While the crown and the parliament had been engaged with the pope, the undulations of the dispute had penetrated down among the body of the people, and an agitation had been commenced of an analogous kind against the spiritual authorities at home.  The parliament had lamented that the duties of the religious houses were left unfulfilled, in consequence of the extortions of their superiors abroad.  The people, who were equally convinced of the neglect of duty, adopted an interpretation of the phenomenon less favourable to the clergy, and attributed it to the temptations of worldliness, and the self-indulgence generated by enormous wealth.

This form of discontent found its exponent in John Wycliffe, the great forerunner of the Reformation, whose austere figure stands out above the crowd of notables in English history, with an outline not unlike that of another forerunner of a greater change.

The early life of Wycliffe is obscure.  Lewis, on the authority of Leland,[462] says that he was born near Richmond, in Yorkshire.  Fuller, though with some hesitation, prefers Durham.[463] He emerges into distinct notice in 1360, ten years subsequent to the passing of the first Statute of Provisors, having then acquired a great Oxford reputation as a lecturer in divinity, and having earned for himself powerful friends and powerful enemies.  He had made his name distinguished by attacks upon the clergy for their indolence and profligacy:  attacks both written and orally delivered—­those written, we observe, being written in English, not in Latin.[464] In 1365, Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, appointed him Warden of Canterbury Hall; the appointment, however, was made with some irregularity, and the following year, Archbishop Islip dying, his successor, Langham, deprived Wycliffe, and the sentence was confirmed by the king.  It seemed, nevertheless, that no personal reflection was intended by this decision, for Edward III. nominated the ex-warden one of his chaplains immediately after, and employed him on an important mission to Bruges, where a conference on the benefice question was to be held with a papal commission.

Other church preferment was subsequently given to Wycliffe; but Oxford remained the chief scene of his work.  He continued to hold his professorship of divinity; and from this office the character of his history took its complexion.  At a time when books were rare and difficult to be procured, lecturers who had truth to communicate fresh drawn from the fountain, held an influence which in these days it is as difficult to imagine as, however, it is impossible to overrate.  Students from all Europe flocked to the feet of a celebrated professor, who became the leader of a party by the mere fact of his position.