Chapter IV: The Coming of the Friars (2)

"The employment of his scholars was to be study--not the
_claustralis religio_ of the older religious Orders, nor the more
practical and more popular self-devotion of the Dominicans and
Franciscans. He forbade them ever to take vows; he enjoined them to
maintain their corporate independence against foreign
encroachments; he ordained that all should apply themselves to
studying the liberal arts and philosophy before entering on a
course of theology; and he provided special chaplains to relieve
them of ritual and ceremonial duties. He contemplated and even
encouraged their going forth into the great world. No ascetic
obligations were laid on them, but residence and continual study
were strictly prescribed, and if any scholar retired from the
college with the intention of giving up study, or even ceased to
study diligently, his salary was no longer to be paid. If the scale
of these salaries and statutable allowances was humble, it was
chiefly because the founder intended the number of scholars to be
constantly increased as the revenues of the house might be
enlarged."

In this foundation Walter De Merton was the first to express the only true idea of a college. Once expressed, it was followed by every succeeding founder. The collegiate system revolutionised University life in England. Merton was never tired of insisting upon the one great claim which his community should have to the loyalty, affection and service of its members.

It was this idea which has produced all that is good in the system. To individual study in the University schools was added common life; to private aims the idea of a common good. "The individual is called to other activities besides those of his own sole gain. Diversities of thought and training, of taste, ability, strength and character, brought into daily contact, bound fast together by ties of common interest, give birth to sympathy, broaden thought, and force enquiry, that haply in the issue may be formed that reasoned conviction and knowledge, that power of independent thought, to produce which is the great primary aim of our English University education" (Henderson).

The founder, who had long been busy acquiring property in Oxford, had impropriated the Church of S. John the Baptist for the benefit of the college, and several houses in its immediate neighbourhood were made over to the scholars. The site thus acquired (1265-8) became their permanent home and was known henceforth as Merton Hall.

Of the buildings which were now erected and on which the eyes of the founder may have rested in pride and hope, little now remains. The antique stone carving over the college gate, the great north door of the vestibule of the Hall, with its fantastic tracery of iron, perhaps the Treasury and Outer Sacristy are relics of the earliest past. But Chapel, Hall, Library and Quadrangle are later than the Founder.

As if to emphasise the ecclesiastical character of the English college, he had begun at once to rebuild the parish church as a collegiate church. The high altar was dedicated in the year of his death, 1277; the rest of the chapel is of later dates.

The choir belongs to the end of the thirteenth century (1297), (Pure Decorated); the transepts (Early Decorated, with later Perpendicular windows and doors) were finished in 1424, but begun perhaps as early as the choir; and the massive tower, with its soaring pinnacles, a fine specimen of Perpendicular work, was completed in 1451.

It will be noticed that the chapel has no nave, but that, probably in imitation of William of Wykeham's then recently finished naveless chapel at New College, the nave which had evidently been intended was omitted at Merton (after 1386). Two arches blocked with masonry in the western wall and the construction of the west window indicate this original intention of adding a nave.

The old thirteenth century glass in the Geometrical windows of the chancel is of great interest. The arms of Castile and the portrait

of Elinor of Castile (d. 1290) will be noticed. Merton Chapel is very rich both in glass and brasses.

On entering the college you are struck at once by the fact that Merton is not as other colleges arranged on a preconceived plan. But the irregular and disconnected arrangement of the buildings of the quadrangle are themselves suggestive of the fact that it was from Merton and the plans of its founder that the college quadrangles may trace their origin; as it is from Merton that they derive their constitution. The hall, the chapel, the libraries and the living rooms, as essentials for college life, were first adopted here, and these buildings were disposed in an unconnected manner about a quadrangular court after the fashion of the outer Curia of a monastery. The regular disposition of college quadrangles was first completed by Wykeham, and whilst other colleges have conformed to the perfected shape, Merton remains in its very irregularity proudly the prototype, the mother of colleges.

Of the college buildings the most noteworthy is the library, the oldest example of the mediæval library in England. It was the gift of William Rede, Bishop of Chichester (1377). The dormer and east windows and the ceiling are later, but the library as it is, though enriched by the improvements of succeeding centuries, beautiful plaster-work and panelling, noble glass and a sixteenth century ceiling, is not very different from that in which the mediæval student pored over the precious manuscripts chained to the rough sloping oaken desks which project from the bookcases. These bookcases stand out towards the centre of the room and form, with a reader's bench opposite to each of the narrow lancet windows, a series of reader's compartments. How the books were fastened and used in those days, you may gain a good idea by examining the half case numbered forty-five.

It was in this library that the visitors of Edward VI. took their revenge on the schoolmen and the popish commentators by destroying in their stupid fanaticism not only innumerable works of theology, but also of astronomy and mathematical science. "A cart-load," says Thomas Allen, an eye-witness, "of such books were sold or given away, if not burnt, for inconsiderable nothings." In this library Anthony Wood was employed in the congenial occupation of "setting the books to rights," and here is preserved, according to tradition, the very astrolabe which Chaucer studied. And, for a fact, a beautiful copy of the first Caxton edition of his works is stored in the sacristy--a building which up till 1878 was used as a brew-house.

The charming inner quadrangle, in which the library is, rejoices in the name "Mob" Quad--a name of which the derivation has been lost. Like the Treasury, it probably dates from about 1300. The high-pitched roof of the latter, made of solid blocks of ashlar, is one of the most remarkable features of Merton. The outer sacristy is on the right of the main entrance passage to Mob Quad, and thence an old stone staircase leads to the Treasury or Muniment room. Another passage from the front quadrangle leads to Patey's Quad. The Fellows' Quadrangle was begun in 1608, and the large gateway with columns of the four orders (Roman-Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite) is typical of the architectural taste of the times. The quadrangle itself, very similar to that of Wadham, is one of the most beautiful and charming examples of late Gothic imaginable. It would have been a fortunate thing if this had been the last building added to Merton. But it was destined that the taste of the Victorian era should be painfully illustrated by the new buildings which were erected in 1864 by Mr Butterfield. The architect was eager and the college not disinclined at that time to destroy part of the library and the Mob Quad. The abominable building which replaced the beautiful enclosure known as the Grove, combines with the new buildings of Christ Church to spoil what might have been one of the most beautiful effects of water, wood and architecture in the world--the view of Oxford from the Christ Church and Broad Walks.

Inspired by the example of Merton and a similar dislike of monks and friars, Walter de Stapeldon, the great Bishop of Exeter, ordained that the twelve scholars whom he originally endowed (1314) should not study theology or be in orders. The society, afterwards known as Exeter College, was housed at first in Hart Hall and Arthur Hall, in the parish of S. Peter in the East, and was intended by the founder to be called Stapeldon Hall. In the following year he moved his scholars, eight of whom, he stipulated, must be drawn from Devonshire and four from Cornwall, to tenements which he had bought between the Turl and Smith Gate, just within the walls. The founder added a rector to their number and gave them statutes, based on those of Merton, which clearly indicated that his object was to give a good education to young laymen. The college was practically refounded in 1566 by Sir William Petre, a successful servant of the Tudors. Of the pre-reformation buildings, nothing unhappily remains save a fragment of the tower. The rest is seventeenth century or nineteenth, the front on Turl Street dating from 1834, and the unlovely "modern Gothic" front on Broad Street from 1854. Sir Gilbert Scott, who designed the latter, destroyed the old chapel and replaced it with a copy of the Sainte Chapelle.

Ten years later another daughter of Merton was born. For in 1324 Adam de Brome, Almoner of Edward II. and Rector of S. Mary's, obtained the royal licence to found a college of scholars, Bachelor Fellows, who should study theology and the Ars Dialectica. The statutes of this "Hall of the Blessed Mary at Oxford," afterwards known as King's Hall and Oriel College, were copied almost verbatim from those of Merton. Tackley's Inn, on the south side of High Street (No. 106), and Perilous Hall, on the north side of Horsemonger, now Broad Street, were purchased for the College. But in 1326 it was refounded by the King, endowed with the advowson and rectory of the Church of S. Mary, and ordered to be governed by a Provost, chosen by the scholars from their own number. The first Provost was the founder, who was also Rector of S. Mary's, and the society now established itself in the Rectory House on the south side of the High Street (St Mary Hall), at the north end of Schidyard (Oriel) Street. The college gradually acquired property stretching up to St John's (now Merton) Street, and in so doing became possessed of the tenement at the angle of Merton and Oriel Street called /p, or, for some uncertain reason, but probably on account of its possessing one of the architectural features indicated by that word, La Oriole. It was here, then, that the society fixed its abode and from this hall it took its name. The present front quadrangle, resembling the contemporary front quadrangles of Wadham and University, and endowed with a peculiar charm by the weather-stained and crumbling stone, stands on the site of La Oriole and other tenements. It was completed in the year of the outbreak of the Civil War, _Regnante Carolo_, as the legend on the parapet between the hall and chapel records, and the statue of Charles I. above it indicates. The Garden Quadrangle was added in the eighteenth century.

The monks and friars have gone their way and the place of their habitation knows them no more. But they have left their mark upon Oxford in many ways. Though their brotherhoods were disbanded by Henry VIII. and most of their buildings demolished, the quadrangles and cloisters of many colleges recall directly the monastic habit, and the college halls the refectory of a convent. Whilst the College of S. John dates back from the scholastic needs of the Cistercians, and the Canterbury Quad and gate at Christ Church keep alive by their names the recollection of the Canterbury college founded by Archbishop Islip (1363) for the Benedictines of Canterbury, the old hostels, which were once erected to receive the Benedictine students from other convents, survive in those old parts of Worcester which lie on your left as you approach the famous gardens of that college. Trinity College occupies the place of Durham, and Wadham has risen amid the ruins of a foundation of Augustines, whose disputative powers were kept in memory in the exercises of the University schools down to 1800. The monks of S. Frideswide's Priory, S. George's Church, the Abbey of Osney, have all disappeared with the friaries. But Christ Church is a magnificent monument to the memory of the abbots and canons regular whom it has succeeded. The very conception of an academical college was no doubt largely drawn from the colleges of the regular religious Orders, which, unlike those of the Mendicants, were entirely designed as places of study.

We have seen how the foundation of Merton, and therefore of Exeter and Oriel, was directly due to the coming of the friars. And it is to their influence that yet another great and once beautiful college, beautiful no longer, but greater now and more famous than ever by virtue of the services in politics and letters of its successful alumni, owes its origin. For it was under the guidance of a Franciscan friar, one Richard de Slikeburne, that the widow of Sir John de Balliol carried out her husband's intention of placing upon a thoroughly organised footing his house for poor scholars.

He, the Lord of Barnard Castle, father of the illustrious rival of the Bruce, having about the year 1260 "unjustly vexed and enormously damnified" the Church of Tynemouth and the Church of Durham, was compelled by the militant bishop whose hard task it was to keep peace on the Border, to do penance. He knelt, in expiation of his crime, at the door of Durham Abbey, and was there publicly scourged by the bishop. He also undertook to provide a perpetual maintenance for certain poor scholars in the University.

Balliol's original scheme of benefaction had little in common with the peculiarly English college-system inaugurated by Walter de Merton. It was drawn up on the lines of the earlier foundations of Paris.

For the Hall of Balliol was originally a college for Artists only who lost their places when they took a degree in Arts. Their scholarships meanwhile supplied them only with food and lodging of a moderate quality. But these youthful students, according to the democratic principles on which the halls were carried on, made their own statutes and customs, and it was in accordance with this code that the Principal was required to govern them.

Balliol's scholars were established in Oxford by June 1266, and were at first supported by an annual allowance from him. He granted them a commons of eightpence a week. The hostel in which he lodged them was a house he hired in Horsemonger Street (Broad Street), facing the moat and city wall. But before he had made any provision for the permanent endowment of his scholars Balliol died. A close connection had apparently from the first been established between the hall and the Franciscans. One of the agents by whom Balliol's dole had been distributed was a Franciscan friar. Now, under the guidance and probably at the instigation of the friar Richard of Slikeburne, whom she appointed her attorney in the business, Lady Dervorguilla of Galloway, the widow of John of Balliol, set herself to secure the welfare of her husband's scholars. Since his death the very existence of the newly formed society had been in jeopardy. The Lady Dervorguilla, then, addressed a letter to the procurators or agents of Balliol's dole, instructing them to put in force a code of statutes which was no doubt in great part merely a formal statement of customs already established at the Old Balliol Hall. She next fitted up the north aisle of the parish church (S. Mary Magdalen) for the use of her scholars; she endowed them with lands in Northumberland, and purchased for their dwelling-place three tenements east of Old Balliol Hall. These tenements, which were south-west of the present front quadrangle, and faced the street, were soon known as New Balliol Hall or Mary Hall. The whole of the site of the front quadrangle was acquired by the Society as early as 1310.

A few years later (1327) the scholars built themselves a chapel, part of which, said to be preserved in the dining-room of the Master's House, forms an interesting link between the original scholars of Balliol and the modern Society which is connected with the name of Dr Jowett. The statutes, which had been much tinkered by subsequent benefactors and bishops, were finally revised by Bishop Fox, the enlightened and broad-minded founder of C.C.C.

Fox gave Balliol a constitution, not altogether in harmony with his own ideals as expressed in the statutes of Corpus, but such as he thought best fitted to fulfil the intentions of the founders. He divided the Society into two halves:--ten juniors, _Scholastici_, and ten Fellows, _Socii_, each of whom had a definite duty. In their hands the whole government of the College was placed.

According to the new regulations the scholars or servitors of Balliol were to occupy a position humbler than that of the younger students at any other College. They were to wait upon the Master and the graduate Fellows and to be fed with the crumbs that should fall from the table of their superiors. They were to be nominated by the Fellow whom they were to serve, to be from eighteen to twenty-two years of age, and if they proved themselves industrious and well-behaved they were to be eligible to Fellowships even though they had not taken the degree of B.A. Commoners, as in most other Colleges, were to be allowed to lodge within the walls of the College, and to take their meals with the members of the Society.

The Fellowships, which entitled the holder to a "commons" of 1s. 8d. a week, were thrown open to competition, candidates being required, however, to be Bachelors of Arts, of legitimate birth, good character, proficient in their studies, and in need of assistance, for any cure of souls, or a private income of more than 40s. a year, was accounted a reason for disqualification.

Fox had a weakness for metaphors. In the statutes of Corpus he "spoke horticulturally; his metaphor was drawn from bees." On the present occasion he uses a metaphor as elaborate and appropriate. The College is described as a human body. The Master was the head, endued with the five senses of seeing clearly, hearing discreetly, smelling sagaciously, tasting moderately, and touching fitly; the senior Fellow was the neck; the Deans were the shoulders; the two priests the sides; the Bursars the arms and hands; the Fellows the stomach; the scholars the legs; and the servants the feet, whose function it is to go whithersoever they are bidden. Just as the body when sick would require a physician, so it was said would the College sometimes require a visitor. The Master and Fellows were given the unusual privilege of choosing their own visitor.

In the fifteenth century the whole quadrangle was rebuilt; the Old Hall, the Old Library, the Master's House, and the block of buildings and gateway facing Broad Street being then erected. Of these the shell of the Master's House, the Old Hall, now converted into an undergraduates' library, and the Old Library, much defaced by Wyatt, survive. The east wall of the library was used to form the west end of the chapel, which was built in 1529 to replace the old oratory. The sixteenth century chapel was removed and the present building erected as a memorial to Dr Jenkins, under whom Balliol had begun to develop into a College of almost national importance. Mr Butterfield, the architect who had done his best to ruin Merton, and who perpetrated Keble, was entrusted with this unfortunate method of perpetuating the worthy Master's memory.

Mr Waterhouse is responsible for the present front of the College, the east side of the first quadrangle, the north side of the Garden Quadrangle and the new Hall therein (1867-1877).

Not content with fighting the University, the Oxford Friars soon began to fight each other. Rivalries sprang up between the Orders; enormous scandals of discord, as Matthew Paris phrases it. Jealousy found its natural vent in politics as in the schools. Politically, the Oxford Franciscans supported Simon de Montfort; the Dominicans sided with the King. The Mad Parliament met in the Convent of the Black Friars. In philosophy the Franciscans attacked the doctrine of the Dominican, S. Thomas Aquinas, who had made an elaborate attempt to show that natural and revealed truth were complementary the one of the other. In order to establish this thesis and to reconcile human philosophy and the Christian faith, the Angelic Doctor, for so he was commonly termed, had written an encyclopædia of philosophy and theology, in which he advanced arguments on both sides of every question and decided judicially on each in strict accordance with the tenets of the Church.

The light of this "sparkling jewel of the clergy, this very clear mirror of the University of Paris, this noble and illuminating candlestick," was somewhat dimmed, however, when the great Franciscan hero, the "subtle doctor," Duns Scotus, took up the argument, and clearly proved that the reasoning of this champion of orthodoxy was itself unorthodox. The world of letters was divided for generations into the rival camps of Scotists and Thomists. But the two doctors have fared very differently at the hands of posterity. Thomas was made a Saint, judged to be a "candlestick," and awarded by Dante a place high in the realms of Paradise. Duns Scotus, on the other hand, whose learning and industry were as great and his merit probably not much inferior, survives chiefly in the English language as a "dunce." The name of the great Oxford scholar stands to the world chiefly as a synonym for a fool and a blockhead. For when the Humanists, and afterwards the Reformers, attacked his system as a farrago of needless entities and useless distinctions, the Duns men, or Dunses, on their side railed against the new learning. The name of Dunce, therefore, already synonymous with cavilling sophist or hair-splitter, soon passed into the sense of dull, obstinate person, impervious to the new learning, and of blockhead, incapable of learning or scholarship. Such is the justice of history.

Duns Scotus had carried the day and the Church rallied to the side of the Franciscans. But such a successful attack involved the Orders in extreme bitterness. The Dominicans retorted that these Franciscans, who claimed and received such credit throughout Europe for humility and Christlike poverty, were really accumulating wealth by alms or bequests. The charge was true enough.

The pride and luxury of the Friars, their splendid buildings, their laxity in the Confessional, their artifices for securing proselytes, their continual strife with the University and their endeavours to obtain peculiar privileges therein had long undermined their popularity. They were regarded as "locusts" who had settled on the land and stripped the trees of learning and of life.

Duns Scotus held almost undisputed sway for a while. His works on logic, theology and philosophy were text-books in the University. But presently there arose a new light, a pupil of his own, to supplant him.

William of Ockham, the "singular" or "invincible" doctor, revived the doctrine of Nominalism. At once the glory and reproach of his Order, he used the weapons of Scholasticism to destroy it.

But if in Philosophy the "invincible doctor" was a sceptic, in Theology he was a fanatical supporter of the extreme Franciscan view that the ministers of Christ were bound to follow the example of their Master, and to impose upon themselves absolute poverty. It was a view which found no favour with popes or councils. But undeterred by the thunders of the Church, Ockham did not shrink from thus attacking the foundations of the papal supremacy or from asserting the rights of the civil power.

Paris had been, as we have seen, the first home of Scholasticism, but with the beginning of the fourteenth century, Oxford had taken its place as the centre of intellectual activity in Europe. The most important schoolmen of the age were all Oxonians, and nearly all the later schoolmen of note were Englishmen or Germans educated in the traditions of the English "nation" at Paris.

And when the old battle between Nominalism and Realism was renewed, it was fought with more unphilosophical virulence than before. "It was at this time that Philosophy literally descended from the schools into the street, and that the _odium metaphysicum_ gave fresh zest to the unending faction fight between north and south at Oxford, between Czech and German at Prague" (Rashdall).

Yet this was not without good results. For Scholasticism began now to come in contact with practical life. The disputants were led on to deal with the burning questions of the day, the questions, that is, as to the foundations of property, the respective rights of king and pope, of king and subject, of priest and people.

The day was now at hand when the trend of political events, stimulated by the influence of the daring philosophical speculations of the Oxford schoolmen, was to issue in a crisis. The crisis was a conflict between the claims of papal supremacy and the rights of the civil power, and for this crisis Oxford produced the man--John Wycliffe.

Born on the banks of the Tees, he, the last of the great schoolmen, was educated at Balliol, where he probably resided till he was elected master of that College in 1356. In 1361 he accepted a College living and left Oxford for a while, but was back again in 1363, and resided in Queen's College. He combined his residence there and his studies for a degree in theology with the holding of a living at Ludgershall in Bucks. Some suppose that he was then appointed Warden of Canterbury Hall,[19] but this supposition is probably incorrect. At any rate he was already a person of importance, not only at Oxford, but at the Court.

When Parliament decided to repudiate the annual tribute to the Pope which John had undertaken to pay, Wycliffe officially defended this repudiation. He continued to study at Oxford, developing his views. That he was in high favour at Court is shown by the fact that he was nominated (1374) by the Crown to the Rectory of Lutterworth and appointed one of the Royal Commissioners to confer with the papal representatives at Bruges. But he continued lecturing at Oxford and preaching in London.

Politically he threw in his lot with the Lancastrian party. For he had been led in the footsteps of his Italian and English predecessors, Marsiglio and Ockham, to proclaim that the Church suffered by being involved in secular affairs, and that endowments were a hindrance to the proper spiritual purpose of the Church. So it came about that the "Flower of Oxford," as he was called, the priest who desired to reform the clergy, found himself in alliance with John of Gaunt, the worldly statesman, who merely desired to rob them. He soon found himself in need of the Duke's protection. The wealthy and worldly churchmen of the day were not likely to listen tamely to his lectures. He was summoned before Bishop Courtenay of London to answer charges of erroneous teaching concerning the wealth of the Church (1377). The Duke of Lancaster accepted the challenge as given to himself. He stood by Wycliffe in the Consistory Court at S. Paul's, and a rude brawl between his supporters and those of Courtenay, in which the Duke himself is said to have threatened to drag the Bishop out of the church by the hair of his head, put an end to the trial. Papal bulls were now promulgated against Wycliffe. The University was directed to condemn and arrest him, if he were found guilty of maintaining certain "conclusions" extracted from his writings. The Oxford masters, however, were annoyed at the attack made upon a distinguished member of their body, and they resented, as a threatened infringement of their privileges, the order of the Archbishop and Bishop of London, which commanded the Oxford divines to hold an enquiry and to send Wycliffe to London to be heard in person. What they did, therefore, was simply to enjoin Wycliffe to remain within the walls of Black Hall, whilst they, after considering his opinions, declared them orthodox, but liable to misinterpretation. But Wycliffe could not disobey the Archbishop's summons to appear at Lambeth. There he proved the value of a Schoolman's training. The subtlety of "the most learned clerk of his time" reduced his opponents to silence.

The prelates were at a loss how to proceed. They were relieved from their dilemma by the arrival of a Knight from the Court, who brought a peremptory message from the Princess of Wales, mother of Richard II., forbidding them to issue any decree against Wycliffe.

The session was dissolved by an invasion of the London crowd. Wycliffe escaped scot-free. Then followed the scandal of the Great Schism, when two, or even three, candidates each claimed to be the one and only Vicar of Christ.

It is the Great Schism which would appear to have converted Wycliffe into a declared opponent of the papacy. Pondering on the problems of Church and State which had hitherto occupied his energies, he was now forced to the conclusion that the papal, and therefore the sacerdotal power in general must be assailed. It was a logical deduction from his central thesis, the doctrine of "dominion founded on grace." He organised a band of preachers who should instruct the laity in the mother tongue and supply them with a Bible translated into English. Thus under his auspices Oxford became the centre of a widespread religious movement. There the poor or simple priests, as they were called, had a common abode, whence, barefooted and clad in russet or grey gowns which reached to their ankles, they went forth to propagate his doctrines. And since the Friars, who owed their independence of the bishops and clergy to the privilege conferred upon them by the popes, were strong supporters of the papal autocracy, Wycliffe attacked them, by his own eloquence and that of his preachers, and that at a time when their luxurious and degenerate lives laid them open to popular resentment.

Already (1356) Richard Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh, who like Wycliffe had been a scholar of Balliol and in 1333 had held the office of Vice-Chancellor, had attacked the Friars for their encroachments upon the domain of the parish priests; their power, their wealth, their mendicancy, he maintained, were all contrary to the example and precepts of Christ and therefore of their founder. He charged them also with encroaching upon the rights of parents by making use of the confessional to induce children to enter their convents and become Friars. This was the reason, he asserted, why the University had fallen to one-fifth of its former numbers, for parents were unwilling to send their sons thither and preferred to bring them up as farmers.

This attack furnished Wycliffe with a model for his onslaught. In his earlier days he had treated the Friars with respect and even as allies--"a Franciscan" he had said, "is very near to God"--for then he had been attacking the endowments of the Church, and it was the monks or "possessioners" and the rich secular clergy to whom he was opposed. In theory the Mendicant Orders were opposed to these by their poverty and in practice by their interests.

But the Friars were the close allies and chief defenders of the Pope. Now, therefore, when Wycliffe passed from political to doctrinal reform, his attitude towards the Mendicant Orders becomes one of uncompromising hostility.

He and his followers denounced them with all the vehemence of religious partisanship and all the vigour of the vernacular. Iscariot's children, they called them, and irregular Procurators of the Fiend, adversaries of Christ and Disciples of Satan.

Wycliffe indeed went so far as to attribute an outbreak of disease in Oxford to the idleness and intellectual stagnation of the Friars.

"Being inordinately idle and commonly gathered together in towns
they cause a whole sublunary unseasonableness."

Finally, Wycliffe aimed at undermining the power of the priesthood by challenging the doctrine of Transubstantiation. According to this doctrine the priest had the power of working a daily miracle by "making the body of Christ." Wycliffe, in the summer of 1381, first publicly denied that the elements of the sacrament underwent any material change by virtue of the words uttered by the priest. The real presence of the body and blood of Christ he maintained, but that there was any change of substance he denied.

The heresy was promulgated at Oxford. An enquiry was immediately held by the Chancellor (William Berton) and twelve doctors, half of them Friars, and the new "pestiferous" doctrines were condemned. The condemnation and injunction forbidding any man in future to teach or defend them in the University was announced to Wycliffe as he was sitting in the Augustinian Schools, disputing the subject. He was taken aback, but at once challenged chancellor or doctor to disprove his conclusions. The "pertinacious heretic," in fact, continued to maintain his thesis, and made a direct appeal, not to the Pope, but to the King. The University rallied to his side and tacitly supported his cause by replacing Berton with Robert Rygge in the office of Vice-Chancellor. Rygge was more than a little inclined to be a Wycliffite. And Wycliffe meanwhile appealed also to the people by means of those innumerable tracts in the English tongue, which make the last of the schoolmen the first of the English pamphleteers. Whilst he was thus entering on his most serious encounter with the Church, suddenly there broke out the Peasant Revolt. The insurrection blazed forth suddenly, furiously, simultaneously and died away, having spent its force in a fortnight. It was a sporadic revolt with no unity of purpose or action except to express the general social discontent. But the upper classes were seriously frightened and some of the odium was reflected on the subversive doctrines of Wycliffe, whose Lollard preachers had doubtless dabbled not a little in the socialism which honey-combed the Middle Ages.

When order was again restored, Courtenay, now become Archbishop, began to take active measures to repress the opinions of Wycliffe. He summoned a synod at the Blackfriars in London to examine them. The first session was interrupted by an earthquake, which was differently interpreted as a sign of the divine approval or anger. The Earthquake Council had no choice but to condemn such doctrines as those they were asked to consider, that God ought to obey the devil, for instance, or that no one ought to be recognised as Pope after Urban VI.

When these doctrines were condemned, Wycliffe does not appear to have been present, nor was any action at all taken against him personally. It is supposed that his popularity at Oxford rendered him too formidable a person to attack. He was left at peace and the storm fell upon his disciples. The attack was made on "certain children of perdition," who had publicly taught the condemned doctrines, and "who went about the country preaching to the people, without proper authority." All such preachers were to be visited with the greater excommunication.

As Oxford, however, was the centre of the movement a separate mandate was sent thither.

The Archbishop sent down a commissary, Peter Stokes, a Carmelite friar, to Oxford, to prohibit the teaching of incorrect doctrines, but avoiding any mention of the teacher's name. The University authorities were by no means pleased at this invasion, so they held it, of their ancient privileges. The Chancellor Rygge had just appointed Nicholas Hereford, a devoted follower of Wycliffe, to preach before the University; he now appointed a no less loyal follower, Philip Repyngdon to the same office. His sermon was an outspoken defence of the Lollards. Stokes reported that he dared not publish the Archbishop's mandate, that he went about in the fear of his life; for scholars with arms concealed beneath their gowns accompanied the preachers and it appeared that not the Chancellor only, but both the Proctors were Wycliffites, or at least preferred to support the Wycliffites to abating one jot of what they considered the privileges of the University. And for once the Mayor was of the same opinion as the rulers of the University. Still, when the Chancellor was summoned before the Archbishop in London, he did not venture to disobey, and promptly cleared himself of any suspicion of heresy. The council met again at the Blackfriars, and Rygge submissively took his seat in it. On his bended knees he apologised for his disobedience to the Archbishop's orders, and only obtained pardon through the influence of William of Wykeham. Short work was made of the Oxford Wycliffites; they were generally, and four of them by name, suspended from all academical functions. Rygge returned to Oxford, with a letter from Courtenay which repeated the condemnation of the four preachers, adding to their names the name of Wycliffe himself. The latter was likened by the Archbishop to a serpent which emits noxious poison. But the Chancellor protested he dared not execute this mandate, and a royal warrant had to be issued to compel him. Meanwhile he showed his real feeling in the matter by suspending a prominent opponent of the Wycliffites who had called them by the offensive name of Lollards ("idle babblers"). But the council in London went on to overpower the party by stronger measures.[20] Wycliffe had apparently retired before the storm burst upon Oxford. John of Gaunt was appealed to by the preachers named. But the great Duke of Lancaster had no desire to incur the charge of encouraging heresy. He pronounced the opinions of Hereford and Repyngdon on the nature of the eucharist utterly detestable. The last hope of Lollardism was gone. Wycliffe himself retired unmolested to Lutterworth, where he died and was buried. "Admirable," says Fuller "that a hare so often hunted with so many packs of dogs should die at last quietly sitting in his form." Just as he owed his influence as a Reformer to the skill and fame as a schoolman which he had acquired at Oxford, so now his immunity was due to his reputation as the greatest scholastic doctor in the "second school of the Church."

The statute "De haeretico Comburendo" did its work quickly in stamping out Lollardy in the country. The tares were weeded out. In Oxford alone the tradition of Wycliffe died hard. A remarkable testimonial was issued in October 1406 by the Chancellor and Masters, sealed with the University seal. Some have thought it a forgery, and at the best it probably only represented, as Maxwell Lyte suggests, the verdict of a minority of the Masters snatched in the Long Vacation. But it is in any case of considerable significance. It extols the character of John Wycliffe, and his exemplary performances as a son of the University; it extols his truly Catholic zeal against all who blasphemed Christ's religion by voluntary begging, and asserts that he was neither convicted of heretical pravity during his life, nor exhumed and burned after death. He had no equal, it maintains, in the University as a writer on logic, philosophy, theology or ethics.

Here then, Archbishop Arundel (1407) an Oriel man, who with his father had built for that College her first chapel, found it necessary to take strong steps. He held a provincial council at Oxford and ordered that all books written in Wycliffe's time should pass through the censorship, first of the University of Oxford or Cambridge, and secondly of the Archbishop himself, before they might be used in the schools. The establishment of such a censorship was equivalent to a fatal muzzling of genius. If it silenced the Wycliffite teaching, it silenced also the enunciation of any original opinion or truth. Two years later Arundel risked a serious quarrel with the University in order to secure the appointment of a committee to make a list of heresies and errors to be found in Wycliffe's writings. He announced his intention of holding a visitation of the University with that object. He met with violent opposition. The opponents of the Archbishop were not all enthusiastic supporters of Wycliffe's views. Not all masters and scholars were moved by pure zeal either for freedom of speculation or for evangelical truth. The local patriotism of the north countryman reinforced the religious zeal of the Lollard. The chronic antipathy of the secular scholars to the friars, of the realists to the nominalists, of the artists to the higher faculties, and the academic pride of the loyal Oxonians--these were all motives which fought for Wycliffe and his doctrines. Least tangible but not least powerful among them was the last, for when civil or ecclesiastical authority endeavoured to assert itself over corporate privileges in the Middle Ages, a very hornet's nest of local patriotism and personal resentment was quickly roused.

The Oxford masters were impatient of all interference ecclesiastical as well as civil. They had thrown off the yoke of the Bishop of Lincoln and the Archdeacon of Oxford. And, with a view to asserting their independence of the Primate, they had succeeded in obtaining a bull from Boniface IX. in which he specifically confirmed the sole jurisdiction of the Chancellor over all members of the University whatever, Priests and Monks and Friars included. The University, however, was compelled to renounce the bull, and to submit to the visitation of the Archbishop. But the submission was not made without much disturbance and bitterness of feeling. The Lollards, the younger scholars and the northerners, with their lawless allies the Irish, were in favour of active resistance.

The behaviour of three Fellows of Oriel will show how the University was divided against itself. These men, so runs the complaint against them, "are notorious fomenters of discord."

"They lead a band of ruffians by night, who beat, wound, and spoil
men and cause murder. They haunt taverns day and night, and do not
enter college before ten or eleven or twelve o'clock, and even
scale the walls to the disturbance of quiet students, and bring in
armed strangers to spend the night. Thomas Wilton came in over the
wall at ten and knocked at the Provost's chamber, and woke up and
abused him as a liar, and challenged him to get up and come out to
fight him. Against the Provost's express orders, on the vigil of S.
Peter, these three had gone out of college, broken the Chancellor's
door and killed a student of law. The Chancellor could neither
sleep in his house by night nor walk in the High Street by day for
fear of these men."

The arrival of the Archbishop at Oxford then, to hold a visitation at S. Mary's was a signal for an outbreak. S. Mary's was barricaded and a band of scholars armed with bows, swords and bucklers awaited the Primate. Notwithstanding the interdict laid on the Church, John Birch of Oriel, one of the Proctors, took the keys, opened the doors, had the bell rung as usual, and even celebrated High Mass there. S. Mary's, it will be remembered, belonged to Oriel. Hence, perhaps, the active resistance of these Oriel Fellows and of the Dean of Oriel, John Rote, who asked "why should we be punished by an interdict on our church for other people's faults?" And he elegantly added, "The Devil go with the Archbishop and break his neck." The controversy was at last referred to the king. The Chancellors and Proctors resigned their office. The younger students who had opposed the Archbishop were soundly whipped, much to the delight of Henry IV. The bull of exemption was declared invalid; the University acknowledged itself subject to the See of Canterbury, thanks to the mediation of the Prince of Wales, mad-cap Harry, and the Archbishop Arundel made a handsome present of books to the public library of Oxford.

The committee desired by Arundel was eventually constituted. Two hundred and sixty-seven propositions were condemned and the obnoxious books solemnly burnt at Carfax. Not long after, a copy of the list of condemned articles was ordered to be preserved in the public libraries, and oaths against their maintenance were enjoined upon all members of the University on graduation.

The methods of the Archbishop met with the success which usually attends a well-conducted persecution. History notices the few martyrs who from time to time have laid down their lives for their principles, but it often fails to notice the millions of men who have discarded their principles rather than lay down their lives.

So the Wycliffite heresy was at length dead and buried. But the ecclesiastical repression which succeeded in bringing this about succeeded also in destroying all vigour and life in the thought of the University. Henceforth the Schoolmen refrained from touching on the practical questions of their day. They struck out no new paths of thought, but revolved on curves of subtle and profitless speculation, reproducing and exaggerating in their logical hair-splitting all the faults without any of the intellectual virtues of the great thinkers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It was against these degenerate dullards that the human mind at last rebelled, when intellect was born again in the New Birth of letters. What wonder then if, suddenly freed from the dead weight of their demoralising stupidities, men broke out in the exuberance of their spirits into childish excesses, confused the master with his foolish and depressing pupils, strewed the quadrangle of New College with the leaves of Dunce, and put them to the least noble of uses, as though they had been the Chronicles of Volusius.

The Archbishop's right of Visitation was confirmed in Parliament and with it the suppression of Lollardy, of free speech and thought, in the schools and pulpits of Oxford.

The issue of the struggle practically closes the history of Lollardism as a recognised force in English politics, and with it the intellectual history of mediæval Oxford.

Up to that time the University had shown itself decidedly eager for reform, and for a few years the same spirit survived. Oxford had consistently advocated the summoning of a General Council to settle the claims of the rival popes and to put an end to the schism which was the scandal of Christendom. But for fifteen years such pacific designs were eluded by the arts of the ambitious pontiffs, and the scruples or passions of their adherents. At length the Council of Pisa deposed, with equal justice, the Popes of Rome and Avignon. In their stead, as they intended, but in addition to them as events were to prove, the conclave, at which the representatives of Oxford and Cambridge were present, unanimously elected Peter Philargi. This Franciscan friar from Crete, who had taken his degree of Bachelor of Theology at Oxford, assumed the title of Alexander V., and remains the only wearer of the tiara who has graduated at Oxford or Cambridge. He was shortly afterwards succeeded by John XXIII., the most profligate of mankind. It remained for the Council of Constance to correct the rash proceedings of Pisa, and to substitute one head of the Church in place of the three rival popes (1414).

But before the opening of this Council the University of Oxford had drawn up and presented to the King a document of a very remarkable character. It consisted of forty-six articles for the reformation of the Church. The Oxford masters suggested that the three rival popes should all resign their claims; they complained of the simoniacal and extortionate proceedings of the Roman Court, and of the appointment of foreigners to benefices in England; they accused the Archbishops of encroaching on the rights of their suffragans, and charged the whole Order of prelates with nepotism and avarice. Abbots, they contended, should not be allowed to wear mitres and sandals as if they were bishops, and monks should hot be exempt from ordinary episcopal jurisdiction. Friars should be restrained from granting absolution on easy terms, from stealing children, and from begging for alms in the house of God. Secular canons should be made to abandon their luxurious style of living, and masters of hospitals to pay more regard to the wants of the poor. Parish priests, who neglected the flocks committed to their care, are described as ravening wolves. The Masters also complained of the non-observance of the Sabbath and of the iniquitous system of Indulgences.

Shades of the founder of Lincoln College, what a document is this! It is Wycliffism alive, rampant and unashamed. Not perhaps altogether unashamed or at least not indiscreet, for the Masters go out of their way to call for active measures against the Lollards. But the whole of this manifesto is a cry from Oxford, in 1414, for reformation; it is a direct echo of the teaching and declamation of Wycliffe, and an appeal for reformation as deliberate and less veiled than "the vision of William Langland concerning Piers Plowman," that sad, serious satirist of those times, who, in his contemplation of the corruption he saw around him in the nobility, the Government, the Church and the Friars, "all the wealth of the world and the woe too," saw no hope at all save in a new order of things.

Oxford's zeal for reformation at this time was made very clear also by her representatives at Constance, where a former Chancellor, Robert Halam, Bishop of Salisbury, and Henry Abingdon, a future Warden of Merton, very greatly distinguished themselves. Yet it was by a decree of this very Council of Constance (1415) that the remains of Wycliffe were ordered to be taken up and cast out far from those of any orthodox Christian. This order was not executed till twelve years later, when Bishop Fleming, having received direct instructions from the Pope, saw to it.

Wycliffe's remains were dug up, burnt and cast into the Swift, but, as it has been said, the Swift bore them to the Avon, the Avon to the Severn, and the Severn to the sea to be dispersed unto all lands: which things are an allegory. For though in England the repression of his teaching deferred the reformation, which theologically as well as politically Wycliffe had begun, for more than a hundred years, yet abroad, in Bohemia, the movement which he had commenced grew into a genuine national force, destined to react upon the world.

Bishop Fleming, who had been proctor in 1407, seems to have thought that the snake was scotched but not killed. For though he had been a sympathiser with the Lollards in his youth, in his old age he thought it worth while to found a "little college of theologians," who should defend the mysteries of the sacred page "against these ignorant laics, who profaned with swinish snout its most holy pearls." The students in this stronghold of orthodox divinity were to proceed to the degree of B.D. within a stated period; they must swear not to favour the pestilent sect of Wycliffites, and if they persisted in heresy were to be cast out of the College "as diseased sheep." It was in 1427 that Fleming obtained a charter permitting him to unite the three parish churches of All Saints', S. Michael's, and S. Mildred's into a collegiate church, and there to establish a "collegiolum," consisting of a rector and seven students of Theology, endowed with the revenue of those churches. No sooner had he appointed the first rector, purchased a site and begun to erect the buildings just south of the tower, than he died. The energy of the second rector, however, Dr John Beke, secured the firmer foundation of the College. He completed the purchase of the original site, which is represented by the front quadrangle and about half the grove; and thereon John Forest, Dean of Wells, completed (1437) the buildings as Fleming had planned them, including a chapel and library, hall and kitchen, and rooms. Modern Lincoln is bounded by Brasenose College and Brasenose Lane, the High Street and the Turl,[21] the additional property between All Saints' Church and the front quadrangle having been bestowed upon the College during the period 1435-1700. Of Forest's buildings the kitchen alone remains untouched, and a very charming fragment of the old structure it is.