File:England in the age of Wycliffe (1899) (14779302315).jpg

Identifier: englandinageofw00trev (find matches)
Title: England in the age of Wycliffe
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: Trevelyan, George Macaulay, 1876-1962
Subjects: Wycliffe, John, d. 1384 Tyler's Insurrection, 1381
Publisher: (London) : Longmans, Green
Contributing Library: PIMS - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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of the governingChurch, and it preceded by thirty years the Elizabethanadjustment of doctrine and ritual. In England we have slowly but surely won the right ofthe individual to form and express a private judgment onspeculative questions. During the last three centuries thebattle of liberty has been fought against the State or againstpublic opinion. But before the changes effected by Henry theEighth, the struggle was against a power more impervious toreason and less subject to change—the power of the MedievalChurch in all the prestige of a thousand years prescriptiveright over mans mind. The martyrs who bore the first bruntof that terrific combat may be lightly esteemed to-day bypriestly censure. But those who still believe that liberty ofthought has proved not a curse but a blessing to Englandand to the peoples that have sprung from her, will regard withthankfulness and pride the work which the speculations ofWycliffe set on foot and the valour of his devoted successorsaccomplished.
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353 NOTE As this work is strictly a history of England and not ofWycliffism, I have felt no call to enter into the second halfof Wycliffes work—his influence on continental affairs. Insome sense this is an omission even from the point of view ofEnglish history, for his doctrines were adopted by the Hussites,the Hussites to a greater or less extent affected Lutheranism, andLutheranism reacted on England. In a Bohemian psalter of1572 appears a symbolical picture representing Wycliffe strikingthe spark, Huss kindling the coals, and Luther brandishing thelighted torch.^ To some extent this truly represents the case; forit is scarcely too much to say that the works of Huss were repe-titions or paraphrases of Wycliffes writings.^ The degree to whichthe Hussite movement hastened or affected the German Reforma-tion is a question which is best left to the Germans themselves. Besides England and Bohemia, Lollardry found a hazardoushome in a country which in institutions and society at that ti

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