John Wiclif

The man who led the attack upon the claims of the church and upon the privileges, corruption, and wealth of the clergy was John Wiclif. He was born in Yorkshire in 1320, and went in early life to Oxford, where he was f or a time master of Balliol, and also, it is thought, warden of Canterbury Hall. In 1374 he was made rector of Lutterworth, a village in Leicestershire, which became on this account the centre of a new religious agitation. Wiclif was the last of the mediaeval schoolmen, men who loved to argue and dispute in a scholastic sense. But he was no unpractical theorizer; he saw the evils of the times and protested against them. He has sometimes been called the "Morning Star of the Reformation."

Wiclif's teaching was largely destructive. He denounced the claims of the papacy, and as early as 1366, in a pamphlet, The Dominion of God, had declared that the state was not subordinate to the church. He next attacked the clergy for their wealth and their interest in worldly affairs, and declared that the church should limit itself strictly to its spiritual functions. He vigorously opposed the use by the clergy of excommunication. In 1377 his views were condemned by Gregory XI, but the condemnation was without effect in England. In 1378 Gregory XI died at Rome, and the church divided on the question of his successor. One group of the cardinals elected Urban VI, who remained at Rome ; the other chose Clement VII, who returned to Avignon. This great schism weakened the authority of the papacy, and Wiclif, taking advantage of this fact, grew bolder. He attacked the doctrines as well as the practices of the church, and went so far as to deny even the doctrine of transubstantiation. He asserted the superiority of an active over an ascetic life, a claim the more striking in that the ascetic had been the ideal of the Middle Ages. He inveighed against the friars, whom he charged with hypocrisy and worldliness; he inspired a body of "poor priests" to preach to the people instead of selling them pardons; and he gave to these priests an English Bible, which he himself translated, the first complete version in English.

Accession of Richard II

In 1377 Edward III died, and his grandson, Richard, son of the Black Prince, ascended the throne without opposition. The old king had outlived his usefulness and had passed away unmourned, and the young king, a mere lad of ten, began his career in an evil time. The French were threatening to invade England and were actually landing on the coast of Kent. Parties at court, in spite of a momentary reconciliation, were engaged in factional quarrels and were struggling with each other for the control of the government. The baronage, with John of Gaunt as their leading representative, had degenerated into a body of selfish parasites, preying on the wealth of the kingdom.

Richard's reign would be of little interest in English history were the wars with France and the bad management of those in authority the only matters to be considered. Of infinitely deeper significance is the unrest among the people of which Langland speaks, the discontent of peasants, artisans, and lesser clergy with the way taxes were levied, wealth was distributed, law administered, and religion taught. The troubles at court and the problem of Richard's personal character are of but little importance when compared with the peasants' revolt, the rise of the Collards, and the activities of parliament. The revolting classes of Richard's reign were the ancestors of those who formed the backbone of the English nation in the days of the Tudors and the Stuarts; whereas the descendants of the selfish and greedy nobility disappeared during the baronial wars of the next century.

The Condition and Grievances of the Peasantry

We have seen that during the fourteenth century the condition of the villeins had been improving ; that they had been to a small degree commuting their labor for money payments ; that many of them had fled from the manors and had taken up service or artisan work in the towns; and that the manorial lords had been compelled to employ hired laborers, whose wages the Statute of Laborers had tried in vain to regulate. We have seen, in fact, that the old agricultural system was breaking down; that the growth of towns and of commerce was giving to the peasantry new means of livelihood; and that the old system itself was not adapted to meet the competition of trade, or to face such grave emergencies as the Black Death. The process of transformation was a very slow one, and even in 1380 the peasantry were still performing their old services on a great many manors. But having once begun to throw off some of the old obligations, they were certain to be discontented with those that remained. Serfdom itself was, therefore, their greatest grievance.

Other grievances, however, were not wanting. The villeins were restless under the yoke of their labor services and the payments which were written down on the rolls of the manors; the hired laborers, in their turn, hated the statutes fixing their wages, and more still the lawyers and justices of the peace who enforced the law against them. The people in general hated the rich, whether nobles or merchants, for their indifference, and the monasteries for their tyranny and selfishness. They sided with the parish priests in their poverty, and viewed with envy the separation of classes and the unequal distribution of wealth. They detested the provisors who came among them, and likewise resented the coming of the Flemish weavers whom Edward III had encouraged to ply their trade in England. The laboring classes everywhere felt that the government was against them, and was not only heavily taxing them, but was leaving them often unprotected against the attacks of French, Welsh, and Scots on the borders.