bury's days; they were more inclined to "revelling" than to laying by their money. Then they would not eat the coarse brown bread, but must have the very best and finest wheaten bread; no "half-penny ale" for them then, but the strongest and brownest that brewers could make; nor would they eat bacon, but fresh hot meat or fish; and so it went on till the bad weather, and cold and scarcity, came again, and hunger pinched them. Sometimes hunger and cold pinched them terribly; we shall hear in the next reign what came of it.

20. We will end this lecture by reading the advice William Langlande gives to the different classes of people in the land. Though he is a poor man himself, and sees the faults William and follies of the rich very clearly, he does not wish Langlande's to do away with them altogether, and to level all admonitions. people to one another. He does not wish the lords and knights to turn ploughmen, but he wishes them to leave off their follies and fopperies. They are to be merciful to their tenants, to take no gifts from the poor, nor to hurt their bondmen. They are to reprove robbers, flatterers, and false men, and to help to keep good order in the land. He says they ought to hunt wild beasts. They are rather fond of doing so now for their amusement; but we have to remember that at that time the greater part of the country was still wild forest and waste land, full of foxes, hares, and other creatures, which did great harm to the farmers. There seem even to have been wolves still, which, he says, worried men, women, and children. So he desires the knights to hunt these and the wild birds of prey, on the weekdays; but to go to church on Sundays, and attend to their religion,

The merchants are to trade honestly, and to use their wealth in repairing hospitals for the sick, in mending bridges which are broken down, helping poor sick people and prisoners, and to do other charitable works, and then he promises no devil shall hurt them.

The lawyers are not to take bribes, but for the love of the Lord they are to speak for the innocent and poor, and to comfort them.

The sick, the blind, and the unfortunate are to be helped and comforted; but the idle beggars are to be set to work. They are to be fed with dog's food until they will work; but when they have deserved it they shall sup the better.

Women are to do a good deal of needlework. Some of them are to sew sacks for the wheat; the ladies, with their long fingers,

should sew with silk, and work vestments for the clergy; and they should all spin wool and flax to make cloth for the poor, and help the labourer who wins their food.

There is one set of people he cannot put up with at all-the jugglers and story-tellers, who went about to amuse the people. As he was of a very grave and melancholy sort of character, anything like fun and merry-making was, as Solomon says, “like vinegar upon nitre" to him. We need not agree with him in this, but otherwise we shall perhaps all feel that the world would still be the better if the spirit of his advice were followed; and shall agree too with Gower, when he says the sun looks not on a worthier race than the English, "had but its people love for one another."

LECTURE XXXI.-NEW ASPIRATIONS.

Wycliffe. The English Bible. Richard II. Wat Tyler and the insurrection of the people. Its results.

1. Of all the great men who lived in Edward III.'s long reign, and that of his successor, Richard II., the one whose work was the most important and has borne the most precious fruit was John Wycliffe, who has been called the Father of the Reformation. The Reformation we may look upon as the greatest event in the whole history of England; it is that which has most affected all our lives and thoughts and actions.

2. We have seen how for several hundred years there had been frequent disputes with the Pope, from the time when William the Conqueror disdainfully refused to do homage to him for the kingdom of England. We remember the great quarrel in Henry II.'s time, which ended in the murder of Becket, and Henry's humble submission. Going on a little farther, we find King John really owning the Pope as his master, doing homage to his legate for his crown, and paying him a large tribute. Though this caused great fury and indignation among the English, it was never formally put an end to till, in the reign of Edward III., the whole parliament, lords, commons, and bishops too, agreed all together to cast it off, and declared they would not only not pay up the back sums of the tribute which had fallen into arrears, but would never pay it at all any more.

3. Still all these disputes were what we may call political; they were all concerning worldly affairs, and had nothing to do with religious belief. Up till this time all the English people believed every one of the doctrines of the Roman Church. John Wycliffe was the first man who began to doubt some Wycliffe. of those doctrines, and to teach other people to do

the same.

He was a clergyman, a very learned and clever man, the head of Balliol College at Oxford. He was also a man of a strong character; very religious, and heartily in earnest in whatever he did.

4. His war with the Church began-just as we might expect, after all we have heard-in a war with the friars. He saw, as Chaucer and Langlande did, all the wickedness and hypocrisy of these men, and the evil they wrought among the people. He wrote against them, and he preached against them; and his books and sermons, being very forcible and clever, had a great effect on men's minds. At one time he fell very ill, and was thought to be dying; upon which a deputation of some of the friars paid him a visit, and after a few polite wishes for his health they exhorted him, now that he was at the point of death, that he would, "as a true penitent, bewail and revoke in their presence whatever things he had said to their disparagement. But Dr. Wycliffe, immediately recovering strength, called his servants. to him, and ordered them to raise him a little on his pillows; which when they had done, he said with a loud voice, I shall not die, but live, and declare the evil deeds of the friars.' On which they departed from him in confusion."

John of

5. During the time when John of Gaunt was managing the kingdom in his father's old age, he was engaged in a great political strife with the clergy and bishops, and was very glad to find a helper in Wycliffe. Accordingly, for a time he favoured and protected him. "Apostolic poverty for the clergy was the idea they had in common; it was recommended to them by very different reasons," says a modern historian.

Gaunt protects him.

bishops.

6. Wycliffe soon began to use very strong language about the Pope, calling him "Antichrist, a proud and worldly priest, and the most cursed of purse-clippers and kervers" (carvers). He also said many other things which made the bishops very indignant. The Archbishop of Canterbury suspended him, and he was summoned to appear before an assembly of bishops at St. Paul's Church in London. John of 1377. Gaunt and the Lord Marshall of England, Henry Assembly of Percy, went with Wycliffe, to protect and encourage him in case of any violence. There was an immense concourse of people crowding around, and within the Ladye Chapel a grand assembly of dukes and lords, besides the bishops and archbishops. 7. But Wycliffe had no chance to speak a word. These great lords soon fell to quarrelling. The quarrel is told very amusingly by Foxe, who wrote the lives of the English reformers. words of Lord Percy, he says, cast the Bishop of London "into a fumish chafe ;" and very soon a fire began to heat and kindle between them," insomuch that they began so to rate and revile one

A few

the other that the whole multitude, therewith disquieted, began to be set in a hurry." John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, now spoke upon Wycliffe's side; to whom the bishop, "nothing inferior in reproachful checks and rebukes, did render and requite to him not only as good as he brought, but also did so far excel him that the duke blushed and was ashamed, because he could not overpass the bishop in brawling and railing." The duke presently whispered (not so low but that he could be overheard) that "he would rather drag the bishop out of the church by the hair of his head than he would take this at his hand." Then the citizens stood up for their bishop, and "with scolding and brawling" the council broke up.

8. After this the Pope sent what Foxe calls a "wild bull" against Wycliffe; but no harm came of it, for John of Gaunt still protected him, and this time the citizens of London also took his part. When this Pope died the state of the Roman Church grew still worse than before, since it became divided against itself, and two rival popes were set up, who were most furious enemies to each other, and set the whole Christian world at enmity. The English took the side of one Pope, and the French that of the other, and each party called the opposite one "dogs."

1378.

9. The Pope whom the English supported sent some of those "sacks full of pardons" to England, and proclaimed that he would absolve from every crime or fault those who would help him in destroying his enemies. These pardons, of course, were not to be had for nothing; but so eagerly were they bought that, in the diocese of London alone, " there was collected," says Froissart. "a large Gascony tun full of money. and it was solemnly declared that all who had given their money, and should die at this time, were absolved from every fault."

We know what such men as Langlande and Wycliffe must have felt when all this was going on. Wycliffe, however, soon began to think that it was not only the things which the Pope and the clergy did which were wrong, but also those which they taught and believed.

10. The principal doctrine which Wycliffe contested was that concerning the sacrament, and the miraculous change in the bread and wine, which was called transubstantiation. But he soon went on to other doctrines too, such as "pardons," pilgrimages, worship of the saints, and worship of their images. When we come to inquire how it was that he began to think all these things wrong, whilst everybody else thought them true and right,