on the Continent, affected him so deeply that he was possessed by the absolute conviction that the wrath of God was upon the land for the sins of the nation at large, and especially of the Church, and he began his work as a preacher against the abuses.  His first assault was upon the Mendicant Friars, whom he held up, as did his contemporary, Chaucer, to the scorn of the world.  Then he passed on to the luxury in which some of the prelates were living, and to their overweening influence in the Councils of State.  Edward III., after a reign of great splendour, had sunk into dotage.  John of Gaunt had been striving for mastery against the Black Prince, but the latter was dying, July, 1376, and Gaunt was now supreme.  He hated good William of Wykeham, who had possessed enormous influence with the old king, and he was bent generally on curbing the power of the higher clergy.  At this juncture Wyclif was summoned to appear at St. Paul’s to answer for certain opinions which he had uttered.  It is not clear what these opinions were, further than that they were mainly against clerical powers and assumptions; questions of doctrine had not yet shaped themselves.  He appeared before the tribunal, but not alone.  Gaunt stood by his side.  And here, for a while, the position of parties becomes somewhat complicated.  Gaunt was at this moment very unpopular.  The Black Prince was the favourite hero of the multitude, an unworthy one indeed, as Dean Kitchin has abundantly shown, but he had won great victories, and had been handsome and gracious in manners.  He was now at the point of death, and Gaunt was believed to be aiming at the succession, to the exclusion of the Black Prince’s son, and was associated in the popular mind with the King’s mistress, Alice Ferrers, as taking every sort of mean and wicked advantage of the old man’s dotage.  Added to this the Londoners were on the side of their Bishop (Courtenay) in defence, as they held, of the rights of the City.  So on the day of Wyclif’s appearance the cathedral and streets surrounding it were crowded, to such an extent indeed that Wyclif had much trouble in getting through, and when Gaunt was seen, accompanied by his large body of retainers, a wild tumult ensued; the mob attacked Gaunt’s noble mansion, the Savoy Palace, and had not Courtenay intervened, would have burnt it down.  The Black Prince’s widow was at her palace at Kennington, with her son, the future Richard II., and her great influence was able to pacify the rioters.

Soon came an overwhelming change.  The succession of the Black Prince’s son was secured, and then public opinion was directed to the other question, Wyclif’s denunciation of the Papal abuses.  Relieved from Gaunt’s partisanship, he sprang at once into unbounded popularity.  His learning, his piety of life, were fully recognised, and the Londoners were now on his side.  He had preached at the very beginning of the new reign that a great amount of treasure, in the hands of the Pope’s agent,