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Fellows and Helpers: The Religious Identity of the Followers of Wyclif

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2016

Jeremy Catto*
Affiliation:
Oriel College, Oxford
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Extract

[The] persecuted Church though it hath bene of longe season trodden under foote by enemies, neglected in the world, nor regarded in histories, & almost scarce visible or knowne to worldly eyes, yet hathe it bene the true Church onely to God … continually stirring up from time to time faithfull Ministers, by whome alwayes hath bene kept some sparkes of his true doctrine and religion.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1999 

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References

1 Foxe, John, Acts and Monuments (London, 1570), fol. iiiGoogle Scholar. On a similar ‘historical justification of their opposition to the church’ by earlier unorthodox thinkers see Lett”, , Heresy, I, p. 9Google Scholar. This work is the foundation of modern discussions of the context of medieval heresy.

2 Thomson, , Lollards; Hudson, PR, pp. 144, 446–56Google Scholar; Rob Lutton, ‘Connections between Lollards, townsfolk and gentry in Tenterden in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries’, and Andrew Hope, The lady and the bailiff: LoUardy among the gentry in Yorkist and early Tudor England’, both in LoUardy and Gentry. Another more speculative line is traced by Hope from the John or FitzLewis descendants of John Montagu, Earl of Salisbury, to William Sweeting who was burnt in 1511.

3 Nolcken, C. von, ‘Another kind of saint: a Lollard perception of John Wyclif, SCH. S, 5 (1987), pp. 429–43.Google Scholar

4 Hudson, , PR, p. 468.Google Scholar

5 Registrum Thome Spafford, ed. Bannister, A. T. (CYS, 1919), pp. 153–6Google Scholar; Wiltshire Record Office, Reg. Neville (Sarum), ii, fols 52r-v, 57V; Thomson, , Lollards, pp. 31–3.Google Scholar

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7 Wyclif, John, Dialogus, ed. Pollard, A. W. (WS, 1886), p. 54Google Scholar; Hudson, , PR, p. 63.Google Scholar

8 See in general Zijl, T. P. van, Cerata Croóte, Ascetic and Reformer (Washington, 1963)Google Scholar, and Elm, K., ‘Die Bruderschaft vom gemeinsamen Leben: ein geistliche Lebensform zwischen Kloster und Welt, Mittelalter und Neuzeit’, in Cert Grote en moderne Devotie, Ons Geestelijk Erf, 59 (1985), pp. 470–96.Google Scholar

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10 McFarlane, K. B., Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights (Oxford, 1972), part ii.Google Scholar

11 See Matthew, F. D., The trial of Richard Wyche’, EUR, 5 (1890), p. 531Google Scholar; The Testimony of William Thorpe, in Two Wycliffite Texts, ed. Hudson (EETS, 1993), p. 41.

12 Hudson, , ‘A neglected Wycliffite text’ in Books, pp. 4366Google Scholar; but see her doubts on this identification in PR, p. 266, n.189.

13 BRUO, 2, p. 914.

14 These words of Arundel’s clerk are reported in Testimony of William Thorpe, pp. 88–9.

15 Ibid., p. 40, and see Hudson’s note, pp. 109–10; Jurkowski, M., ‘New light on John Purvey’, EHR, no (1995), pp. 1180–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Bodl. MS Bodley 117, the commonplace book of William Mede, fol. 32r-v; see Walsingham, Thomas, Historia Anglicana, ed. H. T. Riley (RS, 1863-4), 2, pp. 159–60Google Scholar. Mede’s collection was made some time after 1449. Thorpe’s version is given in his Testimony, p. 41.

17 Testimony of William Thorpe, p. 89.

18 Reg. Trefnant, pp. 396–401. In the manuscript register (Herefordshire Record Office, Diocesan Register AL 19/7, fols 128v, 129V), the attributions both to Palmer and to Hereford are in the main text hand, but the text was copied from an original in which Palmer’s name (hardly, in the circumstances, Hereford’s) may have been added inaccurately.

19 On the building and stocking of the cathedral library, see Mynors, R. A. B. and Thomson, R. M, Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Hereford Cathedral Library (Cambridge, 1993), pp. xxixxii.Google Scholar

20 See Lovatt, Roger, The Imitation of Christ in late mediaeval England’, TRHS, 5th series, 18 (1968), pp. 101–13Google Scholar; and Catto, J. I., Theology after Wycliffism’, in Late Med. Oxford, p. 274.Google Scholar

21 Alington’s Determinatio de adoracione ymaginum is in Merton College, Oxford MS 68, fols 32–40; see Hudson, , PR, p. 92Google Scholar; Catto, ‘Wyclif’, p. 227.

22 Repingdon, Sermones dominicales, Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS 54, fols 1, 135–6v; see Forde, S., ‘Writings of a reformer: a look at sermon studies and bible studies through Repyngdon’s Sermones super evangelici Dominica’ (Birmingham PLD. thesis, 1985), pp. 311–14, 320–25.Google Scholar

23 Corpus Christi, Oxford MS 54, fol. 212v.

24 English Wycliffite Sermons, ed. Hudson, A. and Gradon, P. (Oxford, 1979-96), esp. 4, pp. 33–7Google Scholar; Hudson, , ‘A Lollard compilation and the dissemination of Wycliffite thought’ in Books, pp. 1329Google Scholar; Nolcken, C. von, The Middle English Translation of the Rosarium théologie (Heidelberg, 1979)Google Scholar; Catto, ‘Wyclif, pp. 222–3.

25 The most recent detailed survey of current scholarship on the English scriptures is Hudson, PR, pp. 231–64. On private interpretation of the text see her ‘“Springing cockel in our clene corn”: Lollard preaching in England around 1400’, in Waugh, S. L. and Diehl, P. D., eds, Christendom and its Discontents (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 132–47, cf. p. 145.Google Scholar

26 English WycHffite Sermons, 3, xcvi, ii, pp. 81–2 (British Library, MS Harley 2396 of the sermons and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge MS 179/212 of the gospels). On the character of the glossed gospels, see Hudson, , PR, pp. 256–8.Google Scholar

27 General Prologue cap. 15, ed. Hudson, , English Wycltjpte Writings (Cambridge, 1978), p. 67.Google Scholar

28 On the Wycliffite scriptures see Hudson, , PR, pp. 238–47Google Scholar. Trevisa’s dialogue on translation is most conveniently read in modernized form in Pollard, A. W., Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse (repr. New York, 1964), pp. 203–8; cf. p. 207.Google Scholar

29 Richard Ullerston’s De translacione sacre scripture in vulgare is in Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek MS 4133, fols 195–207V. See Hudson, , The debate on Bible translation, Oxford 1401’, in Books, pp. 6784.Google Scholar

30 Sharpe, John, De oracionibus sanctorum, Merton College, Oxford MS 17s, fols 257–69Google Scholar; ci fol. 267V.

31 Defensorium dotacionis ecclesie, British Library, Lansdowne MS 409, fols 39–68; cf. fol. 64.

32 Sharpe in Merton College, Oxford MS 175, fol. 261v; Ullerston throughout his Defensorium.

33 The arts student’s notebook is Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS 116; Thomas Moston’s is Magdalen College, Oxford MS lat. 92. Cf.Robson, J. A., Wyclif and the Oxford Schoob (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 224–31Google Scholar; Catto, Wyclif’, pp. 220, 241, 243–4.

34 See Catto, ‘Wyclif, pp. 238–41, 245–6, 256–60, and ‘Religious change under Henry V, in Harriss, G. L., ed., Henry V: the Practice of Kingship (Oxford, 1985), pp. 103–6.Google Scholar

35 See McFarlane, , Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, pp. 148–9Google Scholar, citing Walsingham, , Historia Anglicana, 2, pp. 159Google Scholar and 216 and Knighton, p. 294. Walsingham’s more reliable list included Sir Lewis Clifford, Sir Richard Stury, Sir Thomas Latimer, Sir William Neville, Sir John Clanvowe, and Sir John Montagu later earl of Salisbury, with Sir John Cheyne as an afterthought Closely associated with them were Sir William Beauchamp and Sir Philip de la Vache (Lancastrian Kings, p. 171); further research by Charles Knightly has identified other probable patrons, notably in Herefordshire, who were not chamber knights (The early Lollards: a survey of popular Lollard activity in England, 1382–1428’ [York D. Phil, thesis, 1975]. pp. 39-48.

36 McFarlane, , Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, pp. 168, 193–6, 198–9.Google Scholar

37 Walsingham, , Historia Anglicana, 2, p. 253.Google Scholar

38 University College, Oxford MS 97, fols. 114X-123V; British Library Additional MS 22283, fol. 116r; ed. Scattergood, V.J., The Works of Sir John Clanvowe (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 5780Google Scholar. On the first manuscript see Wilson, E., ‘A critical text with commentary of MS Eng. TL f.39 in the Bodleian Library’ (Oxford B. Litt. thesis, 1968), 2, pp. 30–8Google Scholar. For McFarlane’s, view see Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, pp. 199206Google Scholar; see also Catto, , ‘Sir William Bcauchamp between chivalry and LoUardy’, in The Ideals and Practice of Mediaeval Knighthood, 3, ed. Harper-Bill, G and Harvey, R. (Woodbridge, 1990), pp. 3948.Google Scholar

39 Two Ways, 70, II.511-12; 72, U.577, 603; 70, II.520-1, 525–7; The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Meech, S. B. and Allen, H. E. (EETS, 1940), p. 28.Google Scholar

40 McFarlane, , Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, pp. 209–10Google Scholar. Latimer’s will is printed in The Ancestor, 10 (1904), pp. 19–20; Clifford’s in Dugdale, W., The Baronage of England (London, 1675-6), 1, pp. 341–2Google Scholar, and see Nicolas, N. H., Testamenta Vetusta (London, 1826), 1, pp. 164–5Google Scholar. Cheyne’s is in Lambeth Palace, Reg. Arundel, fol. 203V. On Lollard wills see also Thomson, J. A. F., ‘Knightly piety and the margins of Lollardy’, in Lollardy and Gentry, pp. 95111Google Scholar, where McFarlane’s view of the will as evidence of Lollardy is refined and modified.

41 Folkingham’s will is in University College, Oxford MS 97, fols 170–1; see Horstmann, C., Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole and his Followers (London, 1895-6), 2, pp. 448–9Google Scholar. See also University College, Oxford MS fos 13OV, 154, 159V and, Horstmann, , Yorkshire Writers, 2, pp. 439, 443, 446Google Scholar. Cf.McFarlane, , Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, pp. 213–14.Google Scholar

42 The Fifty Earliest English Wills in the Court of Probate, London, 1387–1439, ed. Furnivall, F. J. (EETS, lxxviii, 1882), pp. 1–3, 10–17, 21–2.Google Scholar

43 Ibid., pp. 4–10, 22–6.

44 Lambeth Palace, Reg. Arundel fol. 155V-156; Testamenta Vetusta, i, p. 171; Catto, ‘Sir William Beauchamp’, p. 42.

45 Fifty Earliest Wills, pp. 26–8, 129–31; McFarlane, , Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, p. 216Google Scholar, and The House of Commons, 1386–1421, ed. J. S. Roskell, Linda Clark, and Carole Rawcliffe (Stroud, 1992), 2, pp. 375–9 (articles by Roskell, R. W. Dunning and L. S. Woodger).

46 See Dugdale, , Baronage of England, 1, pp. 341–2Google Scholar; Lady Clanvowe’s will is in Fifty Earliest Wills, pp. 49–51. Clifford’s book might conceivably be The xii prophetis and avauntegis of tribulación, ed. Horstmann, Yorkshire Writers, 2, pp. 389–406.

47 will, Arundel’s is in Sede Vacante Wills, ed. Woodruff, C. E. (Kent Archaeological Society, Records Branch v, 1914), pp. 81–2Google Scholar. On Arundel’s circle and Rolle see Hughes, Jonathan, Pastors and Visionaries (Woodbridge, 1988), pp. 203–4.Google Scholar

48 See The Ancestor, io (1904), p. 21, dated 13 July 1402.

49 Ullerston’s Petitiones are ed. der Hardt, H. von, Magnum Oecumenicum Constantiense Concilium (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1697-1700), 1, pp. 1126–71Google Scholar. On Stonham see BRUO, 3, pp. 1789–90. I am grateful to Professor Hudson for clarification of trie Wyclif text in Stonham’s possession.

50 Hudson, PR, pp. 233–4.

51 See English Wycliffite Sermons, 1, pp. 98–123; Spencer, Helen, English Preaching in the late Middle Ages (Oxford, 1993), pp. 278310.Google Scholar

52 On Scotism and Ockhamism see Courtenay, W. J., Schools and Scholars in Fourteenth- Century England (Princeton, NJ, 1987), pp. 178–92.Google Scholar

53 Leff, , Heresy, 2, p. 444.Google Scholar