John Wycliff

You have to wait until the fourteenth century before an English society starts to become recognisable.

In earlier ages, individuals like King Richard I showed English characters. The Anglo-Norman often marked himself from his continental cousins in plain-speaking and an island insularity. The English air does breathe free men and women. But the Anglo-Saxon villeins remained of the soil, and animal-like, as did the continental peasants.

In the fourteenth century the villeins start to manifest themselves independently in history. That made them mostly two centuries ahead of the peasants across the water. The English ruling classes who wrote the English history not surprisingly have not appreciated that. The etymological history of villein says it all about the common offenders of God and the King's law.

I dare to suggest it was the "rising" of the villeins in the fourteenth century that made recognisable English history. I put rising in quotation marks. That was the word, in its French translation, that the Anglo-Normans actually used. The villeins rose against God and the natural order of things. In doing so they become of serious interest to the historians and political reformers. Wat Tyler and John Ball are kindred spirits to all who rail against privilege and Government deceptions. I suspect it is not a complete coincidence that in the fourteenth century common men and women first start to acquire surnames. Even King Richard II may briefly have called them "sirs" before he treacherously declared "serfs" they would remain.

In fighting the villeins' rising the Anglo-Normans for the first time were fighting for their lives and way of life in the British Isles. They won and by doing so they became English and they made English their language in their assemblies and schools.

That history happened in the fourteenth century. That century made Tyler, Ball and Wycliff. That is, it made a wild-eyed revolutionary; a priest shouting scripture back at the clergy; and a Catholic scholar.

There is something endearing about John Wycliff. He is every true Englishman's blunt-tongued predecessor. His was a phenomenon that more closely resembles the twentieth century than any century from the Renaissance. The twentieth century shares with the Middle Ages the age of the poor scholar. From the Renaissance the Universities became the domain of the rich. In the twenty first century Universities have no corporal existence except as feeding grounds for careerists.

Wycliff was the son of a tenant farmer. Because their Lord was an absentee Royal, the Wycliff family enjoyed greater freedom and prosperity. John, as the second son was sent to Oxford University to train to be a scholar and clergyman. Only poor men studied at Oxford. Thus there was that phenomenon, so resonant of the twentieth century, of clever young people thrown in common poverty together and expected to learn to become wiser and simultaneously more respectful to their governing institutions. When you have to struggle daily merely for a full stomach and shelter that becomes an impossibility.

Oxford city simultaneously exploited and abused its students. Most did not acquire their degrees. But Wycliff survived and graduated as a Doctor of Theology. Careerism now lay in front of him. One could almost say literally the sky was his limit.

But an obstinate character and mind in the end destroyed Wycliff. It also made him as a prophet of the European and English Reformation. Wycliff could not just believe as a good Catholic. He had to know.

Wycliff studied the bible and rigorously applied his Oxford logic. He could not deny that his Church was akin to the temple Pharisees. The wandering begging Friars best resembled the apostolic Church. Wycliff did not directly say this, as he did not seek martyrdom. He wrote and preached that the English Church should transform itself into the primitive Church. Sinful prelates, even the Pope himself, were not due their tithes.

By historic chance, Wycliff's argument co-incided with a cold war between the English Crown and the Papacy. The Crown resented the English gold in tithes demanded by the Papacy. A tame Doctor was very useful to the Crown in its political intrigues. So for some years Wycliff had the Crown protector and patron.

Tormented Wycliff reached the final mystery of the Church. The mystery of the Eucharist. Contemporary theological thought had weighed the final mysteries and concluded they could not be logically explained. They just were because they were in the heart of the Church. Without the heart the Church would perish. Wycliff set out to demolish this feeble logic and prove even the Eucharist could be logically explained. Employing the most advanced science of optics, Wycliff taught his students the blessed bread was indeed the body of Christ. Through an optical illusion – like a candle lighting other candles and retaining its strength – it only looked like bread. Wycliff did not speak about the simultaneous experience of taste at the Eucharist.

While giving this lecture, he heard a hammering at the door. When he came out, he read a summons signed by even some of his doctoral friends to answer a charge of blasphemy.

Wycliff survived because the English King would not permit the Inquisition to work in England. But he was forbidden to ever preach again or serve at the University. But he was not molested when he set out on his great mission of translating the bible into the English vernacular. This was an expensive undertaking by Wycliff and his followers. He seemed to retain at least one anonymous powerful and rich friend.

Then came the rising as a direct consequence of Parliament's imposition of the poll tax. For a few days the Anglo-Normans cowered to the villeins. But the villeins naively trusted the words and proclamations of their King. When the Anglo-Normans assembled their military might, King Richard II turned treacherous. The villeins returned to their exploited state and their leaders were murdered or cruelly executed in Crown trials.

A chorus from the badly frightened Anglo-Normans resounded throughout the land. An Oxford doctor was entirely to blame. Not their endless impositions upon the villeins, their corrupt and foolish government nor the wandering begging friars who often preached to the people the social and spiritual messages of the bible. The friars and the travelling players were the crowd entertainers of the age. Their tongues often got away with them and there was scarcely a constable amidst the crowds of eager listeners.

But John Wycliff was entirely to blame. He was left unmolested but his works were proscribed. He died in obscurity. But by mischance the new Queen of England was a Bohemian Princess. Soon Wycliff's Latin works were circulating at Prague University. A theological doctor, Huss became enamoured. He was one day burnt at the stake. One day in Germany, a monk, Luther, read a single book of Huss that in the monastery library had somehow survived the conflagration. To his great surprise, he found he was rather a Hussite. He wasn't a solitary madman.