Chapter 7
John Wycliffe Addresses Parliament

John Wycliffe was now many supporters and sympathisers the Government, so it appeared that he had the freedom to speak his mind regarding what he was learning from Scripture. Without this protection he would have been imprisoned, and therefore, silenced by the Church hierarchy, but God continued to place, and make use of, influential people throughout Wycliffe’s life.

Sometime in 1376 the Black Prince, son of King Edward III and brother of John of Gaunt died. Soon after, on June 21 1377, Edward himself also died. This left the throne to the Black Prince’s eleven-year-old son, who reigned as Richard II. Back in 1366 Parliament had been dissolved, but now with the reign of Richard II it received new power to govern the country. This was probably due to the young King’s need for adult advisers. Into this arena stepped John Wycliffe.

In October 1377 both King and Parliament sought Wycliffe’s advice and wisdom concerning matters of State in relation to the pope’s demands and claims to total authority over England, though they were little interested in the full extent of his religious ideas. He was obviously extremely happy to oblige. In fact Wycliffe was the leading light of the party that was petitioning Parliament to oppose the claims of the Papacy. The call for the State to introduce a reformation of the Church was a momentous event in British history.

As always John Wycliffe based his advice to the leaders of the nation upon the word of God. He believed that the papacy had no moral, legal, or spiritual right to claim sovereignty over England. He knew, like everyone else, that the Vatican’s sole interest was the riches it could gain by forcing the nation to comply with its demands. Wycliffe taught Parliament (and through it all the people) that the national resources were given by God to the English people for their own use, not to feed the covetousness of some foreign power. For by 1377 the revenue (gold) that the pope would have received annually from England was five times more than that which was paid to the king. He further declared that he could find no place in the entire Holy Bible that even suggested that either Peter or Paul thought of themselves as the supreme authority in the Church or over all men. Wycliffe writes in his work entitled Dominion, “We must oppose the first beginning of mischief. Christ himself is the Lord paramount, and the pope is a fallible man who must lose his lordship in the event of his falling into mortal sin.”

John Wycliffe insisted that instead of national resources being in the hands of the rich, they should be held in common with all men, that is, there should be an equal distribution of wealth. There is much in Wycliffe that the Liberation Theologian would find favourable, but all these attempts to portray John Wycliffe as a card-carrying communist is to do injustice to his vision of an ideal Christian state. In fairness to him, his ideas (and especially his political views) should be seen more in a spiritual light than in any form of anti-materialistic or socialist propaganda.

Maybe with a good dose of sarcasm Wycliffe asked his listeners if they thought that the pope was so poor that he desperately needed the taxes from England. Was the Vatican stricken with poverty? Obviously not! Nevertheless his final comments to Parliament made them uncomfortable, for he stated, “The goods of the Church should be wisely distributed (amongst all the people) to the glory of God, setting aside the greed of the prelates and princes.” His call for removing wealth from the Church would have pleased the anticlerical party led by John of Gaunt, but the majority thought it unwise to adopt this idea. In reality, as long as his words was thought to have direct application to the French pope and his claims on England and English wealth, few people in the country objected, but later when he made it very clear that his teaching applied equally to lordships at home, hostility quickly grew. King Richard II at the suggestion of Parliament imposed silence on Wycliffe over this matter.

This rejection of the pope’s authority was leading England nearer and nearer all out conflict with the mighty power and considerable war machine of the Roman Catholic Church. Wycliffe continued to advise Parliament on issues that directly involved the State and the Church, as well as continuing to write theological tracts that denounced the illegal claims of the Papacy. Therefore though he had been silenced on a political level regarding the wealth of the Church, he was able to use the presentation of his beliefs to reveal the corruption and avarice of the clergy. While politicians were trying to shed the burdensome weight of the Pontiff’s so-called supremacy, Wycliffe sought to lift an even heavier millstone from off the necks of all Englishmen. With the Scriptures as his guide he increased his attacks upon the wealth, authority and worldliness of the clergy. His desire was to see an end to the superstition, ignorance, and lack of spiritual understanding that had become part of the Church, and to replace it with knowledge of Christ and His word.

Wycliffe was invited by the anticlerical party to preach in London regarding his views on the subject of disendowment. While it cannot be certain that he fully understood the position he was placing himself in by associating with them, and the fact that they were obviously using him to voice their own opinions, he accepted the invitation. We will see later how the Church would use such involvement against him.

Also in 1378 Wycliffe defended the right of the State with regards to the Right of Sanctuary. King Ine of Wessex had established this right in 680. His defence of the State occurred because two knights, Hauley and Shakyl, had been imprisoned in the Tower of London for refusing to produce Alphonso, a Spanish prisoner of war, whom the government wanted to use to barter for an exchange of prisoners with Spain. The knights wanted to make their own gain from what must have been a very important Spaniard. They somehow managed to escape from the Tower, but Shakyl was rearrested shortly afterwards. Hauley took sanctuary inside Westminster Abbey where he was found and executed along with an abbey official who tried to rescue him. Wycliffe argued in his treatise entitles ‘The Church’ that the two knights were offenders against God, the Church, and the Crown, therefore the State had every right to refuse such persons the Right of Sanctuary. He declared that the blatant criminal has no provision of sanctuary under God’s law. Wycliffe viewed the Right of Sanctuary as simply a licence for the pope’s men to do what they pleased and find freedom from judgement under his protection.

By 1378 John Wycliffe had become the nations champion and hero, nevertheless his influence upon Parliament was about to wane. He was becoming to hot to handle and so they sought out his advice less frequently. Though he may have been initially disappointed, being the devoted man of God that he was, he would have realised that God’s word and work was first and foremost in setting spiritual captives free. The fact that the leaders of the nation had been using him to bolster their position against the papacy did not appear to cause Wycliffe any undue concern. His success did not stand upon political power or the flatteries of men. If the truth be known it is very likely that Wycliffe was using them to get his eternal message across.

Chapter 8 Trial at Lambeth Palace