CHAP.
V.

$ 13. Wyclif's Principles.

organised crowd, and the insurrection was quenched in blood.

Revolutions are only possible when the interests of the masses can be welded into a permanent political force by the leadership of the thoughtful few. In the latter part of the fourteenth century, the masses were ready to act, and the thinker was present to think. That thinker was Wyclif. But between the two there was no common ground, and the failure of his movement for religious reform was inevitable. His ideas developed themselves not out of the new social aspirations of the multitude, but out of the old national aspirations of the upper classes. He began by demanding that England should be more independent of the Papacy than it had hitherto been, less a prey to the needy foreign clergy who came to batten on its ecclesiastical pastures. It was the cause alike of the English clergy who disliked seeing the benefices which they coveted in the hands of Italians, and of the English landowners, who disliked the loss of the patronage which they counted as their own. But Wyclif was not a man to be content with the defence of merely material interests. He asked that English benefices should be placed not merely in the hands of men of English birth, but in the hands of men whose high moral worth fitted them for the fulfilment of spiritual functions. He cast down his doctrine of Dominion founded on Grace as his challenge to a worldly and self-seeking clergy. At once he had on his side the still more worldly and self-seeking aristocracy, with John of Gaunt at its head. They fancied it would be easy, under the cover of reforming the Church, to draw a large portion of its revenues into their own pockets. They did not see that Wyclif's challenge had opened wider issues than they were aware of. Stripped of its scholastic and ecclesiastical form, Dominion founded on

Grace was the doctrine with which we are so familiar at the present day, that no authority or institution can, in the long run, justify its existence except by the services which it is capable of rendering. John of Gaunt and his comrades were happy in finding such a weapon wherewith to cut down their rivals the bishops till, on a sudden, they discovered that their own authority was at stake. The dominion which they claimed over the peasants, the hard compulsion to forced service, the scanty pay doled out, did not seem to the wretched labourers to be in any way founded on grace. The insurrection of 1381 came to remind the barons that they were playing with edged tools, and that the less they had to do with Wyclif the better they would consult their own interests.

CHAP.

cliff's

V.

If Wyclif thus lost his hold upon one side in the social $ 14. Wystrife, he gained no hold on the other. A few months Failure. before the insurrection, he entered boldly on the path of a religious reformer by his denial of the doctrine of transubstantiation. He was not without numerous followers, and the Lollardism which sprang out of his teaching was a living force in England for some time to come. But it was weak through its connection with subversive social doctrines. He himself stood aloof from such doctrines, but he could not prevent his followers from mingling in the social fray. It was perhaps their merit that they did so. The established constitutional order was but another name for oppression and wrong to the lower classes. But as yet the lower classes were not sufficiently advanced in moral and political training to make it safe to entrust them with the task of righting their own wrongs as they would have attempted to right them if they had gained the mastery. It had nevertheless become impossible to leave the peasants to be once more goaded by suffering into re

CHAP.

V.

$ 15. The Conserva

tion.

bellion. The attempt, if it had been made, to enforce absolute labour-rents was tacitly abandoned, and gradually during the next century the mass of the villeins passed into the position of freemen.

For the moment, nobles and prelates, landowners and tive Reac- clergy, banded themselves together to form one great party of resistance. The church came to be but an outwork of the baronage. Courtneys and Arundels, Beauforts and Bourchiers, sate on the high seats of prelacy; no longer vigorous scholars like Stephen Langton, or humble saints like Edmund Rich. If there still lingered a feeling of appetite for the goods of the clergy, it was among the burgesses and lesser gentry of the House of Commons, not among the great houses, the chiefs of which were to be found in the House of Lords. Such a union of interests was certain to increase the weight of parliament in the constitutional system. Parliaments are weak when they will nothing strongly; when the aims of the more devoted and intelligent fall flat upon the ears of those who care for nothing but present ease. The defence of interests appeals alike to all who share in those interests. Not, indeed, that the better minds amongst the sharers in this great conservative reaction were without some sense of higher duty. To them it seemed that the battle was not for the preservation of pelf and power, but for the salvation of society from those who were undermining its foundations in Church and State. Such a combination would, in any case, have raised into increased prominence the parliament which represented the upper classes. Its progress to power was accelerated, if only accelerated, by the weakness of the king. Richard II. had this special failing, that he stood on neither side of the great controversy of the age. He had not the large-heartedness and the heroism to place himself at the head of the peasants,

excepting in one brief moment of excitement, and thus to obtain at least some consideration for their just demands. On the other hand he had no real sympathy with the ruling classes. Fitful and uncertain in action, he strove, with long intervals of inertness, to maintain or acquire authority over them without regard for the conditions on which alone authority can be wielded.

СНАР.

V.

Revolution of 1399.

The revolution of 1399, which hurled Richard from § 16. The the throne, was, in its external circumstances, the counterpart of the revolution of 1688. Both diminished the powers of the crown; in both the leadership fell into the hands of the aristocracy. But whilst the revolution of 1688 was one step forward in the direction in which the nation was ultimately to move, the revolution of 1399 was a step backward in arrest of motion. Its main advantage was that by postponing the consideration of the relation between the labouring and the propertied classes to a time when the question could be faced without fear of violence and bloodshed, and by improving the working of constitutional government, it provided for the consideration of such matters in the way of reasoning and argument, and thus indirectly benefited even those who were, for the present, entirely excluded from the deliberations of parliament.

§ 17. Gra

dual Eman

The fifteenth century witnessed, if not the entire extinction of serfage, at least its limitation within very cipation of narrow bounds. Economical laws proved too strong for the Serfs. the governing classes, and they found their account rather in dealing with the labourer as a free man to be bargained with, than in treating him as a serf to be compelled to work against his will for nothing. A hundred years after the revolution of 1399 there were still serfs in England. But their existence was the exception and not the rule. Lollardism, too, ran much the same course. As soon as it ceased to be fostered by the indignation of the

H

СНАР.

V.

§ 18. The Decay of

age.

labouring class against its oppressors, it dwindled away. Some traces of it, indeed, are long to be found. Much dissatisfaction with the lives and teaching of the clergy lingered on till the dawn of the Reformation. The sharp statute which authorised the burning of heretics in the reign of Henry IV. found its martyrs for a time, and then fell asleep for lack of material, till a new attack upon the clergy appeared to awaken it afresh.

Whilst a new class was thus rising up to share in the the Baron- privileges of freemen, the victors of 1399 were reaping the natural consequences of their success. The revolution of selfish conservatism was followed by a scramble for power. Only with the greatest difficulty did Henry IV. succeed in holding his own against the great feudal houses. His son, Henry V., turned their energies and their love of plunder upon foreign soil. More unprincipled war there never was. It had not even the excuse which the war of Edward III. had, of the necessity of giving protection to the English trade with Flanders. When, after Henry's death, the English conquerors were driven step by step out of the territory which they had held for a time, they found themselves in much the same position as that in which their ancestors had been a century before. Cooped up within the limits of their island, they sighed for fresh fields to plunder, and those of their own countrymen were alone accessible. To restrain men in such a temper would have been difficult even for a strong king. Unhappily, the king on the throne was always weak in mind, and was often absolutely insane. The name of Henry VI. became a weapon in the armoury of men whose only object was to enrich themselves under legal forms. Men who were great and powerful already saw their opportunity of becoming more great and powerful still. Great landowners, who had crowds of armed retainers in their service, bribed and bullied juries till