[453] 38 Ed. III. stat. 2; 3 Ric.  II. cap. 3; 12 Ric.  II. cap. 15; 13 Ric.  II. stat. 2.  The first of these acts contains a paragraph which shifts the blame from the popes themselves to the officials of the Roman courts.  The statute is said to have been enacted en eide et confort du pape qui moult sovent a estee trublez par tieles et semblables clamours et impetracions, et qui y meist voluntiers covenable remedie, si sa seyntetee estoit sur ces choses enfournee.  I had regarded this passage as a fiction of courtesy like that of the Long Parliament who levied troops in the name of Charles I. The suspicious omission of the clause, however, in the translation of the statutes which was made in the later years of Henry VIII. justifies an interpretation more favourable to the intentions of the popes.

[454] The abbots and bishops decently protested.  Their protest was read in parliament, and entered on the Rolls. Rot.  Parl. iii. [264] quoted by Lingard, who has given a full account of these transactions.

[455] 13 Ric.  II. stat. 2.

[456] See 16 Ric.  II. cap. 5.

[457] This it will be remembered was the course which was afterwards followed by the parliament under Henry VIII. before abolishing the payment of first-fruits.

[458] Lingard says, that “there were rumours that if the prelates executed the decree of the king’s courts, they would be excommunicated.”—­Vol. iii. p. 172.  The language of the act of parliament, 16 Ric.  II. cap. 5, is explicit that the sentence was pronounced.

[459] 16 Ric.  II. cap. 5.

[460] Ibid.

[461] Ibid.

[462] LEWIS, Life of Wycliffe.

[463] If such scientia media might be allowed to man, which is beneath certainty and above conjecture, such should I call our persuasion that he was born in Durham.—­FULLER’S Worthies, vol. i. p. 479.

[464] The Last Age of the Church was written in 1356.  See LEWIS, p. 3.

[465] LELAND.

[466] LEWIS, p. 287.

[467] 1 Ric.  II. cap. 13.

[468] WALSINGHAM, 206-7, apud LINGARD.  It is to be observed, however, that Wycliffe himself limited his arguments strictly to the property of the clergy.  See MILMAN’S History of Latin Christianity, vol. v. p. 508.

[469] WALSINGHAM, p. 275, apud LINGARD.

[470] 5 Ric.  II. cap. 5.

[471] WILKINS, Concilia, iii. 160-167.

[472] De Heretico comburendo. 2 Hen.  IV. cap. 15.

[473] STOW, 330, 338.

[474] Rot.  Parl. iv. 24, 108, apud LINGARD; RYMER, ix. 89, 119, 129, 170, 193; MILMAN, Vol. v. p. 520-535.

[475] 2 Hen.  V. stat. 1, cap. 7.