then, in their wounds and half-naked, to be driven out in winter into the open fields, where, without food and shelter, outcasts from all society, and by all men unpitied, they were left miserably to perish. But they met their fate with joy notwithstanding; they sang aloud, "Blessed are ye that are persecuted for righteousness sake, for yours is the kingdom of heaven." But the monkish chronicler, heartlessly enough, makes the following comment upon the incident" This pious severity not only purified the kingdom. of the plague which had already crept into it, but, by striking terror into the heretics, guarded against any future irruption of the evil." 71 Between forty and fifty years later, however, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, under the reign of John, as a later writer briefly informs us, several Albigenses came into England and were burnt alive.

That such merciless procedure should in the end act as a deterrent may be easily understood; and, in particular, to the Waldenses, who never seem to have made their way into England. At least, Peter of Pilichdorf, who wrote in 1444 against the Waldenses, attests that, with some other countries, England had always remained entirely pure and free from the Waldensian sect.73 And I find an indirect confirmation of this in the circumstance, that in all the writings of Wiclif which I have searched through in manuscript, I have never come upon a single trace to indicate that either in his own time, or in earlier centuries, heretics of any kind had made their appearance in England. Even the Waldenses are not once historically referred to by him, or so much as named. It is without all support, therefore, from original sources, when some writers put forth the conjecture that there were secret disciples of the Waldensian doctrines in England in Wiclif's time, who

only came publicly into view when emboldened by his movement and the number of his followers.

If there had been any foundation for this conjecture the opponents of Wiclif and his party would certainly not have omitted to make use of such a fact, which they could so easily have turned to their own advantage. They would in that case have pilloried the Lollards as the adherents of a sect already long ago condemned by the Church. But of this, too, there is not a single trace. On the contrary, one of the earliest opponents of the Lollards, in a polemical poem written soon after Wiclif's death, freely admits that England, which now favours the Lollards, had hitherto been free of all stain of heresy, and of every form of error and deception.75 In a word, it is irreconcilable with the known facts of history to attempt to bring the inner development of Wiclif or his followers into connection with any earlier manifestation of heresy on the European continent. And, in England itself, the history of the centuries before Wiclif has not a single manifestation of the heretical kind to show which was of any continuance or of any importance.

It is no doubt true that in the intellectual, moral, ecclesiastical, and political character of the period in which Wiclif's youth and early manhood fell, there were elements which exercised influence upon him, and received from him in turn a further development. These, however, were all elements which were compatible with true zeal for the existing Church, and with a sincere devotion to the Papal See; being, on the one hand, a certain national self-includedness, favoured by insular position, but fostered still more by the spirit of Saxon nationality, which was evoked so powerfully during the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries, till it stood out conspicuously in the compact, united consciousness of the whole nation; on the other hand, a spirit of independence which did not shrink from defending the rights and interests of the nation and the National Church, even against all the power of the Papal See, and to wage open war against the abuses of the Church. In a word, there awoke in the Anglican Church of the thirteenth, and still more of the fourteenth centuries, "the true Reformation spirit which can never die out in the Church, but must rather from time to time. break forth afresh with rejuvenescent strength, in order to remove the ever recurring rust of abuses and mischiefs." 67

SECTION IV.—Richard of Armagh and the Mendicant Orders. WE must at this point recall the name of an important man in whom this Reformation spirit had a vigorous vitality-an older contemporary of Wiclif, to whom, as to Grossetête, he often refers, and with whom he has sometimes been placed in a closer connection than can, in our judgment, be historically justified. We refer to Archbishop Richard, of Armagh, Primate of Ireland, who had a high celebrity in his day.

Richard Fitzralph studied in Oxford, under Dr. John Bakonthorpe, who was an opponent of the Mendicant Orders, and in whose steps his disciple is alleged to have walked.* Fitzralph was recommended to Edward III. as a man of high ability, and was promoted to be Archdeacon of Lichfield; in 1333 he became Chancellor of the University of Oxford; and finally, in July 1347, Archbishop of Armagh. The only side on which he is still known at the present day is as the practical Churchman, especially in connection with his

* See Additional Note at the end of the Introduction.

opposition to the encroachments of the Mendicant Orders. But in his own age and in following times he was also held in high honour as a master of theological science. The reason why nothing is now known of him in this character is, that none of his dogmatic and polemical writings have ever been sent to the press.

But in addition to theological lectures delivered in Oxford, he left important writings behind him. Among these we are told not only of a commentary on the sentences of Peter Lombard, originating in his Oxford lectures, but also of several apologetico-polemical works, directed partly against Judaism-De intentionibus Judæorum-partly against the Armenian Church. The latter work, his nineteen books. against the errors of the Armenians, called also his Summa, was the principal dogmatic work of "Richard of Armagh," as he was commonly called, or simply "Armachanus;" and Wiclif himself cites the books against the Armenians with extraordinary frequency. Richard composed this work under Pope Clement VI., about 1350, at the request of several Armenian Bishops. For since 1145, the Armenian Kings had entered into transactions and connections with Rome, which had for their aim a union of the National Church of Armenia with the Roman Church of the west. At the beginning of the fourteenth century several synods of the Armenians were held in Sis, the ancient Issus, in 1307, and in Atan (Adana) in 1316, with a view to this union. In this connection the learned Englishman wrote the extensive work referred to," at the instance of the Armenian John, bishopelect of Khelat, and his brother Nerses, Archbishop of Manaz-Kjerd. Richard accordingly threw his book into the form of a dialogue. John, the bishop - elect, proposes questions, and brings forward objections. Richard

himself answers books are handled the Christological and Trinitarian doctrines; the seventh defends the Primacy of Rome; four books-8 to 11-are devoted to the Doctrine of the Sacraments; the 12th and following to the Doctrine of the Last Things; the five remaining books closing with philosophicotheological investigations of a general kind, which form the basis of the whole work."8 78

and solves them. In the first six

We are told that Richard left behind him a translation of the Bible in the Irish tongue, which would have been an important fact if it had been well attested, but the allegation rests upon insufficient evidence.79

But we have trustworthy information on the position taken up by the Irish Primate against the Mendicant orders. The following circumstances gave rise to this incident as related by himself:-Having occasion to come to London on the business of his Archbishoprick, he found that learned men there were engaged in animated discussions upon the question of the poverty of the life of Jesus, and whether He had even begged. This was no doubt an after effect of the debate formerly maintained between Pope John XXII. and a party of the Franciscans.80 The Archbishop was repeatedly asked to preach in London upon the subject, and in the church of St. Paul he delivered seven or eight sermons in English, in which he set forth and maintained the propositions following:

1. Jesus Christ, during His sojourn upon earth, was indeed always a poor man; but

2. He never practised begging as His own spontaneous choice. 3. He never taught any one to beg.

4. On the contrary, Jesus taught that no man should practice voluntary begging.