The Last Plantagenets (6 page)

The lack of will to wipe out Lollardy, root and branch, may have been due to the characteristics of the two men in whose hands the decision lay. Things might have been different if the positions of Simon of Sudbury and Courtenay had been reversed, in other words if Courtenay had been Archbishop of Canterbury when the Pope delivered his attack on the apathy of the English church. Courtenay had no spiritual or social sympathy with those who espoused Wycliffean ideas. He was the first to punish spiritual derelictions with corporal penalties. No one was burned at the stake in his time, but he had opened the door to this diabolical method of stamping out heresy.

Another reason for the tolerance which wrapped Wycliffe in the folds of immunity was that he had support in high places. Duke John blew hot and cold, but it was always believed he would back the reformer if the need grew urgent. And he had highhanded ways of dealing with matters if anything went against his will.

There was, for instance, a case in which he allowed adherents of his to violate the church law of sanctuary. From primitive days there had been a belief that anyone, even a criminal with blood on his hands, attained some degree of holiness if he passed the inner portals, and this had been embodied in Roman practices to the extent of establishing certain churches in all countries as sanctuaries. There were crosses placed on all roads leading to such churches at a distance of a mile and marked
Sanctarium
. Although the theory accepted in the first place had been that immunity was established in any part of the edifice, it was only while seated in the frithstool, a stone chair beside the altar, that a criminal was legally safe.

The course to be pursued had been developed in considerable detail. The fugitive must present himself at the front entrance and ring the galilee bell which was reserved for that purpose. When the tolling
of the bell brought a response, the desperate applicant had to pay an admission fee, make a full statement of the crime, and, before being admitted, don a black robe with St. Cuthbert’s cross on the left shoulder, a strange device in view of the dying statement of the Celtic saint that he did not want the presence of his bones to assist evil men in claiming sanctuary.

In the year 1377, Duke John, who was still actively asserting his claim to the throne of Castile because his second wife, Constance, was the elder daughter of Pedro the Cruel (thus disregarding her illegitimacy), wanted to retain in his custody the son of the Count of Denia who was related to the Castilian royal family. The boy had been left as a hostage by his father in the care of two squires named Schakel and Haule until he could raise the ransom demanded for him. The duke agreed to pay the ransom if the boy were left in his charge but, as this proposal was contrary to the established laws of chivalry, the offer was refused. The duke then used his influence to have Schakel and Haule committed to the Tower of London until they turned the boy over. They escaped from the Tower and made their way to Westminster where they claimed sanctuary. They had been followed by Lancastrian men-at-arms who secured Schakel and took him back to his cell in the Tower. Haule was less fortunate. Returning to the Abbey, the armed men found that High Mass was being celebrated and that Haule was beside the choir. They surrounded him and proceeded to drag him out. Haule drew his sword in defense and circled the altar twice before a blow from one of his assailants shattered his skull.

The incident created much bitterness and the perpetrators of the murder were excommunicated. Duke John, however, was declared exempt. Later he made the claim that Haule had sought sanctuary as a debtor and that the laws limited that right to men charged with crimes of violence, an interpretation to which the bishops servilely assented.

T
HE market town of Lutterworth in Leicestershire stood on an eminence around which flowed the river Swift. It has often been pointed out that its location should be considered symbolic: for the Swift joined the Avon and the Avon joined the Severn and then they all joined the sea, while on the other side a brooklet rising near the town flowed into the Soar, the Soar flowed into the Trent, the Trent into the Humber, and all of them finally were lost in the German Ocean. Was it not significant that this quiet medieval backwater, from which a prophetic voice would send its message to all parts of the world, should thus feed the waters of both east and west?

John Wycliffe did not retire to his living at Lutterworth because of ecclesiastical pressure. He knew how little time remained to him and that he must use every hour in the completion of his great task, the translation of the Latin Bible into English. He had left followers behind him to carry on his work at Oxford, men who were sometimes more radical and outspoken than he had been. Even Dr. Rygge, the chancellor, belonged to this group. Throughout the country the Lollards, who preached his message, were being heard at village crossroads and in forest glades.

News of this reached the ears of the venerable leader, toiling in his quiet home on the glebe at the church of St. Mary’s; but the drone of the outside world came to him faintly and had, perhaps, lost some of its sense of urgency. He may have smiled approvingly when he learned that his Oxford adherents, even Dr. Rygge, had adopted a particular manner of dress, going barefoot and wearing coarse russet gowns which reached to the ankles, because he believed in simplicity and avoided for himself the use of quatrefoil decoration on his alb or the manciple he
wore when serving at the altar. It was, nonetheless, a contentious day in matters of clerical apparel. At the time that Wycliffe went into retreat at Lutterworth, the amiable Archbishop Simon of Sudbury was struggling to adjudicate a dispute in St. Paul’s, finally approving the right of minor canons to sit in the choir in white surplices with almuces of black, lined with the skins of animals, and black open capes. They were all most tenacious of their little rights, these little men. The same canons had demanded, and had been awarded, seven white loaves and three trencher loaves of black bread each week, to say nothing of twelve weekly bowls of the best ale, called welkyn.

All that can be told of the life at Lutterworth is that the dedicated group who worked with him lived very simply. Wycliffe begrudged himself the morsels of food he took, counting it as so much less for the needy poor; bread, vegetables, cheese in great moderation, and a very occasional egg; that was all. There were no complaints, for their thoughts were too deeply immersed in the task at which they labored.

Little is known of Wycliffe’s appearance. Some chroniclers say he carried himself at a good height; others speak of him as small and wasted of frame. There are some portraits in existence, all of which were painted after his grave had been rifled and his ashes thrown into the Swift, and so are based on nothing more than faint echoes of traditional description. They agree in depicting him as the possessor of an eye burning with zeal, with a Messianic arch to his nose and a flowing white beard.

In order to realize the enormity of the task that John Wycliffe had taken on himself a glance forward may be in order to consider what happened more than two hundred years later, from 1604 to 1617, to be exact. King James of Scotland had succeeded Elizabeth on the English throne and, being something of a pedant, had eagerly grasped at a suggestion that a better English version of the Bible was needed. Forty-seven men were summoned to aid in the project, theologians, scholars, professors of Hebrew and Greek, nearly all of them from the universities. They were divided into six groups and sections of the Scriptures were assigned to each. The size of the groups was determined by a consideration as set forth later, when the translation had been completed, “not too many, lest one should trouble another, and yet many lest many things haply might escape them.” Each of these learned expounders of the Law and the Prophets prepared his own version of the books and chapters assigned to his group and a final version was decided on between them. Two groups met at Westminster, two at Oxford, and two at Cambridge. They took no particular account of the Latin version but
went back to the original sources, Hebrew for the Old Testament, Greek for the New.

This mighty undertaking was placed under the supervision of Dr. Miles Smith, an orientalist who could speak Chaldaic, Syriac, and Arabic, a stout and worthy scholar who had come up the long and hard way, born the son of a butcher in Hereford. His views tended to the puritanical. His personal participation was with the group to whom the prophetic books had been assigned, but later he was active in preparing a final version of the Old Testament. He prepared also a long and learned introduction, addressed to the Readers. For the competence of his work, he was later made Bishop of Gloucester.

His chief aide was Thomas Bilson, Bishop of Winchester, who was descended, it was said, from a Duke of Bavaria. Bilson was quite definitely on the traditional side of the fence, having served in the previous reign as a Crown pamphleteer. His selection undoubtedly was to establish a balance between high church and puritanical viewpoints.

More time was spent in the preliminary steps than in the actual work of revision. It was more than three years later that the forty-seven rolled up their learned sleeves and set to work. After two years and nine months of continuous effort, a final version was arrived at. Nine additional months were needed to prepare the text for the presses.

It was indeed extraordinary that out of so much conflict of opinion there emerged the noble and much loved King James version which has been almost universally accepted in English-speaking countries, even to the present day.

What a contrast is presented by the little group which gathered about John Wycliffe, beginning probably in 1381! They were not scholars in the same sense as the learned architects of the King James version and they had to work exclusively from the Vulgate, the Latin Bible, having no means of drawing on Hebrew and Greek sources. There were as many as five of them, but probably not more, and they lived in the house on the glebe, assembling around one table. The pens of these earnest and dedicated men scratched in tireless industry; their voices were muted in the constant discussion of controversial points. They could not have allowed themselves much leisure, because the pressure of time was heavy upon them. One can picture them as going out together in the cool of evening when the last rays of the sun were falling on the high spire of the church and warming the stained glass to new beauty, walking perhaps two and two, their heads nodding in discussion.

So little is known about this historic labor that the number five, already given, is a guess based on the fact that the manuscript of the final text of the Old Testament carries the imprint of five contributors,
differing in handwriting and even in dialect, one possibly Wycliffe himself. The chief aide was Nicholas de Hereford, a subtle and forceful reasoner, who had been with Wycliffe at Oxford. He was such a determined propagandist that he was later excommunicated and went to Rome to plead his case before the Pope, being found guilty of heresy for his pains and committed to prison. After making his escape, he returned to England and became recognized as the leader of the Lollards. Toward the end of the century, when the hue and cry of heresy were on, he was seized and put to the torture. Weakening then, he recanted publicly at St. Paul’s Cross and, strangely enough, became a vigorous opponent of his former associates.

Two men who served as curates under Wycliffe at Lutterworth, John Purvey and John Horn, were also engaged in the work, the former being given credit for the much improved
Later Version
brought out in 1388.

Little is known about the Lutterworth undertaking, but it seems reasonably certain that the
Early Version
was completed before the death of Wycliffe. He had not devoted himself exclusively to the work for he had felt it incumbent on him to perform at least part of the parochial work. In addition he had put into pamphlet form some severe strictures on Pope Urban VI which so irked that far from gentle pontiff that the writer was ordered to Rome to explain himself. This peremptory invitation had to be declined by the feeble old man at Lutterworth.

John Wycliffe lived long enough to see the
Early Version
completed. Then, as if nature had purposely abstained until the last words had been scratched on the manuscript, he suffered a stroke. A partial recovery made it possible for him to proceed about some of his duties but he never again officiated in the church. On December 28, 1384, he was hearing Mass when the attack was repeated. His wasted form seemed to shrink into the plain gray robe he had chosen to wear and his heavy breathing was the only sign that he still lived. He was carried out through the high and noble west arch of the church for the last time.

Gathered around his couch, his devoted followers watched intently for three days, knowing that he would never recover full consciousness again. It became apparent that he would not survive to see the new year and, in the last moments, the curate began to read from the manuscript of their Bible.

The Wycliffe Bible, copied in large quantities by the hands of willing “poor priests,” was widely received. So widely, in fact, that it continued to circulate throughout England for nearly two centuries, by which time better translations were available. The reverence with which the book was accepted is evident in the fact that 150 perfect copies are still in existence. Clearly the copyists had made them in the thousands.