Lollards

Innovations.

The most explicit statement of the opinions of the early Lollards is contained in the document commonly known as the Conclusions of 1395. This manifesto asserts that temporal possessions ruin the church and drive out the Christian graces of faith, hope and charity ; that the priesthood of the church in communion with Rome was not the priesthood Christ gave to his apostles ; that the monk's vow of celibacy had for its consequence unnatural lust, and should not be imposed; that transubstantiation was a feigned miracle, and led people to idola try; that prayers made over wine, bread, water, oil, salt, wax, incense, altars of stone, church walls, vestments, mitres, crosses, staves, were magical and should not be allowed ; that kings should possess the jus episcopate, and bring good government into the church; that no special prayers should be made for the dead; that auricular confession made to the clergy, and declared to be necessary for salvation, was the root of clerical arrogance and the cause of indulgences and other abuses in pardoning sin ; that all wars were against the principles of the New Testament, and were but murdering and plundering the poor to win glory for kings; that the vows of chastity laid upon nuns led to child murder; that many of the trades practised in the commonwealth, such as those of goldsmiths and armourers, were unnecessary and led to luxury and waste. These Conclusions really contain the sum of Wycliffite teaching; and, if we add that the principal duty of priests is to preach, and that the worship of images, the going on pilgrimages and the use of gold and silver chalices in divine service are sinful, they include almost all the heresies charged in the indictments against individual Lollards down to the middle of the 15th century.

If the formal statements of Lollard creed are to be got from these Conclusions, the popular view of their controversy with the church may be gathered from the ballads current at the time, and from the Piers Ploughman poems. Piers Ploughman's Creed (see LANGLAND) was probably written about when Lollardy was at its greatest strength ; the ploughman of the Creed is a man gifted with sense enough to see through the tricks of the friars, and with such religious knowledge as can be got from the creed, and from Wycliffe's version of the Gospels. The Ploughman's Complaint tells the same tale. It portrays popes, cardinals, prel ates, rectors, monks and friars, who call themselves followers of Peter and keepers of the. gates of heaven and hell, and pale poverty-stricken people, cotless and landless, who have to pay the fat clergy for spiritual assistance, and asks if these are Peter's priests.

Persecutions.

With the accession of the Lancastrian dynasty the church began a more direct attack upon the Lollards. It was hampered by a strong anti-clerical party in the House of Corn mons, which twice petitioned the crown to seize the temporalities of the church and apply them to such national purposes as relief of taxation, maintenance of the poor and the support of new lords and knights. Nevertheless the church succeeded in obtain

ing statutory authority for the capital punishment of heretics, in particular by the act De Heretico Comburendo of 1401, and the period of persecution began. In the earlier stages of Lollardy, when the court and the clergy managed to bring Lollards before ecclesiastical tribunals backed by the civil power, the accused generally recanted and showed no disposition to endure martyrdom for their opinions. They became bolder in the beginning of the 15th century. William Sawtrey refused to recant and was burnt at St. Paul's Cross (March 1401), and other martyrdoms followed. The Lollards, far from daunted, united a struggle for social and political liberty to the hatred felt by the peasants towards the Romish clergy. Jak Upland (John Countryman) took the place of Piers Ploughman, and upbraided the clergy, and especially the friars, for their wealth and luxury. Wycliffe had published the rule of St. Francis, and had pointed out in a commentary upon the rule how far friars had departed from the maxims of their founder, and had persecuted the Spirituales (the Fratricelli, Beghards, Lollards of the Netherlands) for keeping them to the letter. Jak Upland put all this into rude nervous English verse : Freer, what charitie is this To fain that whoso liveth after your order Liveth most perfectlie, And next followeth the state of the Apostles In povertie and pennance: And yet the wisest and greatest clerkes of you Wend or send or procure to the court of Rome, . . . and to be assoiled of the vow of povertie.

Meanwhile, Archbishop Arundel was attacking Lollardy in its academic stronghold, the University of Oxford, and procured the issue of severe regulations in order to purge the university of heresy. In 1408 he proposed and carried in convocation the famous Constitutiones Thomae Arundel intended to put down Wycliffite preachers and teaching. They provided amongst other things that no one was to be allowed to preach without a bishop's licence, that preachers preaching to the laity were not to rebuke the sins of the clergy, and that Lollard books and the translation of the Bible were to be searched for and destroyed. Under Henry V. a more determined effort was made to crush Lollardy. Hitherto its strength had lain among the country gentlemen who were the representatives of the shires. The new king by directing the trial for heresy of Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham thereby did some thing to check the spread of Lollardy among the aristocracy, and the persecution of the humbler Lollards continued. This policy aroused little resentment ; during the successful war with France little sympathy was felt for men who had declared that all war was but the murder and plundering of poor people for the sake of kings. Mocking ballads were composed upon the martyr Old castle, and this dislike of warfare was one of the chief accusations made against him.