Old Times in the Colonies & The Story of Liberty. Charles Carleton Coffin
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men. They belong to a holy office, but that alone does not make them holy men. To be holy they must lead righteous lives. It is not right for them to extort a living from the people, by threatening them with the loss of their souls if they do not supply their wants. Doctor Wicklif denounces them as a set of robbers who live upon the fat of the land, while the people are in poverty and wretchedness. They take from the people, and give nothing in return. They are ignorant; many of them cannot read, and can only mumble a few prayers. They manifest no desire to acquire knowledge, and would like to keep the people in ignorance. He maintains that the king is superior to the Pope in his own realm, and that he has a right to put a stop to all the swindling and extortions of the monks, and to punish men who commit crime. They cannot tolerate such preaching, for it makes the king greater than the Pope. It is the exercise of an individual opinion, the beginning of individual liberty. "Doctor Wicklif is a heretic!" they cry. That is a terrible accusation. A heretic is a fellow who does not believe as they believes. A man who does not believe that the Pope can do no wrong, that he is not superior to kings, is worthy of death. He ought to be burned. It is the duty of the Pope, the bishops, and the priests to prevent the spread of such opinions. If a man is afflicted with a cancer, is it not the duty of the physicians to cut it out, to burn it with fire? The Pope and the bishops are God's physicians, and they must destroy all heretics: so they reason. Bat who gave them this authority over the beliefs of men? No one. They took it, and have exercised it so long that they honestly believe that they truly are God's agents, and that it is their duty to exercise it, and to exterminate all who do not believe as they do. So at this period the intellects and consciences of men are in slavery.
Doctor Wicklif is summoned to appear before the Bishops' Court, in the palace of the Archbishop of Canterbury, a great building which stands on the bank of the Thames, in Lambeth Parish, London. On a day in January, 1378, the bisiiops, in their flowing robes, sit in the Council Chambers to try the man who has preached such obnoxious doctrines. All London is astir. People come in boats and on foot, filling the streets. Nobles and great men are there; one is the powerful Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt Many of the people and the duke alike are determined that no harm shall come to the man who has preached so fearlessly, and whom they love. Anne of Bohemia sends word that he must be protected. The bishops do not dare to put him in prison; but they report him to the Pope, and the Pope sends a bull — not an animal with four legs and two horns, and ferocious, but a piece of parchment, with a ribbon and a round piece of lead attached to it, which is called a bulla. The Pope's seal is stamped upon the lead, ordering Wicklif to make his appearance in Rome to answer the charges preferred against him. The Pope cannot allow a parish priest to set up his opinions unchallenged, for to permit Doctor Wicklif to go on will be the subversion of all the authority and power of the Pope, bishop, and priests, and in time the whole fabric of ecclesiastical government will tumble to the ground.
Although the Pope sends his summons, Doctor Wicklif does not obey it, for he is getting to be an old man, and, besides, there are two popes just now — one in Rome, and one at Avignon, in France. There is a great division in the Church. The people compare the two popes to the dog Cerberus, which, according to the old Greeks, sat at the gate leading to the infernal regions. The popes are fighting each other. The King of Castile recognizes the French Pope, whereupon the Roman Pope sends word to the people of Castile that if they do not obey him they will be forever accursed. The Roman head, to obtain money, sells the offices of the Church. Anybody can be a bishop, archbishop, or cardinal by paying for it. He sells the offices over and over; and if those whom he has cheated complain, be can laugh in their faces: lie has their money, and they may help themselves if they can. He suspects that some of the cardinals are corresponding with the other Pope: that is a terrible offence, in his eyes. He puts them to torture to wring a confession from them, and then puts them to death. He curses all who oppose him, swears fearful oaths, and takes his revenge upon some priests who offend him by sewing them up in sacks, taking them out to sea, and pitching them overboard!
Doctor Wicklif reasons wisely that it will not do for him to make his appearance in Rome before such a Pope, and he is more than ever of the opinion that the Pope commits sin, as well as other men. He remains in England, preaching to the good people of Lutterworth. Sometimes he preaches in London, at the preaching-place erected in the streets. He has great crowds to hear him on Sunday, and works hard through the weeks, translating a book from the Latin into the English language — the Bible. The only Bibles in England are in the libraries of Oxford, Cambridge, abbeys and monasteries, and some of the churches. They are all in Latin or Hebrew, written on parchment. Scarcely one person in ten thousand has ever read a Bible. Doctor Wicklif believes that the people have a right to read it, although the Pope has forbidden its reading by any except the priests, monks, and bishops, and other prelates of the Church. But into what dialect shall he translate it? for there is no uniform language in England, In the Eastern counties — the East Midland section, as it is called, where the Saxons first landed and obtained a foothold — the language is almost wholly Saxon; in the Southern counties — all along the South Shore, where the Normans landed — the language 18 largely Norman. In the Western and Northern counties are other dialects, so unlike that of the East or South that a man from the old town of Boston, on the East coast, or a man from Plymouth, on the South coast, would hardly be able to make himself understood by a countryman from York or Lancaster.
Doctor Wicklif selects the East Midland — his own native dialect — which is spoken by a majority of the people; besides, it is strong, vigorous, and expressive Many other preachers believe that the people have a right to read the Bible, and clerks are set to work making copies of the translation, which are placed on desks in the churches, and chained, so that no one can take them away.
The people listen to the reading with wonder and delight. They begin to think; and when men begin to think, they take a step toward freedom. They see that the Bible gives them rights which hitherto have been denied them — the right to read, to acquire knowledge. Schools are started. Men and women, who till now have not known a letter of the alphabet, learn to read: children teach their parents. It is the beginning of a new life — a new order of things in the community — the beginning of liberty.
One of Doctor Wicklif's friends is Geoffrey Chancer, a poet, who helps on the cause of freedom mightily in another way. He is a learned man, and has been to Genoa and Florence on an embassy for the king, and has made the acquaintance of many renowned men. He is a short, thick-set man, with a pleasant countenance, and laughing eyes. He is witty and humorous. The king thinks so much of him that he directs his butler to send the poet a pipe of his best wine every year. The Princess of Wales (Anne, from Bohemia) is pleased to call him her friend, and the poet dedicates a poem to her,entitled "The Legend of a Good Woman." He sets himself also to write some stories in verse, which he calls "The Canterbury Tales;" but while he is writing them, let us see what is going on in England.
In 1377, Richard II. is made king. The barons complain to him that the villains — the people who owe them service — do not give it; that they are banding themselves to throw off the service altogether, claiming that freedom is their right. Doctor Wicklifs books and preachers have Bet them to thinking, and preachers are going here and there telling the people that the barons have no claim upon them. One of the agitators is a fellow named John Bull, who sings sarcastic ballads. In one of them he rehearses this couplet:
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?"
The people ask the question over and over, and make up their minds that they, as well as the men who live in castles, have some natural rights.
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