in worldly matters, he held that she would have the wealth and might of heaven at her command.  Wyclif’s theory of Church and State had led him long since to contend that the property of the clergy might be seized and employed like other property for national purposes.  Such a theory might have been left, as other daring theories of the schoolmen had been left, to the disputation of the schools.  But the clergy were bitterly galled when the first among English teachers threw himself hotly on the side of the party which threatened them with spoliation, and argued in favour of their voluntary abandonment of all Church property and of a return to their original poverty.  They were roused to action when Wyclif came forward as the theological bulwark of the Lancastrian party at a moment when the clergy were freshly outraged by the overthrow of the bishops and the plunder of Wykeham.  They forced the king to cancel the sentence of banishment from the precincts of the Court which had been directed against the Bishop of Winchester by refusing any grant of supply in Convocation till William of Wykeham took his seat in it.  But in the prosecution of Wyclif they resolved to return blow for blow.  In February 1377 he was summoned before Bishop Courtenay of London to answer for his heretical propositions concerning the wealth of the Church.

The Duke of Lancaster accepted the challenge as really given to himself, and stood by Wyclif’s side in the Consistory Court at St. Paul’s.  But no trial took place.  Fierce words passed between the nobles and the prelate:  the Duke himself was said to have threatened to drag Courtenay out of the church by the hair of his head; at last the London populace, to whom John of Gaunt was hateful, burst in to their Bishop’s rescue, and Wyclif’s life was saved with difficulty by the aid of the soldiery.  But his boldness only grew with the danger.  A Papal bull which was procured by the bishops, directing the University to condemn and arrest him, extorted from him a bold defiance.  In a defence circulated widely through the kingdom and laid before Parliament, Wyclif broadly asserted that no man could be excommunicated by the Pope “unless he were first excommunicated by himself.”  He denied the right of the Church to exact or defend temporal privileges by spiritual censures, declared that a Church might justly be deprived by the king or lay lords of its property for defect of duty, and defended the subjection of ecclesiastics to civil tribunals.  It marks the temper of the time and the growing severance between the Church and the nation that, bold as the defiance was, it won the support of the people as of the Crown.  When Wyclif appeared at the close of the year in Lambeth Chapel to answer the Archbishop’s summons a message from the Court forbade the primate to proceed and the Londoners broke in and dissolved the session.

[Sidenote:  Death of Edward the Third]