sketched. After the fall of Calais a succession of armistices or truces
suspended hostilities for about six years. Meanwhile King Philip had
died in 1350, and been succeeded by his eldest son John. By this time
Edward had come to perceive how little impression his brilliant but
insulated successes had made upon the real strength of his
adversary--how little a way--or, rather, no way at all--he had advanced
towards the conquest of France by the mere winning of a great battle or
two, and the capture and retention of a single town. In the end of the
year 1353, therefore, he renewed more formally an offer which he had
already made to Philip, of renouncing his claim to the French crown on
condition of being acknowledged as sovereign of Guienne, Poitou, and the
other territories in France which the English kings had hitherto held as
vassals. The negotiations consumed some time, but ended in nothing:
several months were then spent in preparations for the renewal of the
war; at last, in October, 1355, the Black Prince, who had been for some
years intrusted with the government of Guienne, took the field at the
head of an army of sixty thousand men, with which, advancing from his
capital of Bordeaux, he made a circuit through Armagnac and Languedoc,
spreading devastation wherever he went, and laying, it is affirmed, more
than five hundred towns and villages in ashes in the space of seven
weeks. In the summer of the next year he proceeded to repeat the same
experiment in a different direction: this time the force with which he
set out amounted to only about twelve thousand men, and with these he
boldly crossed the Garonne, and penetrated into the heart of France. For
some weeks he pursued his destructive course without opposition; but, at
last, when making for Poictiers, and within a short distance of that
city, he suddenly found himself enveloped by a French army, commanded by
King John, more than four times as numerous as his own. Then, on the
19th of September, was fought the battle of Poictiers, making that other
name worthy to be associated for ever in story and in song with Creci,
of which both the extremity of peril and the glorious deliverance were
now more than renewed. The French host was beaten back at all points,
and in the end utterly routed, scattered, and annihilated by Prince
Edward and his handful of English. Most of the chief nobility of France
were either slain or captured: King John himself fell into the hands of
the victors. The illustrious captive was treated with noble courtesy
both by the Black Prince and by the king his father; but, although the
extraordinary fortune of Edward had now placed in his power the persons
of the kings of both the countries which he had so long been
endeavouring to subdue, it soon appeared that he was still as far from
the conquest of either as ever. King David was liberated by a treaty
concluded in 1357; and in 1360 peace was made with France by the treaty
of Bretigny, in which Edward renounced his claim both to the French
crown and to the possession of Normandy, Anjou, Touraine, and Maine, on
condition of being acknowledged the full sovereign of Guienne, Poitou,
and Ponthieu. This treaty set King John at liberty; but three years
after, on finding himself unable to pay the instalments due upon the sum
that had been agreed upon for his ransom--three million gold crowns--he
honourably returned to his imprisonment; and he died in England, in the
palace of the Savoy, London, in the beginning of April, 1364. His eldest
son immediately mounted the throne of France as Charles V. Charles, from
the commencement of his reign, had betrayed a disposition to extricate
himself as soon as an opportunity should occur from the obligations of
the treaty of Bretigny, the renunciations stipulated by which had never,
in fact, been actually made on either side. Meanwhile the course of
circumstances favoured his views. The King of England was no longer the
man he had been either in ardour or in energy; his heroic son had also
fallen into ill health, the effect of exposure in an expedition, to be
lamented on every account, which he had made in the winter of 1366-7
into Spain, to assist Pedro the Cruel in his contest for the throne of
Castile with his illegitimate brother Enrique; and much disaffection had
been excited both in Poitou and Guienne by the severe exactions of the
English government, rendered necessary by the expenses of this
expedition, and by the debts incurred in the late war. In the beginning
of the year 1369 Charles openly took his ground by summoning the Black
Prince, as Duke of Aquitaine, to appear in his court as a vassal, and
answer the complaints of the people of that duchy. The most memorable
event of the short war that followed was the sad and atrocious massacre
by the English prince of the inhabitants of Limoges, the capital of his
country of the Limosin, after he had recovered the town, which had a
short time previously been taken by, or had given itself up to, the
French general, the Duke of Berri. "It was great pity," says Froissart,
"to see the men, women, and children that kneeled down on their knees
before the prince for mercy, but he was so inflamed with ire that he
took no heed to them, so that none was heard, but all put to death as
they were met withal, and such as were nothing culpable: there was no
pity taken of the poor people, who wrought never no manner of treason,
yet they bought it dearer than the great personages, such as had done
the evil and trespass. There was not so hard a heart within the city of
Limoges, an if he had any remembrance of God, but that wept piteously
for the great mischief that they saw before their eyen; for mo than
three thousand men, women, and children were slain and beheaded that
day. God have mercy on their souls! for I trow they were martyrs."
Disease by this time seems to have debilitated and perverted the very
moral nature of the prince. He was soon after obliged to sheathe his
sword, and come home to England, where he lingered, in such debility and
suffering as allowed him to take very little actual share in public
affairs, although his name remained influential, till his death on the
8th of June, 1376. The war in France, meanwhile, had prospered so ill,
that by the year 1374 Edward, who had retained and still used the title
of king of that country, had lost all the territory he had ever
possessed there, with the exception only of Calais, Bordeaux, and
Bayonne, and a few detached localities between those two last-named
towns. No peace, however, was ever made while Edward lived. After the
death of the Black Prince the chief ascendancy in the government was
acquired by his younger brother John of Gaunt (that is, Ghent, the place
of his birth), Duke of Lancaster. The king himself, who had lost Queen
Philippa in 1369, had, in the weakness of old age, sunk under the
dominion of a female favourite, Alice Perrers or Piers. She was a
married woman, and had been lady of the bedchamber to Queen Philippa;
and she is said to have been eminently distinguished by her wit and
talent, as well as by her beauty, an influence to which Edward had all
his life been extremely sensible, although in his better days he had at
least never allowed it to master the soldier or the king. This artful
woman, however, soon acquired so much power over him, and abused it with
so much insolence, that shortly before the death of the Black Prince the
parliament had passed an ordinance declaring that, whereas complaint had
been made before the king that some women had pursued causes and actions
in the king's courts by way of maintainance, and for hire and reward,
which thing displeased the king, the king forbade that any woman should
do it hereafter, "and in particular Alice Perrers, under the penalty of
forfeiting all that the said Alice can forfeit, and of being banished
out of the realm." Alice, notwithstanding, still remained about the
king's person; while Edward, wasting with disease, lay, to quote the
words of Stow, "neglecting the benefit of time that God had given him,
like as he should never have died; trusting the fond fables of the
oft-named Alice when she affirmed he should recover his health, so that
at that time he talked rather of hawking and hunting than of any thing
that pertained to the saving of his soul; only he granted pardon of
death for offences throughout his kingdom to the inhabitants." "Being
now," continues this old chronicler, "suddenly taken with the day of his
death, he began to have manifest signs thereof; what Alice Piers then
did any man may judge, although we set them not down in writing; for, as
soon as she saw the king had set foot within death's door, she bethought
her of flight; yet before she went, that all men might perceive that she
loved not the king for himself, but for that which was his, she took the
rings from his fingers which for the royalty of his majesty he was wont
to wear. Thus yielding him such thanks for his benefits, she bade him
adieu, and so withdrew herself from him. The king, keeping thus at the
point of death, was left not only of her the said Alice Piers, but of
other the knights and esquires, who had served him, allured more with
his gifts than his love. Amongst a thousand, there was only present at
that time a certain priest (other of his folks applying the spoil of
what they could lay hands on), who, lamenting the king's misery, and
inwardly touched with grief of heart for that, amongst so many
counsellors which he had, there was none that would minister to him the
word of life, came boldly unto him, and admonished him to lift up the
eyes as well of his body as of his heart unto God, and with sighs to ask
mercy of him, whose majesty he well knew he had grievously offended;
whereupon the king, listening to the words of the priest, although he
had a little before wanted the use of his tongue, yet then taking
strength to him, seemed to speak what was in his mind; and then, what
for weakness of his body, contrition of his heart, and sobbing for his
sins, his voice and speech failed him, and, scarce half pronouncing the
word Jesu, he with this last word made an end of his speech, and yielded
up the ghost." He died at Richmond in Surrey (then called Shine or
Sheen), about seven o'clock on the evening of Sunday the 21st of June,
1377; leaving the throne to his grandson, Richard II., son of Edward the
Black Prince, by his wife Joan, called the Fair Maid of Kent, the
daughter of his great uncle Edmund, Earl of Kent, and previously the
wife of Thomas Holland, who in her right had assumed the title of Earl
of Kent in 1360, but died in the end of the same year, upon which his
widow immediately gave her hand to the Prince of Wales.
The children borne to Edward III. by his wife Queen Philippa were,
Edward the Black Prince, in 1330; Isabel, who became the wife of
Ingelram de Coucy, in 1332; Joan de la Tour, in 1335; William of
Hatfield, in 1336; Lionel, afterwards Duke of Clarence, in 1338; Blanche
de la Tour, who died in childhood in 1340; John of Ghent, afterwards
Duke of Lancaster, in 1340; Edmund, afterwards Duke of York, in 1341;
Mary, afterwards Duchess of Bretagne, probably in 1342; Margaret,
afterwards Countess of Pembroke, in 1346; William, in 1349; and Thomas,
afterwards Duke of Gloucester, in 1355.
It has been observed, in regard to Edward III., by Sir James
Mackintosh, that "though his victories left few lasting acquisitions,
yet they surrounded the name of his country with a lustre which produced
strength and safety; which perhaps also gave a loftier tone to the
feelings of England, and a more vigorous activity to her faculties."
"During a reign of fifty years," it is added, "Edward III. issued writs
of summons, which are extant to this day, to assemble seventy
parliaments or great councils: he thus engaged the pride and passions of
the parliament and the people so deeply in support of his projects of
aggrandisement, that they became his zealous and enthusiastic followers.
His ambition was caught by the nation, and men of the humblest station
became proud of his brilliant victories. To form and keep up this state
of public temper was the mainspring of his domestic administration, and
satisfactorily explains the internal tranquillity of England during the
forty years of his effective reign. It was the natural consequence of so
long and watchful a pursuit of popularity, that most grievances were
redressed as soon as felt, that parliamentary authority was yearly
strengthened by exercise, and that the minds of the turbulent barons
were exclusively turned towards a share in their sovereign's glory.
Quiet at home was partly the fruit of fame abroad."
WICLIFFE
Beyond that of most of our great men, has the fame of Wiclif[20]
undergone fierce dispute within the last few years. From regarding him
with reverence as "the Morning Star of the Reformation," it has come to
be more than questioned whether he was a reformer at all, or whether a
certain superior craft was not the motive that incited him throughout
his career. It will be convenient to leave the consideration of this
matter till we have looked at the leading events of his life, when we
shall be better prepared to estimate his character. To assume a
controversial tone--as it would be scarcely possible to avoid doing if
we entered into the discussion of the various views and statements that
have been put forth respecting him--is not at all our intention. We have
examined the several statements; we shall be content with expressing our
own opinions.
There is some uncertainty about both the year and the place of John
Wiclif's birth: the place which seems most probable, however, is a
little village pleasantly situated near the junction of the rivers Greta
and Tees, about six miles from Richmond in Yorkshire; the year 1324.
What is known of his life commences with the year 1340, when he entered
as a commoner at Queen's College, Oxford, then newly founded: his name
is in the list of the first scholars. From Queen's he soon removed to
Merton College, at that time highest in repute at the University; where
he greatly distinguished himself. The theology taught at this period was
that of the schoolmen, who, as Bacon afterwards said of them, "did, out
of no great quantity of matter, spin out those laborious webs of
learning which are extant in their books...admirable indeed for the
fineness of the thread, but of no substance or profit." In this
scholastic discipline Wiclif became so deeply versed, that his
contemporary Knighton, a bitter enemy and a competent judge, declared he
was without an equal (_in scholasticis disciplinis incomparabilis_.) Nor
was he skilled in this alone; he appears to have pursued, with almost
equal success, the whole round of moral, philosophical, and legal
studies as then taught. According to the standard of his time he was an
eminently learned man.
The earliest of Wiclif's publications, so far as is known, was written
in 1356; it was first printed in 1840. The work itself does not occupy
more than fourteen small pages, and is of little value on its own
account, but deserving attention, as Wiclif's first work, written when
he was thirty-two years old, a period in a man's life when his character
is fixed and his tone of thought determined, and when consequently the
opinions he has formed will almost certainly colour the actions of the
remainder of his life. We may therefore spend a few minutes in looking
at this production and at the circumstances which called it forth. In
1349 a fearful pestilence occurred in England. It had marched slowly
from the east, ravaging every country it passed through. Nearly the
whole of Europe was visited by it. The voice of the terrified nations
affirmed that only a tithe of the human race had escaped; that all
children born since it were deficient in the number of their teeth; that
even the brute creation was not spared, their corpses being so many as
to fill the air with a horrible taint. So severe indeed was the
visitation, that, in this country at least, it long served as an epoch
from which legal documents were dated. The Scriptures told that
pestilence had of old been the scourge wherewith an offended God had
punished the sins of the nations; and the people devoutly believed that
this had been sent for such a purpose. The plague ceased, but sober men
saw with sorrow that the rulers and the priests had not heeded the
heavenly warning, and to the faithful the wickedness that stalked abroad
seemed like an awful defiance of the divine power. Under such
circumstances and prompted by some such feelings was it that Wiclif
wrote 'The Last Age of the Church.' Taking for his guide the prophecies
of Abbot Joachim, a mystic who lived in the twelfth century, and
combining therewith a cabalistic computation of the Scriptural
prophecies, and turning also to the verses of the Sybil, he thought the
end of the world was at hand, and announced its speedy dissolution. He
was mistaken, and lived to see that he was mistaken. But although his
prophecy failed, there is much in the tract that shows the man as he
then was, and throws a bright light on his future career. It proves that
he had thus early come to have identified in his mind religion with the
whole life of man, to look upon it as reaching to all his duties and
employments, that he, indeed, regarded it as the animating principle of
the whole of the political and social institutions. It proves that he
had cast an anxious look around him, and, dissatisfied with the state of
the world, he was more dissatisfied with the ministers of religion, whom
he boldly and broadly charges with a disregard of their higher
functions, and an indulgence in a greedy and unholy rapacity. It may in
a word be said, that the object of the tract is to declare the troubles
that will fall upon the church and the world, on account of the simony
of the priests, and the encroachments and exactions of the papal power.
These feelings were brought out more strongly a few years later. In
1360 he engaged in what a recent historian calls "a fierce but
ridiculous controversy with the different orders of friars." To the
stern moral dignity of Wiclif the controversy did not seem a ridiculous
one, and indeed it hardly seems to us more ridiculous than that of
Luther with Tetzel and the Dominicans. These friars had been established
in England for more than a century, and had obtained considerable
influence. Although vowing poverty, they had acquired great wealth;
under the guise of sanctity they had concealed, it was affirmed, gross
depravity. They had almost from the first been at enmity with the
secular clergy, and were especially obnoxious to the University of
Oxford. Before Wiclif, they met with a steady opponent in Fitz-Ralph,
chancellor of Oxford, and afterwards Bishop of Armagh, who carried his
charges against them to the papal throne. Fitz-Ralph died in 1360, from
which time Wiclif pursued the war fiercely, and only ceased to prosecute
it with his life. Of the works he produced against them at this period
it is not certain that any remain. Two pieces, one which he presented to
the court of Richard II., and the other which seems to have been written
a year or two before his death, were printed by Dr. James in 1608, and
serve to show the nature of his quarrel. It was not, as Dr. Lingard
implies, merely a charge against them for depending upon alms, which
Wiclif asserted to be repugnant to the Gospel; though upon that he
strongly insisted, but rather that they misled the unwary, by holding
out to them false hopes of pardon, and by their untrue representations
obtained their property from them, leading them to trust to these
worthless pardons thus purchased by money, instead of setting before
them the great Gospel truth. He charges them with doing this that they
might obtain the wealth of their dupes. They become, he says in his
bitter and plain-spoken language, "confessors, preachers, and rulers
commonly of all men, and they teachen them not their foul sins, for
winning of stinking muck and lusts of their own bellies, that is foul
worm's meat and a sack of dirt." And elsewhere, "St. James directs to
visit the fatherless and motherless children, and widows in their
tribulation, and to keep man unfouled from the world, that is, from
pride, covetise, and vanities. But friars do all the contrary, for they
visiten rich men, and by hypocrisy getten falsely their alms, and
withdraw from poor men; but they visiten rich widows for their muck, and
maken them to be buried at the Friars, but poor men come not in there."
This was Wiclif's quarrel, and this continued to be his quarrel with
them, that while intent only on driving a lucrative and disgraceful
trade, they were deceiving the souls of those who trusted to them: no
ridiculous controversy that, to a man of Wiclif's mind! As he said, so
doubtless he thought--"Friars be worse enemies and slayers of man's
soul, than is the cruel fiend of hell by himself. For they under the
habit of holiness lead men and nourish them in sin, and be special
helpers of the fiend to strangle men's souls." It is not our business to
palliate the violence of Wiclifs language, but only to represent his
feelings, and a cold statement in the calm phraseology of our day would
poorly express the vehemence of his indignation. These words were not
probably written till long afterwards, but these were no doubt his
sentiments then. His controversy with the friars marks the commencement
of his career as a reformer.
The year following that in which he engaged in this controversy he was
chosen master of Baliol College, and presented to the living of
Fillingham, a valuable benefice in the diocese of Lincoln. Four years
afterwards he was appointed warden of Canterbury Hall, by Archbishop
Islip, the founder of that college.[21] Originally the archbishop had
appointed Woodhall, a friar, to be warden, and had founded eleven
scholarships, three to be held by monks, and eight by clerks, or secular
clergymen. At this time the dispute between these orders was at its
height, and the peace and security of the infant establishment were soon
disturbed by the bickerings of its inmates. To such a length were they
carried, that Islip felt himself called upon to interfere, and he
determined to prevent the probability of a recurrence of the quarrel by
removing the monks, and substituting for them seculars. Islip did not
live long after this change; and, on the succession of Langham to the
vacant see, Woodhall appealed to him, as visitor of Canterbury Hall, to
remove Wiclif, who, he affirmed, had procured his appointment at a time
when Islip was incapable from sickness of judging aright. He was
successful; but Wiclif in his turn appealed from the new archbishop to
the pope; his holiness, however, ratified the decision of Langham, but
not till after a delay of nearly four years. Meanwhile Wiclif had done
nothing to propitiate the papal power, but he had done some things to
offend it. In 1365 Urban V. renewed the papal claim to a domination over
the sovereignty of England, which had been conceded to the holy see by
John; and he demanded the payment of an annual tribute of a thousand
marks, together with the arrears of the last thirty years. Edward III.
was little disposed either to acknowledge his subjection or to pay the
money. He submitted the claim of the pontiff to his parliament, which on
the next day, and without dissent from laymen or clergy, declared his
submission to the pope to be beyond the power of any sovereign to
render, and engaged, if the demand were persisted in, to oppose it with
the whole power of the nation. Urban was intimidated by an opposition so
much more resolute than he expected. A monk, however, published a tract,
in which he reasserted the right of the pontiff to the tribute, and
ventured to declare, that England was justly forfeit on account of the
non-payment of it; and hence he presumed to assert that the clergy were
absolved from their subjection to the English king. To controvert his
argument he challenged Wiclif by name. The reformer was not the man to
submit quietly to such a challenge. He speedily replied to it, though,
as he declared, he was not ignorant that the object of his antagonist
was to involve him in difficulties with the pope, and to obtain for
himself, and his order, the papal favour. Wiclif gives a statement of
the debate in parliament, and of the reasons there adduced against the
grant; and then, in his own name, shows that the papal claim, and the
grant on which it was founded, were dishonest, and that therefore, as
the conditions were bad, the consequences that were asserted to result
logically from them were bad also. Wiclif in this tract calls himself
the king's chaplain, and it is a proof of the eminence to which he had
attained, that he should be singled out for this encounter, unless it
arose from his prior controversy.
In 1368, before the dispute respecting the wardenship of Canterbury
Hall was determined, Wiclif exchanged the rectory of Fillingham for that
of Ludgershall, also in the diocese of Lincoln. After the award of the
pontiff was received, Woodhall remained two years before he could obtain
the king's confirmation, which was, it is said, then only procured by a
bribe of two hundred marks. But another and more important dignity was
at this time conferred upon Wiclif by the University. In 1372 he was
elected Professor of Theology, and at the same time he took the degree
of D.D. This is a most important period in his life. It is evident that
he had already attained a high position in the esteem of those who were
most competent to judge of his abilities, but it is probable that his
election to this office may have arisen from their gratitude for his
services in opposition to the growing influence and power of the monks,
and his fervid declaration against the continuous encroachment of the
pope. But if it were for these less immediately _religious_ services
that he received the appointment of professor of divinity, it is not to
be doubted but, in accordance with his repeatedly declared sentiments of
the responsibility of the ministers of religion, he would address
himself devoutly to the important duties of the office he had
undertaken. He appears, indeed, from this time to have more earnestly
and more rigorously set himself to the study of the Scriptures. In those
days the Scriptures were not unknown to the teachers of religion, as has
been sometimes asserted, but the knowledge of them does not appear to
have been general or exact. Wiclif's quotations from them were now more
frequent; his expositions of them always exhibited them as the ultimate
rule. It is probable that from this time we may date the establishment
of his main doctrinal views, and also his departure from the received
theology. It is not possible in our brief space to extract from the
works that appear to belong to this period, but we may say that, if they
have been correctly dated, he now distinctly set forth those truths
which caused him to be branded as a heretic. His lectures on the
Decalogue afford striking proofs of the clearness and vigour of his
powers, and exhibit his leading views of religion with much
distinctness. These views were very different from those generally
received, and must have excited much surprise--much enmity, and much
deep attachment. As we shall have to speak of his opinions more
hereafter, we may conveniently leave any further remarks upon them for
the present.