V 1 '-f

"I give theft Beaks
far thefaundin^tf a. College in ihis Colony'^

The Lollards of the
Chiltern Hills
Glimpses of English Dissent in the Middle Ages

By
W. H. SUMMERS
Author of " 0«r Lollard Ancestors," " Memories of Jordans
and the Chalfonts," &c.

London
FRANCIS GRIFFITHS
34 Maiden Lane, Strand, W.C.
1906

MW3:

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
Saintly Legends ..... i
CHAPTER II
Monastic Houses IN Buckinghamshire . lo
CHAPTER III
Religious Life in the Middle Ages . ig
CHAPTER IV
The Rector of Ludgershall . . 28
CHAPTER V
The Early Days of Loli.ahdy . . 41
CHAPTER VI
The Fall of the Older Lollardy . 49
CHAPTER VII
Under the White Rose of York . 65
CHAPTER VIII
The Revival of Lollardy .... 74
CHAPTER IX
Three Lollard Teachers and their Fate . . 78
. CHAPTER X
The Great Abjuration .... 90
iii

iv CONTENTS
CHAPTER XI
John Foxe and the Longland Register . . 103
CHAPTER XII
The Justfast Men of Amersham . . 109
CHAPTER XIII
More of the Justfast Men . . . . 124
CHAPTER XIV
The Argument of Fire and Faggot . . . 137
CHAPTER XV
Lollardy Passing into Protestantism . . 143
CHAPTER XVI
The Last of the Lollard Martyrs . . . 151
CHAPTER XVII
The Turn of the Tide . . . 160
CHAPTER XVIII
John Knox in Buckinghamshire . . 173

PEEFACE
In the following pages, an attempt has been
made to illustrate from the records of a single
county the course of a religious movement the
influence of which upon the story of the English
people has been much more deep and far-reaching
than is usually supposed.
The writer was first led to take up the subject
by the interest he felt in listening to curious local
traditions of the Lollard times, still extant in
the old abodes of the ' ' Known Men ' ' in Buck
inghamshire, while he was for several years a
resident in the district. In the year 1888, a
series of articles from his pen, upon the " Lollards
of Bucks," appeared in a local paper, the South
Bucks Free Press. But he was then under the
great disadvantage of being dependent for nearly
all his facts upon the statements of that much
discredited writer, John Foxe, and was not aware
to what a remarkable extent Foxe's statements,
with regard to Buckinghamshire at any rate, are
confirmed and illustrated by independent autho
rities. A very large number of writers have been
consulted in the preparation of the work ; and
in most cases the names of these are given. But

vi PEEFACE
as the work is intended for popular use, extracts
from the Latin are given in an English trans
lation, and old English is modernised where it
is likely to present a difficulty. The references
to books and documents, however, will enable
those who wish to do so to consult the original
text for themselves.
Some of the matter contained in the earlier
chapters may at first sight seem somewhat irrele
vant, as relating to North Bucks, where Lollardy
never appears to have gained a footing ; but it will
be found that these passages often refer to
institutions and localities to which allusion is
made in the later chapters.
In conclusion, the writer desires to express his
obligation to a number of gentlemen who have
assisted him with valuable information and
suggestions. Among these he may mention Mr.
C. Guthrie, K.C., Procurator of the United Free
Church of Scotland ; the late Eev. P. W. Phipps,
M.A., rector of Chalfont St. Giles ; Mr. J. Cheese,
of Amersham ; and especially Dr. F. J. Furnivall,
who has allowed him to make use of some
" confessions of heresy," copied for the use of
the Early English Text Society, though unfortu
nately not yet published in a complete form,
owing to the scanty support accorded by the public
to that excellent organisation.

The Lollards of the Chiltern Hills

CHAPTEE I
SAINTLY LEGENDS
" Now it is no small praise to Buckinghamshire,
that being one of the lesser counties of England,
it had more martyrs and confessors in it before
the time of Luther than all the kingdom besides . ' '
So says Thomas Fuller (Church History, book
v., chap, i.) ; and though his statement is perhaps
not literally correct, it may fitly serve to intro
duce the story of the Buckinghamshire Lollards.
Before entering on that story, however, it may
be well to sketch the earher conditions of
religious life among which they arose.
Scarcely any traditions survive of the intro
duction of the faith of Christ into this part of
England. Some have seen a memorial of Saxon,
if not of Celtic, piety, in the crosses cut out in
the turf of the Chiltern Hills at Whiteleaf and
Bledlow, above the ancient British road of the
Icknield Way. But these are probably of far
1

2 THE LOLLAEDS
later origin ; though the Puritan dislike to the
sign of the cross makes it difficult to accept the
suggestion of the late Mr. E. J. Payne that the
Whiteleaf Cross was a landmark cut out by the
Parliamentary soldiers.
The Eev. T. Williams, m an interesting
article in the Records of Buckinghamshire for
1896, considers it likely that the earliest apostle
of the county in Saxon days was Birinus, the
founder of the see of Dorchester (Oxon), whose
name survives in Berin's Hill, near Ipsden, five
or six miles from the county boundary, where
he is said to have had a cell, and perhaps in
Bicester (Buringceastre). He died, says the
legend , from the bite of an adder on the Chiltern
Hills, upon December 3rd, 650. (Adders did not
hybernate in those days, it would seem!)
The Chiltern country, then and for centuries
after, was a vast forest of beeches and other
trees, the haunt of the wolf, the boar, and the
wild ox, and of robbers and outlaws yet more
dreaded. The credit of making the forest
passable for wayfarers is given to Leofstan,
Abbot of St. Albans, in the days of Ed
ward the Confessor. He opened up roads, and
appointed men-at-arms to patrol the forest. It
was the need of guarding this wild region that
gave rise to the well-known office of " steward
of the Chiltern Hundreds." But the wild and
beautiful scenery which characterises South
Bucks fostered good as well as evil elements of
character. Alike in the days of the Lollards, in

SAINTLY LEGENDS 3
the Eeformation period, and in the days of the
Civil War, the men of the Chiltern Hundreds,
John Hampden's country, were foremost in the
struggle against civil and ecclesiastical despotism ,
while those of the flatter district to the north
of the hills were, as a rule, more disposed to
yield to constituted authority.
When Birinus landed in 634, only fifty -four
years had elapsed since the Saxons took
Aylesbury. But it is quite uncertain whether
any rehcs of British Christianity remained, and
certainly heathenism was fully established in the
district. Mr. Payne, in an article in Gibbs'
Buckinghamshire Miscellany , thinks that Woden
was worshipped at Waddesdon, Thor at Turville,
Hilda at Hillesden, and .^gil, the sun-god, at
Aylesbury. Mr. Williams, however, derives the
name of the county town from the British Eglwys,
a church, and thinks that one already stood there.
Soon, at any rate, the county was so far Chris
tianised as to have saints of it-s own. Prominent
among these was that marvellous infant St.
Eumbold or Eomwald, a grandchild of Penda of
Mercia, bom at King's Sutton in Northampton
shire, but buried at Buckingham. The legend,
quaintly and contemptuously told by Fuller in
his Worthies of England, narrates how he cried
three times, " I am a Christian," as soon as he
was born ; how he asked to be baptized, choosing
his name and god-parents; how he pointed out
a hollow stone to be used as the font, which none
but his godfathers were able to lift; how he

4 THfi LOLLAEDS
spent three days in pious discourse, and then died,
having ordered that his body should remain at
Sutton one year, at Brackley-two years, and at
Buckingham ever after. The fame of the child-
saint spread far and wide, and in the Middle
Ages his shrine in Buckingham parish church
was the resort of numerous pilgrims, for whose
accommodation a large hostelry known as
" Pilgrim's Inn," which was standing at the
close of the eighteenth century, was erected.
The town had a " St. Eumbold's Street," and
a "Guild of St. Eumbold," incorporated by
Henry VI. ; and also several holy wells, the
supposed efficacy of which in healing the blind
and the lame was ascribed to the merits of the
saint. There were also " Wells of St. Eumbold "
at King's Sutton and Brackley, and a famous
image of him at Bexley in Kent. This last, like
the Holy Grail that Sir Lancelot might not see,
was a test of chastity, for none but the pure in
heart and life could lift it. The fact was, it is
said, that it was fastened by a peg behind, which
was only rem.oved for those who had been liberal
enough in their offerings.
Aylesbury, as well as Buckingham, had its
saints in Saxon times. Eadburg and Eaditha,
the daughters of Frithwald, a Mercian under-king,
are said to have received Aylesbury as a gift from
their father, and to have taken the veil in a
convent there. St. Eadburg died at Aylesbury,
but her body was afterwards removed to Edburton
in Suffolk, where miracles were said to have been

SAINTLY LEGENDS 5
wrought at her tomb. The story of St. Osyth or
Sithe, sister or niece of Eadburg and Eaditha,
comes before us in a most shadowy form. She
is said to have been born at Quarrendon, at a
period variously stated; to have been educated
at Ellesborough ; to have been compelled by her
father to marry Sigebert, King of East AngUa ;
to have taken the veil, and founded St. Osyth's
monastery, near Colchester, where she remained
as abbess for many years ; and to have been
beheaded by Danish pirates. The corpse of the
virgin martyr was brought to Aylesbury, remained
there and worked miracles for forty-six years,
and was then taken back to St. Osyth's Abbey, the
fear of Danish incursions having ceased for a
time. At Bierton, close to Aylesbury, was a well
of St. Osyth, now known as " Up Town Well."
The old chronicler Eoger of Wendover tells of
a St. Ulfric or Wulfric, who lived at Aylesbury
(unless Aylesbeere in Devonshire is really meant) ,
under Henry I., but was of Saxon blood. From
being a worldly priest, fond of his hawks and
hounds, he became a rigorous ascetic, clad in a
single hair-cloth garment or iron cuirass, eating
no flesh, and speaking to no one save through a
grated window. We are told that by his sanctity
and prayers he even rescued an unhappy north -
countryman, who had soM his soul to the enemy
of mankind !
Another Saxon saint who became the object of
special reverence in Buckinghamshire was
Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester, who, in consider-

6 THE LOLLAEDS
ation of his fidelity to William the Conqueror,
was allowed to retain his diocese after the other
Saxon bishops had been deprived, and was
reverenced throughout the country as a living
link with the days of Edward the Confessor. In
1076, however, he was cited before a great council
at Westminster, as "insufficient for his place
for want of learning." On his way, he passed
through High Wycombe. The house in which
he lodged being in an insecure condition, an alarm
was raised that it was giving way, and his
servants rushed forth in terror. Wulstan,
however, remained to the last, and quietly left
the house just before it fell. An exhibition of
self-control like this seemed nothing short of
miraculous to that superstitious age, but it was
fully in keeping with his conduct before the
council. He was declared incapable of exercising
his functions, and was summoned by WiUiam to
surrender his staff and ring. Thereupon he laid
his staff on the tomb of Edwar-d the Confessor,
saying, " Thou, 0 holy Edward, gavest me this
staff, and to thee I restore it." Then turning
to the Norman prelates and lords, he calmly said,
' ' I received my staff from a better man than any
of you, and to him I have returned it. Take it
from him if you can." The impression produced
on the council was so great that Wulstan was left
in the undisturbed enjoyment of his bishopric.
On his way back to his diocese his friends in
Buckinghamshire received him with enthusiasm.
They would doubtless be quite prepared to receive

SAINTLY LEGENDS 7
the story that was noised abroad, that Wulstan 's
staff had penetrated the stone of Edward's tomb,
and lodged there so that no one could move it
but Wulstan himself. For it was believed that
Edward, among many other miracles, had restored
to sight a Buckinghamshire man, Wulwin of
Ludgershall ; and had not Wulstan himself
miraculously escaped from the falling house at
Wycombe? Accordingly, he was asked to conse
crate Wycombe parish church, which was then
being built at the expense of a wealthy Saxon
thane. Having obtained the consent of the
Norman diocesan Eemigius, Wulstan came and
consecrated the church. Later tradition asserted
that on this occasion he healed an afflicted girl
with a piece of gold which had been touched by
the Holy Lance (the spear which had pierced the
Saviour's side) ; but unfortunately this was before
the Holy Lance had been found at Antioch. On
another occasion, the bishop visited Marlow.
According to William of Malmesbury, in his Vita
Sancti Wulstani, he found the roads in a frightful
state, the weather having been very wet. The
clergy who served the parish church were some
what reluctant to turn out to matins in the cold,
cheerless early morning. Wulstan, however,
insisted on their coming with him. They led him
round by the miriest road they could find, in
order to force him to turn back, but the sturdy
bishop trudged on through the mud, with the
loss of one of his episcopal shoes. After saying
matins in the church, he went back to breakfast,

8 THE LOLLAEDS
and then, without any expression of annoyance
or complaint, quietly sent two priests in search
of the missing shoe !
One more Buckinghamshire saint, of later date,
but probably also of Saxon blood, may here be
mentioned. Master John Shorne, or Schorne,
rector of North Marston from 1290 till his death
in 1314, was renowned far and near for his piety
and his miraculous powers. It was believed that,
like another St. James, he had caused his knees
to become hard and horny by the frequency of his
prayers. But more marvellous still, he was
believed, when sore tempted by the Evil Ope,
to have imprisoned the enemy in one of his boots 1
— " which astounding miracle raised him to the
dignity of a saint, and won for him the veneration
of centuries." Though he was never actually
canonised, his shrine, which was removed in 1478
to St. George's Chapel, Windsor, became the
resort of such multitudes that their offerings are
said to have amounted to £500 per annum,
representing fifteen or twenty times that amount
in present values. There seems also to have been
an image of him at Long Marston, much resorted
to by pilgrims; and a well in the village, which
still bears his name, and is remarkable for its
purity and coldness, was said to have sprung up
in answer to his prayers in time of drought.
Absurd as some of these legends now appear,
there is one interesting point to be noted about
them. The saints associated with and most
honoured in Buckinghamshire were English

SAINTLY LEGENDS 9
saints — not, as in some counties, Celtic, or
Eoman, or Norman. Their stories point to a
vigorous sense of Saxon nationality, which had
not a little to do with preparing the way for the
Lollard movement. Dr. Stoughton,in his Church
of the Civil Wars (page 52), remarks that "the
plain and sturdy nature of the Anglo-Saxon"
always leaned to "a simple and unostentatious
kind of religious worship," and was "unfriendly to
that ecclesiastical pomp of architecture and
glittering ritual which delighted the Norman."
There is much truth in his further statement,
that " traditional opinions and sentiments,
opposed to the spirit of Eomanism, had been
handed down through the Middle Ages, from one
generation to another of the English commonalty
in their homesteads and cottages," and that
' ' those opinions and sentiments contributed to the
outbursts of Lollardism. ' ' Even where the Saxon
accepted the teachings of the Eoman Church , he
gave them a colouring of his own.

CHAPTEE II
MONASTIC HOUSES IN BUCKINGHAMSHIRE
The ecclesiastical antiquities of this county are
far less extensive and splendid than those of many
others. Buckinghamshire never had any great
abbey, like Glastonbury or St. Edmundsbury, nor
any great collegiate foundation before Eton arose
under Henry VI. Yet it was at Winslow, where,
as at Brill and Cippenham, the kings of Mercia
had a palace, that Off a planned the foundation of
the mighty Abbey of St. Albans. Matthew Paris
tells how a sudden light illuminated the oratory
where bishops and priests, in response to the king's
tearful entreaty, were seeking the Divine guid
ance, and how he resolved to endow the abbey
with the royal manor of Winslow, which con
tinued to belong to it until the Dissolution.
There are few remains of Saxon church archi
tecture, beyond some stone- work at Iver, Wing,
and Lavendon, and the tower of Caversfield
church (formerly in Bucks, but now in Oxford
shire) . Domesday Book shows very little land as
belonging to the Church in this county, and men
tions no religious house except one at North
Crawley, founded under Edward the Confessor,
10

MONASTIC HOUSES 11
and dedicated, like the parish church, to St.
Firmin, Bishop of Amiens. It probably became
extinct at an early date.
In Saxon times, Buckinghamshire was part of
the diocese of Dorchester (Oxon). To this was
afterwards annexed that of Sidnacester in Lincoln
shire, when it became of enormous extent,
reaching from the Thames to the Humber, and in
cluding seven archdeaconries. After the Norman
Conquest, Eemigius de Fechanip, "a dwarf in
stature but a giant in soul," and a friend of the
great Lanfranc, removed the see from Dorchester
to Lincoln, to which diocese Bucks continued to
belong till 1845.
Towards the close of the eleventh century,
under Wilham II. , a Cluniac priory arose at Tick-
ford, near Newport Pagnell, as a branch or
" cell " of the great Abbey of Marmonstiers, or
St. Martin, at Tours. This was one of the " alien
priories," in which French monks came to reside,
who collected the revenues, and transmitted them
to the parent house. Not an unnatural arrange
ment when the English kings had possessions on
the Continent, this became a very obnoxious one
in later days, when war arose between England
and France, and after many interferences on the
part of the Crown, the ahen priories were at last
suppressed by Henry V.
Under Henry I. (1100-1135) a Benedictine or
Cluniac priory appears to have been founded at
Newton Longville, as a cell of the Abbey of St.
Foy at Longueville in Normandy, by Walter

12 THE LOLLAEDS
Giffard, Earl of Buckingham ; while Eobert
Bossu, Earl of Leicester, founded another Bene
dictine house at Luffield, in Whittlebury Forest,
and on the very borders of Northamptonshire.
The Abbey of St. Mary at Great Missenden is
said to have been founded by-William de Missen
den in 1133, for the black-robed and bearded
Austin Canons,, " half monks, half secular
clergy ;" but other authorities date it from 1293.
"At the close of Henry's reign," writes Mr.
J. E. Green (History of the English People, i.
156) , ' ' and throughout tht reign of Stephen ,
England was stirred by the first of those great
movements which it was to experience afterv^rards
in the preaching of the Friars, the Lollardism of
Wickhffe, the Eeformation, the Puritan enthu
siasm, and the mission work of the Wesleys.
Everywhere, in town and country, men banded
themselves together for prayer, hermits flocked
to the woods, noble and churl welcomed the aus
tere Cistercians  A new spirit of devotion
woke the slumbers of the religious houses, and
penetrated alike to the home of the noble and the
trader." It was naturally to be expected that
many would seek retirement from the world
during the troubled days of Stephen (1135-1154).
And the Cistercians, the " White Monks of
Citeaux," whose rule bore the impress of the
sturdy English character of Stephen Harding, and
whose studied simplicity of life and worship was a
practical protest against the growing luxury and
worldliness of the degenerate Benedictines and

MONASTIC HOUSES 13
Cluniacs, were the very men to impress the time.
A house of these monks, "the Quakers of the
Middle Ages," was founded at Biddlesden in 1147
by Ernald de Bosco, steward to the Earl of
Leicester, who dedicated it to St. Mary, and en
dowed it with his lands there ' ' in wood and in
plain." Another of the 115 monasteries built in
England during Stephen's reign was an ahen
priory at Wing, a cell of the Abbey of St.
Nicolas at Angers, which was founded in 1140,
and was endowed with lands by the Empress
Maud. Under Henry II. (1154-1189) three Benedic
tine nunneries arose at uncertain dates. One, to
which some attribute an earlier origin, was dedi
cated to St. Margaret, the virgin martyr of
Antioch. It stood among the beech-crowned
Chilterns, in a detached portion of the parish of
Ivinghoe, upon the Herts border. Two more were
on the banks of the Thames — St. Mary's at Little
Marlow (called "the Priory of the Springs"),
close to the present village of Well End ; and St.
Mary Magdalene's, Ankerwyke, at the extreme
south of the county in the parish of Wraysbury.
The Premonstratensians or White Canons had an
abbey, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, at
Lavendon, near Olney. In the beautiful vale of
Notley, with its hazel-copses by the banks of the
Thames, Walter Giffard, second Earl of Bucking
ham (son of the Earl who is said to have founded
Newton Priory), and Ermentrude his wife,
founded an Augustinian abbey, dedicated to the

14 THE LOLLAEDS
Virgin and St. John the Baptist (1161), which
became very rich in lands and other possessions.
St. Mary's Priory at Bradwell, near Wolverton,
a Benedictine house, dated from about 1155 ; and
a small hospital at Ludgershall, a " cell " of an
abbey in Picardy, also had its origin in this reign.
The number of dedications to the Virgin is very
significant. One third of the ancient dedications
of parish churches in Buckinghamshire are also
to the "Blessed Virgin," or to her Nativity or
Assumption. This is said to have been largely
due to the influence of St. Hugh, Bishop of Lin
coln 1186-1200, who earnestly promoted the cultus
which is thus indicated.
Under Eichard I. (1189-1199) no religious
foundations are recorded in the county ; and under
John (1199-1216) only one. This was the small
Abbey of Medmenham, really a cell of the Cis
tercian Abbey of Woburn, Beds, founded in 1201,
occupied by monks from Woburn in 1204, aban
doned for a time, and then re-opened in 1212.
Early in the long reign of Henry III. (1216-
1272) we come to the foundation of the Benedic
tine Priory of Snelshall, on the borders of Whad-
don Chase (1218) . In 1244 Sir Ealph de Norwich
(probably a veteran who had fought with Cceur
de Lion in Palestine) founded an Augustinian
priory at Chetwode ; and another sprang up at
Eavenstone in 1254, nominally originated by the
King, but really by Peter de Chaceport, the
keeper of his wardrobe. In 1265, the king's
brother Eichard, King of the Eomans, founded

MONASTIC HOUSES 15
an abbey for Benedictine nuns at Burnham, close
to his manor-house at Cippenham.
Lastly, at an uncertain date in the reign of
Edward I. (1272-1307), Edmund Earl of Corn
wall, son of the Eichard just mentioned, founded
and munificently endowed a monastery or " Col
lege " for " Bonhommes " of the order of St.
Augustine, at Ashridge, on the site now occupied
by the palatial residence of Earl Brownlow. It
became the most renowned place of pilgrimage
in the county, for its founder presented it with a
portion of the contents of a golden vessel, said to
contain some of the blood of our Saviour, which
he had obtained in Germany, and in honour of
which he dedicated the College. The remainder
he bestowed on an abbey founded by his father at
Hales, in Gloucestersliire. " The blood of
Hales" is often mentioned in writings of the
Eeformation period. One account makes it the
blood of a duck ; but Henry VIII. 's commissioners
declared it to be "an unctuous gum" coloured
red. Mr. Pratt, in his notes on Foxe (vol. vii. , p.
775), gives an extract from the Liber Festivalis,
stating -that it was not supposed tR be the actual
blood of Christ, but that of a miraculous crucifix,
pierced by certain Jews. But Latimer, when
living at West Kington, not far from Hales, says :
' ' They beUeve verily that it was the very blood
that was in Christ's body, shed upon the mount
of Calvary for our salvation." The founder's
heart was preserved at Ashridge in a golden
shrine, along with that of St. Thomas de Canti-

16 THE LOLLAEDS
lupe. Bishop of Hereford. A century later,
Edward the Black Prince richly endowed the
College of the Precious Blood, and presented it
with a portion of the True Cross set in gold and
gems. This list of monasteries is not complete (e.g.,
there was certainly one at Aylesbury in early
Norman times) ; but the rest were either very
small, or soon fell into decay.
The monastic houses enjoyed curiously varied
privileges. For example, Biddlesden, by a grant
of Edward II., to whom the Abbot had lent
money, had the right of holding a market every
Monday, and an annual fair during six days. The
nuns of Burnham, in the second year of Henry
IV., acquired the right of holding a market and
fair at Burnham, and a fair at Beaconsfield, the
tolls of which were of course Abbey property, and
also the right of claiming all goods confiscated
for felony both in Burnham and Beaconsfield.
The nuns of Marlow similarly held a fair at
Ivinghoe. The Prior of Snelshall held weekly
markets at Snelshall and Mursley. The Abbot of
Notley held the advowson and tithes of
several parishes, with exemption from pay
ments in the county and hundred courts, free
dom from market tolls throughout the realm, and
the right to use two carts at certain seasons to
bring wood from the royal forest of Bern wood.
The nuns of Ankerwyke might feed sixty swine on
the acorns of Windsor Forest. Strangest of all,
the Prior of Tickford had the privilege of setting

MONASTIC HOUSES 17
up a " pillory and tumbrill, to punish and chastise
transgressors ;" while his near neighbour the Prior
of Newton might keep his vassals in awe by means
of his own private gallows.
A curious picture of a monastery farm is given
in Dugdale's Monasticori (v. 205), in the shape of
an inventory of the goods of Tickford Priory, early
in the fourteenth century. There were 11 horses,
28 head of cattle, 54 sheep, 77 swine, 2 swans,
2 peacocks, 124 acres of wheat, 133 of oats, 15
of peas and vetches, 9 of here (coarse barley),
4 of beans, and 3 of meadow- land, besides
two acres "mixed." Each man-servant had the
same allowance as a monk, but with an extra
supply of bread and ale. Throughout England
the monks were the best farmers. The sneer that
— ' ' these black crows
Had pitched by instinct on the fattest pastures,"
loses its point when it is remembered that the sites
they selected often owed their beauty and fer-
tihty to the patient toil of the brethren, having
been at first unreclaimed wastes and swamps. The
rule of the monks as landlords, too, was probably
milder than that of the Norman baron, though
we shall see that the great houses could be tyran
nous enough to their tenants at times.
There were five leper houses in the county —
two at Aylesbury, one at Wycombe, and
one at Newport Pagnell (which still exists
as an almshouse), and also a " chapel of

18 THE LOLLAEDS
leprous women " at Bradley, belonging to
N^otley Abbey. The inmates naturally lived a
semi-monastic life. Some have imagined that
eprpsy was imported from the East by those
returning from the Crusades ; but there are traces
jf its existence in England at a much earlier date.
[t was probably due to the general ignorance of
sanitary laws, and had greatly abated in virulence
by the close of the fourteenth century.
A more certain trace of the influence of the
Crusades is to be found in the fact that the two
^reat military orders of the Knights Templars
md Hospitallers held lands in various parts of
the county. The Templars would be well known
at Marlow, as they had a Preceptory at Bisham,
just across the river (where the name " Temple "
still survives) ; and the Hospitallers had a
Commandery at High Wycombe, the ruins of
which may still be seen in front of the Grammar
School, and another at Hogshaw, near Winslow.
Many a gallant Buckinghamshire knight doubtless
found his way to Palestine to fight against the
" misbelievers." Sir Ealph de Norwich has
already been referred to. John of Marlow, a
Knight Hospitaller, went with Prince Edward to
the last Crusade, and was slain at the siege of
Acre on Palm Sunday, 1270. Even in the early
part of the fifteenth century, John Cheyne, son
of the lord of Drayton Beauchamp, fought in
Palestine. And we may still see a reminder of
the Holy Wars in the " Saracen's Head," no
uncommon sign of Buckinghamshire inns.

CHAPTEE III
RELIGIOUS LIFE IN THE MIDDLE AGES
In estimating the religious condition of the
country before Lollardy arose, it is necessary to
take into account numerous elements, which
exercised a more wide-spread influence than the
monastic houses described in the last chapter.
These were scattered here and there ; but in every
village there was a parish priest. There is reason,
however, to fear that these clergy were as a rule
sadly ignorant and inefficient. They preached
but little ; and when Archbishop Peckham tried to
institute a reform in the days of Edward I., he
went no further than to require that every clerk
should deUver four sermons a year to his
parishioners !
The revenues of the Church were so largely
monopolised by the monasteries and the higher
ecclesiastics (many of the latter foreign nominees
of the Pope, and in some cases never entering
England) that the parish priests, like those of
Ireland at the present day, were largely dependent
on the dues and offerings of their people. In the
Records of Buckinghamshire (i. 233) a curious
document is cited, by which Bishop Sutton, in
19

20 THE LOLLAEDS
1394, appoints Eobert of Thame to " the newly
ordained vicarage of Bierton," with the duty of
holding service in the chapels of Bierton,
Quarrendon, Buckland, and Stoke. The revenues
of these four chapels are estimated at 36 marks
(£24:) , of course representing a far larger amount
at the present day. This included " all manner
of oblations, mortuaries, tithe of wool, lambs,
milk, flax, hemp, pigs, geese, eggs, foals of
horses, calves, gardens and crofts which are dug
with foot and spade, and also all the tithe of
pigeons," besides " certain corn, commonly called
Puttecorne, for the burial of the parishioners of
Hulcote, who are buried at Bierton." The parish
priest of Wycombe had " the tithe of teasels "
(used in fulling cloth).
The whole nation was nominally of one faith,
save for a handful of Jews. These were so few
that a law was passed under Henry II., restricting
their interments to one burying-ground near
London. In Buckinghamshire a few scattered in
dividuals residing at Buckingham, Wycombe, and
Marlow, are all that have been traced by Jewish
antiquaries. In 1290, all Jews were expelled,
and the outward uniformity was complete.
The old Paganism, however, had died hard,
and traces of it were to be found at a much later
date than is commonly supposed. As late as the
reign of Henry II., St. Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln,
had complained that he found many relics of
heathenism in his diocese. (Vita Sancti Hugonis,
Eolls Series, 348). Amongst others, it is recorded

LIFE IN MIDDLE AGES 21
that he suppressed the worship of a certain
" fountain " at Wycombe. This, it seems, was
the spring at the east end of Wycombe Eye, by
the piece of ground still known as Halliwell (Holy
Well) Mead. But the worship of sacred springs
was carried on, if in a modified form, for at least
a century after the time of St. Hugh. In 1299
Bishop Sutton forbade the resort of pilgrims to
the ' ' holy well at Linslade , ' ' alleging that it
had become a public scandal, and that the vicar
had encouraged it for his own emolument.
Another Bishop of Lincoln, in the next century,
had a deep and lasting influence throughout his
vast diocese. Eobert Grossetete, Bishop from
1235 to 1253, was bom of humble peasant stock
in Suffolk, and his whole career was not only that
of a true Christian pastor, but that of a great
English patriot. No " hireling that cared not
for the sheep," no cold and unsympathising
foreigner, he looked on each peasant and serf in
his unwieldy diocese as a fellow-countryman and
a brother in Christ. He has been styled " a
Eeformer before the Eeformation," but his
protests were against the corruptions of the /
Church in discipline, and the encroachments of
the Papal Court, not against the received
doctrines of Catholicism. He set himself
against impropriation of tithes, against ab
sentee and pluralist clergy, and against the
holding of secular office by bishops and priests.
He used all his influence to supply the parishes
with suitable pastors, and refused to institute

22 THE LOLLAEDS
incompetent men. In his Epistolce, pubhshed
in the Eolls Series, we find some allusions to
Buckinghamshire. He protests against the ap
pointment of the Abbot of Eamsey as itinerant
justice for the counties of Buckingham and
Bedford (p. 105). He writes to the monks of
Missenden, who were about to elect an abbot,
and points out to them the responsible nature of
their choice, entreating them not to exercise less
care in the selection of a guardian of souls than
they would in that of one of their swineherds
(p. 268). The suffrages of the monks fell upon
Eoger of Aylesbury, and we must hope that he
realised the Bishop's ideal.
Grossetete regarded with favour the rise of a
new religious movement which characterised his
day — the work of the Friars, especially of the
Franciscans and Dominicans. Through their
efforts, he said, " the people that sat in darkness
had seen a great light." Indeed, the labours of
these men, who sought out the poor and degraded,
and preached with homely earnestness in street
and market-place, amounted to a religious revo
lution, and tended to win back for the Church
much of the popular sympathy which had been
alienated by the aloofness of the monks and the
inefficiency of the parish priests.
The Dominicans or Black Friars first appeared
in England in 1221, the year of their founder's
death, when thirteen, landing at Dover, went
first to Oxford to convert the Jews, and then to
London. Three years later, nine Franciscans or

LIFE IN MIDDLE AGES 23
¦ Grey Friars landed penniless at Dover, and settled
at Canterbury, at Oxford, and in " Stinking Lane
by the Shambles at Newgate," henceforth known
as Greyfriars. In thirty years their numbers in
England had increased to over 1200. The
Carmelites (White Friars) and Augustinians
(Austin Friars) followed a few years later.
However warmly the Friars were received by
the "common people," they were scarcely
welcomed by the older Orders, whose comfortable
devotion was disturbed by the ascetic life and
noisj teaching of the new comers. The two first
Grey Brothers who journeyed to Oxford lost their
way in the woods between Oxford and Baldon
(five or six miles from the Buckinghamshire
border). Fearful of the floods, they sought
shelter at a grange of the monks of Abingdon.
¦' ' ' Their ragged clothes and foreign gestures , as
they prayed for hospitality, led the porter to take
them for jongleurs, the jesters and jugglers of
the day, and the news of this break in the
monotony of their lives brought prior, sacrist, and
cellarer, to the door to welcome them and witness
their tricks. The disappointment was too much
for the temper of the monks, and the brothers
were kicked roughly from the door to find their
night's lodging under a tree."
No doubt the people of Buckinghamshire
became familiar with the sight of Grey and Black
Friars traversing the roads between Oxford and
London. But it was not till 1368 that the
Franciscans founded an establishment at Ayles-

24 THE LOLLAEDS
bury, the only one of any order of Friars in the
county ; and the permanent Friary there was not
built until some years later.
Although the preaching of the Friars was of
course thoroughly Eomanist (Wycliffe complains
that they took for their texts the lives of the
saints, and even popular tales and ballads, insteael
of the words of Scripture), and although they ^
afterwards found means of evading their vow of
poverty, acquired rich possessions, and were
accused of greed, laziness, and licentiousness ;
still their work was of immense importance in/
preparing the way for the Lollard Eeformation.
Especially did they awaken a love of earnest,
homely preaching which has largely characterised
the Enghsh race ever since.
When we come to consider the traces of actual
dissent from the teaching of the Church before
the rise of Wycliffe, we find them singularly few
and vague. Yet there was undoubtedly a good
deal of secret dissent hidden below the surface ;
and it is curious that this is especially traceable
in the adjoining county of Oxford. In 1166,
according to William of Newburgh , a council was
convened at Oxford to enquire into the heresy of a
company of about thirty German weavers, called
" Publicani," who had appeared in the diocese of
Worcester. It is stated that Gerard, their leader,
was a man of education, and that his answers
showed him to be orthodox as to the person of
Christ, but that he rejected baptism, marriage,^
the Eucharist, and the authority of the Church.

LIFE IN MIDDLE AGES 25
It is probably to be understood that he and his
followers refused to accept the doctrine of sacra
mental grace, and held, like the Quakers, that
marriage might be celebrated by mutual consent.
Newburg states that Gerard and his followers, by
the king's command, were stripped to the waist,
scourged through the city of Oxford, and branded
on the face with a hot iron. They sang as they
endured their punishment, " Blessed shall ye be
when men shall hate you." Then proclamation
was made that all men were forbidden to give
them food or shelter, and they were driven forth,
with loud cracking of whips, to perish miserably
of cold and hunger. Such is Newburgh's account ;
and if it is to be accepted, we might suppose that
some of these unfortunate foreigners possibly met
their fate among the hills and woods of Bucking
hamshire. But Newburgh wrote long after, and
in the north of England ; and other chroniclers
(Eoger of Wendover, Walter Mapes, and Ealph of
Coggeshall), say that the Publicani were banished
from the realm after being scourged and branded.
J The admission that these Pubhcani were ortho
dox as to the person of Christ is of importance
as distinguishing them from the wilder heretical
sects of the period. They probably held views
similar to those of the Albigenses and Waldenses ;
and it is certain that Albigensian refugees found
their way to England in the reign of John, when
one was burned alive in London, and others in
different parts of the country (Knyghton, col.
2418). Traces of the Waldenses are less distinct.

26 THE LOLLAEDS
There is a reference in the Custumale of the
diocese of Eochester to certain tenants of the
manor of Daren th, settled there at some time be
tween 1181 and 1197. These are described as
"Waldenses;" but this may simply mean men
of the Walda, or Weald. Still more interesting
is an allusion in a document cited in Burn's His
tory of Henley (p. 186). By a lease dated in the
6th of Henry IV., the Warden and Bridgemen of
Henley, demised to Master Edward Bekyn-
ham, rector of the Church of Henley,
a granary situate near the bridge, with a
chapel adjoining, " quondam Waldeschenes."
Mr. Burn renders these last words, " formerly that
of the Waldenses," and goes so far as to suggest
that there may have been some connexion between
them and the followers of Gerard ! This cer
tainly seems in the last degree unlikely ; and
indeed Mr. Burn seems to abandon the idea in a
later portion of his work (p. 237), on the ground
that the name of Waldense appears as a surname
in the Henley Court Eolls. Even this can hardly
be regarded, however, as decisive, when we re
member the frequent significance of surnames in
the Middle Ages ; and it is at least curious that
Henley became a stronghold of Lollardy. Of
course if there were actually Waldenses, either at
Darenth or at Henley, they must have outwardly
conformed to the dominant Church ; but this was
the case with many of the Waldenses on the
Continent. Under date of November 23rd, 1263, Foxe

LIFE IN MIDDLE AGES 27
(Acts and Monuments, ii. 559) gives a curious
letter addressed by Henry III. to the Sheriff of
Oxfordshire, requiring him to suppress " certain
vagabond persons calling themselves Harloti,"
who were carrying on "meetings, conventicles,
and unlawful contracts, against the honesty of the
Church and of good manners." Foxe seems to
think that this was a fanatical religious sect ; and
the letter certainly seems to indicate some move
ment which had given alarm to the authorities of
the Church.
So far we have found no trace of heresy in
Buckinghamshire itself ; but the county , lying as
it did between London with its love of freedom,
and Oxford with its intellectual ferment and its
multitudes of foreign students, was a district
where ' ' obstinate questionings ' ' were likely to
find an echo, as we shall see was actually the
case.

CHAPTEE IV
THE RECTOR OF LUDGERSHALL
The reign of Edward III. is one of the most
significant epochs in our English history. It was
characterised by the final blending into one
national life of the Saxon and Norman elements,
and by the recognition of English as the national
language ; by the birth of English literature in
Chaucer and Langland ; and by the first stirring
of agrarian and democratic movements, which
have told on the whole of our subsequent history.
This great formative period was the real birth-
time of the English Eeformation. Protestantism
in England was not the offspring of the caprice
of Henry VIII. Kings can do but little towards
changing the faith of the classes in which the real
strength of a country's religion lies. The Eefor
mation of the sixteenth century was the inevitable
resultant of a series of forces which had been
at work for ages, and which had found an
embodiment a century and a half before in the
life and teachings of John Wycliffe, for six years
the rector of a Buckinghamshire parish.
The estimate of John Wychffe's greatness has
steadily increased with the lapse of time. Here
28

EECTOE OF LUDGEESHALL 29
and there some obscure writer may affect to
believe that his splendid career of opposition to
the Papacy finds its explanation in spite, at being
deprived of a wardenship at Oxford; though it
is very doubtful whether the John Wycliffe or
Wyclyve who was Warden of Canterbury Hall,
by the appointment of Archbishop Islip, and who
was dispossessed in 1367 by Archbishop Langham,
was not quite another person, the parish priest
of Mayfield in Sussex. Anyhow, it is certain that
Islip was at Mayfield at the time of the appoint
ment, having been seized with an attack of
paralysis while on a journey.
Continental scholars, like Lechler and Loserth,
with a truer appreciation of Wycliffe 's greatness
than that shown by some of his countrymen , have
seen in him the master-mind, not only of the
""Enghsh, but of the European Eeformation.
Milton was not so far wrong when he wrote in
his Areopagitica, "Had it not been for the
perverseness of our prelates, against the divine
and a-dmirable Wicklef, to suppress him as a
schismatic and innovator, perhaps neither the
Bohemian Huss and Jerome, no, nor the name
of Luther or of Calvin , had ever been known. The
glory of reforming all our neighbours had been
completely ours."
Born near Wycliffe-on-Tees, in the extreme
north of Yorkshire, about 1320, Wycliffe pursued
his studies at Oxford with such success that in
or about 1360 he became Master of Balliol. In
1361 he was presented by that College to the living

30 THE LOLLAEDS
of Fillingham in Lincolnshire. He still continued,
however, to reside mainly at Oxford, probably
providing a curate to supply his place at Filling-
ham. In 1368, Wycliffe obtained two years' leave of
absence from Fillingham, and the same year he
exchanged the living for the less valuable rectory
of Ludgershall, in Buckinghamshire, so as to be
nearer Oxford.
Ludgershall is a tiny village, about 12 miles
N.E. of Oxford, and nearly the same distance
W.N.W. of Aylesbury. The old church, with an
embattled tower, stands at the top of a sloping
village green. The scenery around is somewhat
flat, except to the south, where the picturesque
heights of Brill and Ashendon divide the plain
of North Bucks from the Vale of Aylesbury. Over
the south porch of the church was formerly a
parvise, or priest's chamber, the spiral stair
leading to which from the aisle may still be traced.
This chamber seems to have been destroyed in a
restoration a few years ago, a loss which is to
be regretted, because the parvise was often used
as a study, and a doubtful tradition has it that
here Wycliffe wrote his great work, De Civili
Dominic. The village was probably a place of greater
relative importance then than now. The Eoman
Akeman Street, and the broad trackway from
Oxford to Cambridge, passed through the parish.
The Knights of St. John had presented Wycliffe
to the Uving. Their office was to protect travellers,

EECTOE OF LUDGEESHALL 31
and they had a hospice at Ludgershall, just on
the borders of Bern wood Forest. There was also,
as we have seen, a small " alien priory."
It is not easy for us to picture the conditions
of life in a village like Ludgershall in the four
teenth century. Many of Wycliffe's parishioners
would be serfs and villeins, almost as much a
part of the estate they tilled as the cattle or the
trees ; clad in the coarsest garments, living on the
poorest food, and inhabiting wattled hovels, with
smoke-holes instead of chimneys. The winter
floods are troublesome at Ludgershall even now,
but would be far worse then. The old people
would remember the Seven Years' Famine
(1315 — 1321), the most terrible in English history.
And worst of all, twenty years before Wycliffe
came to the village (1348), the Black Death, after
slaying its tens of millions both in Asia and
Europe, had made its appearance in Dorsetshire,
and crept slowly northward and eastward. The
grass grew in the streets of Bristol. The lads
who were crowded together, living on the barest
fare, in the hostels of Oxford, died by hundreds
after a few hours' sickness. Fifty thousand
corpses were interred in one great burying-ground
outside the gates of London. In the country,
cattle roamed about ownerless, and the harvests
rotted in the fields. At Winslow, ten miles from
Ludgershall, 153 holdings changed hands in a few
months, and 37 out of 43 jurymen of the manor
court died. A milder outbreak marked the year
1361, while Wychffe was Master of Balhol. A

32 THE LOLLAEDS
third came in 1368, just after his settlement at
Ludgershall, and the fourth and last in 1375.
Some writers have maintained that Wycliffe
held the living of Leckhamstead, near Bucking
ham, at the same time as that of Ludgershall.
In the will of William de Askeby, Archdeacon
of Northampton, made just before his death in
1371, and preserved in the Lambeth Eegister, is
a legacy of " 100s. or one best robe'*' to " John
de Wyclif, rector of Lekehamstede." The
principal executor of this will is " John de Wyclif,
rector of Ludgershale." Hence some have
thought that the rector of Leckhamstead was a
kinsman of the Eeformer. But John de Barton
was rector there from 1361 to 1365, when he re
signed, and was followed by John D' Autre.
Moreover, there is a tick in the margin of the
Eegister against "Lekehamstede," as if to hint
at some error. Possibly the dying Archdeacon
dictated the word by a momentary inadvertence
or failure of memory. Wycliffe could hardly
have protested as strongly as he did against
plurahsts, if it had been known that he was a
pluralist himself.
Some very vague traditions are preserved in a
part of the county rather remote from Ludger
shall, which have to do with Wycliffe. In the
little town of Colnbrook, through wiich he would
probably pass on his journeys between Oxford and
London, a family named Weekly used to claim
a descent from him, which if true, must have
been of course a collateral one. Clo^e by, at

EECTOE OF LUDGEESHALL 33
Longford, in Middlesex, an old house was long
pointed out as having given him shelter in some
time of danger ; and not very far off is the Crouch
Oak at Addlestone, in Surrey, under which a
very doubtful tradition states that he preached.
Eoughly speaking, Wycliffe's life-work may be
divided into three periods — academic, political,
and spiritual. It was during the second that he
was rector of Ludgershall. England was asser
ting its independence of the Papal Court at
Avignon, the influence of which had been lessened
by Edward III.'s French victories. The
Statutes of Provisors and Praemunire (1350, 1353)
had challenged the Pope's right to interfere in
English affairs. In 1366, however. Urban V.
unwisely required the King to pay the tribute
promised by John, with thirty years' arrears, or
else to appear before him as his feudal superior,
and answer for his neglect. The spirit of the
nation was thoroughly roused. There was a
growing intolerance of priestly pretensions, a
significant instance occurring in Buckingham
shire two or three years before this, when the
Abbot of Missenden, who had been convicted
of illegal coining, was sentenced to be hanged,
drawn, and quartered, a doom he escaped by
means of the Eoyal pardon. Parliament repu
diated the Papal claim, and declared John's sur
render of the Crown null and void. Further
anti-Papal legislation followed (1371 to 1374) ;
and in the latter year the now aged King
appointed a Commission to treat with Papal

34 THE LOLLAEDS
delegates at Bruges on the points at issue between
England and the Pope. There were seven com
missioners, and Wycliffe's name stands second
on the list. The negotiations proved to a large
extent fruitless, but Edward showed his appre
ciation of Wycliffe's services by offering him on
his return a prebendal stall in Worcester Cathe
dral, which he declined. Earlier in the year,
however, he had accepted the living of Lutter
worth in Leicestershire, on which appointment he
seems to have immediately resigned the living
of Ludgershall. The ties which bound him to
Oxford had been weakened (if he was indeed the
dispossessed Warden of Canterbury Hall) by the
action of Archbishop Langham ; and he no longer J
felt the need of a residence near the University.
Henceforth he was to speak not so much to
scholars as to the English nation at large.
Lechler (page 367) thinks that it was not until
after the Papal Schism (1378) that Wycliffe
began to send out his famous itinerant preachers,
the "Poor Priests," and that Lutterworth was
the headquarters of the mission. His translator.
Dr. Lorimer, however (page 201, note) says :—
" The prevalence of Lollard doctrines in after
years throughout the districts lying immediately
to the east of Oxfordshire seems to point to some
original centre of activity in that neighbourhood ;
and as Wycliffe held the living of Ludgershall
from" 1368 till 1374, the probability seems to be
that the plan was originated there." Lechler's
suggested date certainly seems too late, in view

EECTOE OF LUDGEESHALL 35
of the proportions which the movement had
reached at the date of the " Earthquake Council "
in 1382. But the Lollard districts in this part
of the country group themselves far more naturally
round Oxford itself than round Ludgershall ; for
as we shall see, while we meet with hundreds of
instances in South Bucks, which lies between
Oxford and London, but is cut off from Ludgers
hall by the Chiltern Hills, there is scarcely one
recorded for the north of the county. There are,
on the other hand, numerous cases in the parts
of Oxfordshire and Berkshire which lie to the
T\est and south of the University City.
Wycliffe's preachers do not all seem to have
been in orders ; and towards the end of his life
he speaks of them as " evangelical men," rather
than as "priests." Clad in russet gowns, with
bare feet, they travelled with staff i^'EandTroin
town to town, preaching in the churches when
allowed, or otherwise in the churchyard, street,
or market-place, like Wesley's itinerants four
centuries later.
Though Wycliffe had in him something of the
typical Conservatism of the college don, it was
curiously mingled with broad popular sympathies,
and he was perhaps the first to see the importance
of influencing the common people, and especially
those of the country districts, in the direction of
religious reform. Speaking of Christ, he says : —
' ' The Gospel relates how He went about in the
places of the country, both great and small, in
cities and castles, or in the small towns; and

36 THE LOLLAEDS
this He did that He might teach us how to be
profitable to men generally, and not to forbear to
preach to the people because they are few, and
our name may not in consequence be great.
For we should labour for God, and from Him
hope for our reward. There is no doubt that
Christ went into such small uplandish towns as
Bethphage and Cana of Galilee ; for Christ went
to all those places where He wished to do good.
He was not smitten either with pride or covetous-
ness " (Tracts and Treatises, 85).
It was by men imbued with this spirit that the
doctrines of Wycliffe were spread in the "up
landish towns " and villages of the south of
Buckinghamshire. These doctrines shaped them
selves more clearly towards the close of his life ;
and although they were not such as to prevent his
remaining a priest of the Catholic Church, they
held within them the germs of far-reaching
change. He taught the right of private judgment,
the sole and sufficient authority of Scripture as a
rule of faith, and the direct responsibility of each
soul to God. The ministry was necessary to the
well-being of the Church, but not to its existence,
and the logical outcome of his teaching pointed
both to Voluntaryism and to Presbyterian govern
ment. The Pope was Antichrist, and his cen
sures were not to be feared. Wycliffe repudiated
baptismal regeneration and transubstantiation,
but taught' a doctrine of the presence of Christ
in the Eucharist somewhat resembling the later
consubstantiation of Luther. But the view which

EECTOE OF LUDGEESHALL 37
perhaps attracted most attention in his own time,
and was most keenly controverted, was his doc
trine of " dominion founded in grace." God, as
the great feudal Superior of the Universe, had not,
he said, granted dominion to one man as His Vicar
on earth. The King was as much God's Vicar
as the Pope, and indeed every Christian held his
rights immediately of God.
We can only briefly refer to the subsequent
portion of Wycliffe's life. Summoned before the
Convocation of Canterbury at St. Paul's Cathe
dral, he was protected by the intervention of John
of Gaunt ; and when in the following year he had
to appear before the Archbishop at Lambeth, Sir
Lewis Clifford, a gentleman of the household of
the Princess Joan, mother of the young King
Eichard II. , appeared to stay further proceedings
in her name.
Wycliffe continued at times to give divinity
lectures at Oxford after settling at Lutterworth.
Perhaps he may now and again have visited his
old flock at Ludgershall, and no doubt would take
care that his preachers visited the district. But
now (1381) the University condemijed his views
on the Eucharist ; John of Gaunt withdrew his
patronage ; and in the same year an event took
place which proved a great injury to his cause,
though it would be an exaggeration to say with
Green that " in a few months the whole of his
work was undone."
The depopulation of the country by the Black
Death had deranged the whole relations between

38 THE LOLLAEDS
capital and labour. The authorities had blindly
sought to stay the social changes which were
taking place by harsh and oppressive statutes
regulating the rate of wages and the price of food.
At last, maddened by the imposition of a poll-tax,
the peasantry rose over half the country. Wat
Tyler marched on London with the men of Kent
and Essex. The tenants of the great abbeys^-
Glastonbury, St. Albans, Beverley, Bury St.
Edmunds — were especially embittered against
their mitred lords, and not without cause, if we
may judge by the conduct of the St. Albans
authorities towards their tenants in the Bucking
hamshire parishes of Winslow, Grandborough ,
Aston Abbots, and Little Horwood. " Instances
are not wanting," says Mr. A. Clear in his
History of the Town and Manor of Winslow, " in
which the lord" (i.e. , the Abbot) "to show his
authority, issued the most trivial orders, such as
directing that the tenants should go off to the
woods and pick nuts for his use. If the ' Nativi '
married without the lord's consent, they were
fined ; if they allowed their houses to get out of
repair, they were fined for being guilty of waste ;
if they isold an ox without the license of the lord ,
again they were fined ; if they left the manor
without permission, they were searched for, and
if found, arrested and brought back into servitude.
.... In all these offences, the whole of the jury
were also fined if they neglected to report the
delinquent." The tenants were obliged to plough
the Abbot's land for so many days in the year,

EECTOE OF LUDGEESHALL 39
to cut his hay and corn, and perform various
kinds of servile work. If they showed any
tendency to insubordination, their horses and
cattle were confiscated, and they were cast into
prison. But the grievance which seems to have
been most bitterly resented was the obligation to
grind their com at the Abbot's mill, and to pay
for its use. The handmills in their houses were
confiscated and turned into paving-stones for the
abbey cloisters. When the news reached the
Buckinghamshire manors of the rising of the
citizens of St. Albans, under the spirited leader
ship of William Grindecobbe, the peasants
hastened to the help of their Hertfordshire
brethren. They tore up the millstones, carried
them home in triumph, and extorted from the
terrified monks ("by force and sheer roguery,"
as the, latter declared) " charters such as were
never before held by bondmen." But the insur
rection was soon quelled ; Grindecobbe paid the
penalty of his boldness with his life, and the
charters were declared null and void.
Wycliffe's opponents declared, and the alle
gation has been repeated ever since, that the
commons had been incited to rebellion by his
poor priests. If they sympathised with the
sufferings of the peasantry, it was very much to
their credit. But certainly if they shared the
views of their great leader, these were very far
from giving sanction to any such violent pro
ceedings as those which characterised the revolt.
It is true that John Ball, "the mad priest of

40 THE LOLLAEDS
Kent," was said to have confessed himself a
follower of Wycliffe. But such confessions, in
those days of torture, signify very little ; and Ball
had been accused of ' ' many errors and scandals ' '
fifteen years before. He was probably older than
Wycliffe, and Knyghton calls him the latter 's
"precursor," not his follower.
The insurgents did Wycliffe great disservice,
not only by bringing discredit on the movement
he had originated, but by murdering the gentle
and lenient Archbishop Sudbury, whom by the
way, they accused of discouraging pilgrimages to
Canterbury, which does not look much as if they
were Wycliffites. His death made way for the
promotion to the Primacy of Wycliffe's bitterest
antagonist, William Courtenay, Bishop of Lon
don. Courtenay assembled a synod to condemn
the doctrines of Wycliffe. It met at the Black-
friars Monastery in London on May 21st, 1382,
and was known as the " Earthquake Council,"
from the fact that the City was shaken by an
earthquake during the proceedings. But neither
Cburtenay nor any other of his foes ventured to
lay hands on Wycliffe, and he remained in
peaceable possession of his living at Lutterworth
till his death on the last day of the year 1384.

CHAPTEE V
THE EARLY DAYS OF LOLLARDY
The name " Lollard," as applied to the
followers of Wycliffe, is first met with in the
latter years of the Eeformer 's life (about 1382).
It had previously been applied to ' ' heretics ' ' who
had arisen in Germany and other parts of the
Continent, even as far east as Livonia. The
origin of the word is much disputed. It seems
at the time to have been connected with the word
lolium, "tares;" and Walden calls Wycliffe's
doctrines " bundles of tares." But the etymolo
gies of that time are notoriously fanciful. Nor
is there any ground for the idea that the name
was derived from that of a German heretic called
Lolhard. The word " loll," to lounge, has been
suggested ; but a more likely derivation is from
the German word lollen, to sing softly (with which
our words " lull " and " lullaby " are connected).
The fact that the Lollards never seem to have
been addicted to psalm-singing has been cited
as an argument against this derivation ; but the
word may have been intended to satirise some
alleged peculiarity of tone, and used with some
of the vague significance of the modern word
41

42 THE LOLLAEDS
"ranter." In the Political Songs Poems and
Songs (Eolls Series, ii. 244), occur the lines : —
And parde, lolle thei never so longe,
Yut wuU lawe make hem lowte (i.e.. Yet
will law make them submit).
The Archbishop obtained from the young king
after the Earthquake Council a royal ordinance
for the arrest and imprisonment of the itinerant
preachers. Strangely enough, this was entered
as an Act of Parhament, though the Commons
had never consented to its passing, and afterwards
vainly demanded its repeal. It was, however,
by no means easy to put the so-called Statute in
force. The Lollards had many powerful suppor
ters among knights and noblemen ; and Henry
of Knyghton asserts that some of these were
accustomed to summon their tenants to listen
to the preaching of the "poor priests," and to
stand beside the preacher armed with sword and
shield for his defence. '
Were any of these militant supporters of
Ijollardy to be found in Buckinghamshire? A
paper in the Archceologia (ix. 375) says of John
de Montacute, nephew of the Earl of Salisbury,
' ' He was one of the chief of the sect called Lol
lards, and the greatest fanatic of them all, being
so transported with zeal, that he caused all the
images that were in the chapel at Schenele
(Shenley in Buckinghamshire), that had been set
up there by the ancestors of his wife, to be taken

EAELY DAYS OP LOLLAEDY 43
down and thrown into obscure places; only the
image of St. Catherine, in regard that many did
affect it, he gave leave that it should stand in his
bakehouse." The writer is in error as to the
locality. The Shenley referred to was not that in
Buckinghamshire, but Shenley in Hertfordshire,
between Barnet and St. Alban's, where Monta
cute had lands in right of his wife. As to this
"fanatic," he was in reality one of the most
scholarly and accomplished men of his time. A
French chronicler, the Monk of St. Denys,
instead of heaping on him opprobrious epithets
such as are bestowed upon him by Lancastrian
scribes like Walsingham and Knyghton, calls
him "humble, gentle, and courteous in all his
doings," "loyal and chivalrous in all places,"
" bold and courageous as a lion;" and adds, " so
gracious were all his deeds, that never, I think,
shall that man issue from his country, in whom
God has implanted so much goodness as was in
him." At a later period, by his uncle's death,
Montacute became possessed of Bucks manors at
Datchet and Aston Clinton. Another manor in
the latter parish belonged to Sir Phihp de la
Vache, K.G., who sat for Bucks as knight of
the shire in 1386, and who also held the estate
of the Vache at Chalfont St. Giles. Sir Philip
married a daughter of the Lollard leader. Sir
Lewis Clifford, already referred to; and it has
been suggested that he was probably inclined to
Ijollardy himself. At Aston Clinton he would be
a near neighbour of the well-known Cheyne

44 THE LOLLAEDS
faniily of Drayton Beauchamp , as well as of Ches-
ham Bois and Chenies, which were near his other
estate of Chalfont. Thomas Cheyne, a member
of this family, and a personal attendant of Eichard
II., was imprisoned in the Tower for rebellion
and heresy a few years later. We thus see that
there existed in South Bucks a little circle of
landed proprietors, who would be more or less
certainly in favour of the movement ; and as a
matter of fact we shall find that the district lying
round Chalfont and Chesham was the very part
where the principles of Lollardy took their deepest
root. In or about 1388 there appeared a revision of
Wychffe's translation of the Scriptures, supposed
to have been from the hands of his friend John
Purvey. Of this, 150 copies of the whole or part
are still extant, a truly remarkable number con
sidering the attempts made to suppress it, over
and above the ordinary ravages of time. It
evidently had a wide circulation, of course in MS.
In 1395, a memorial was presented to Parlia
ment by Sir Thomas Latimer and Sir Eichard
Story, which set forth in " Twelve Conclusions "
the reforms demanded by the Lollards. Their
sweeping character marked an advance on the
views of Wycliffe. Church endowments, vows
of celibacy, transubstantiation, the exorcism and
benediction of inanimate objects, the holding of
secular office by the clergy, prayers for the dead,
pilgrimages, image-worship, and auricular con
fession, were alike denounced, as well as war.

EAELY DAYS OF LOLLAEDY 45
capital punishment, and the practice of unneces
sary arts. Great excitement followed, and King
Eichard, who was in Ireland, returned to England
and summoned before him Montacute, Clifford,
Latimer, Story, and others. His attitude towards
the movement had previously been somewhat
favourable, but he now gave the Lollards clearly
to understand that they must look for no support
from him. Still , persecution did not become very
acute during his reign. In 1399, however, he was
dethroned, and the crown was seized by his cousin
Henry of Lancaster. The new King at once
ordered the prelates to take measures for the
suppression of heresy, and the arrest of the wan
dering preachers. At the Christmas of 1399, John
de Montacute, now Earl of Salisbury, with some
other nobles, attempted to seize Henry at Wind
sor Castle, and restore Eichard. The plot failed,
and after a skirmish at Maidenhead Bridge, the
conspirators fled to the west, and were seized and
beheaded at Cirencester. The Monk of St.
Denys, who was in England at the time, says
that the heads of the Lollard Earl and seven of
his companions, borne aloft on spear-pbints, were
brought into London to the sound of trumpets,
and were met by the Bishop and clergy in their
robes, chanting the Te Deum.
The murder of the fallen king probably took
place in 1400; but for years many refused to
believe in his death. In 1401, as recorded in the
Archceologia (xxiii. 135), Henry was informed
by one of the Grey Friars of Aylesbury that a

46 THE LOLLAEDS
priest attached to the Friary had expressed his
pleasure at hearing a report that Eichard was still
alive. Henry sent for him, and asked if this
were true.
" I am glad," answered the priest, " as a man
is glad of the life of his friend ; for I am beholden
to him, and all my kin ; for he was our furtherer
and promoter."
" With which would you hold," asked Henry,
" if you saw me and King Eichard fighting?"
" Forsooth, with him," said the brave priest;
"for I am more beholden to him."
" What would you succour him with?" asked
the King, sneeringly.
"With a staff, perhaps," was the undaunted
reply. " What would you do with me, then?"
" I would make you Duke of Lancaster."
"Ah," said the tyrant, "thou art no friend
of mine; and thou shalt lose thine head."
No doubt many of the Lollard neighbours of
this outspoken cleric shared his feelings, for they
soon had cause to look back regretfully to the
gentler days of Eichard. In 1400, as recorded in
Wilkins' Concilia (ii ; 248) one John Seynon, " of
Dounton in the diocese of Lincoln," recanted
Lollard doctrines. He may have been of Dunton
near Winslow, though perhaps more probably of
Dunton Basset near Lutterworth. In 1401, the
Court Eolls of the manor of Wycombe contain
the entry, " Item, they present that John
Dry vere doth not set up a cross upon his house. ' '

EAELY DAYS OF LOLLAEDY 47
The Lollards, we are told, held that " all they
who do worship and reverence the sign of the
cross do commit idolatry;" and whether Dry vere
was a Lollard or not, it seems likely that the
authorities wished to show their zeal for orthodoxy
by calling attention to his omission.
This year (1401) was marked by the enactment
of the terrible statute De Hceretico Comburendo,
by which obstinate or lapsed heretics were liable
to be publicly burned to death. William Sawtre,
a priest from Lynn, suffered in London this year
as the proto-martyr of Lollardy.
The new law was met in some quarters with
a burst of indignation. It would almost seem
from the Patent Eolls (2 Hen. IV. iv. 17) that
the Friars, who were regarded as instigators of
the measure , could hardly pass through the streets
of Oxford or Cambridge without having their
habits torn from their shoulders by the students.
But the Statute had a crushing effect on the Lol
lards as a body. Among others. Sir Lewis
Clifford, now nearly eighty years of age, abjured
their doctrines. The terms of his will, " probably
the result of mental and bodily infirmity," express
the most abject contrition for his heresy, and he
styles himself ' ' false and traitor to his Lord
God." He bequeaths certain Catholic devotional
books to his daughter, the wife of Sir Philip de
la Vache. As Sir Phihp was in high favour with
the new king, he also must have renounced
Lollardy, if he had ever embraced it.
Although continual efforts were made to stamp

48 THE LOLLAEDS
out Lollardy throughout the reign of Henry IV.,
the work of repression was far from being entirely
successful. There were still persons of influence
who sheltered the wandering evangelists ; and
there was a strong tendency even among the
orthodox laity to withstand the encroachments
of the clergy. In 1410 the Commons petitioned
the Crown to resume the superfluous revenues of
the Church. These they estimated as being
As much as would maintain to the King's
honour
Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights.
Six thousand and two hundred good esquires,
A hundred almshouses right well supplied.
And to the coffers of the King beside
A thousand pounds by the year.
Such is Shakespeare's account (Henry V., Act
i.. Scene i.) ; but the actual sum named by the
Commons appears to have been far larger. This
daring proposal is ascribed by Spelman in his
History of Sacrilege to a Buckinghamshire knight,
Sir John Cheyne, one of the Lollard family
already referred to. The Commons also petitioned
for the relaxation of the Statute of Heretics ; but
neither request was granted.

CHAPTEE VI
THE FALL OF THE OLDER LOLLARDY
The death of Henry IV., in 1413, and the
accession of his son as Henry V. , were followed
by the initiation of far more stringent measures
against the Lollards. Sir John Oldcastle, a per
sonal friend of the young King, and one of the
most distinguished soldiers of the time, was
charged with heresy, and summoned to appear
before the Archbishop of Canterbury. He at first
refused to do so; but on the King intervening,
he surrendered himself. On his refusal to abjure,
he was excommunicated, and handed over to the
secular power to be burned ; but before the sen
tence could be carried into effect, he fled from
the Tower, and remained for some time concealed
in or near the borders of Wales, where his
ancestral estates were situated.
Three or four months after this event, it was
suddenly given out that 20,000 Lollards were
marching on London from the country, and that
a much larger number, mostly servants and
apprentices, were ready to throw open the City
gates and join them. The gates were held by
a strong force of troops ; all egress was forbidden ;
and the young king rode in from Eltham, raised
49

50 THE LOLLAEDS
the standard of the cross as in a solemn crusade,
and rode out with his men-at-arms on Sunday
evening, January 7th, 1414, to St. Giles's Fields.
Here he found a large body of people, who are
described as on horseback, but appear to have
been unarmed. Numerous arrests were made,
not only at " Thicket Field," in St. Giles's, but
at Harringay, near Hornsey, and within the City
itself. Five days later, thirty-nine persons were
hanged and burned in St. Giles's Fields, after a
hasty trial. The chroniclers name Sir Eoger
Acton, William Murle, a rich brewer of Dun
stable, John Beverley, a preacher, and John
Brown. What was the object of this gathering? It was
asserted that the Lollards intended to kill the
King and his three brothers, with all the prelates
and nobles, to rase to the ground all the cathedrals
and abbeys, and to compel all monks and friars
to earn their living. On the other hand, most
Protestant writers have followed Foxe in his
contention that the gathering in St. Giles's
Fields was nothing but a religious assembly to
listen to the preaching of Beverley. It seems
most likely that the Lollards had formed some
wild plan of revolt. Many of them, no doubt,
regarded the rule of the House of Lancaster as
a usurpation. Then, too, if there is any truth in
Shakespeare's portraiture of " Mad Prince Hal,"
and if, as is stated, the Lollards had deduced from
Wycliffe's doctrine of "dominion founded in
grace ' ' the dangerous corollary that a wicked

FALL OF OLDEE LOLLAEDY 51
ruler had forfeited his right to rule, the King's
early life may have seemed to the Lollards to
justify an insurrection, in which they may have
hoped to be supplied with arms by their friends
within the City. May not the movement, really
have been (like the risings in 1402 and 1405 , and
the Earl of Cambridge's plot in 1415), in favour
of young Edmund Mortimer, whose pretensions
it was not safe to name publicly, as he was in
the power of King Henry at the time? It is at
least suggestive that places in Herefordshire
pointed out as refuges of the Lollards, including
the curious little building in Deerfold Forest,
traditionally known as the "Lollard Chapel,"
are close to the old stronghold of the Mortimers
at Wigmore. Oldcastle himself is said to have
believed that Eichard II. was still alive in Scot
land ; and it is surely just as likely that the
movement was really a Legitimist one as that
it had the levelling and Socialistic character
ascribed to it by some writers.
In the Patent Eolls of Henry V. we find a
document (1 Hen. V. v^ 24) setting forth that
Wilham Tumour, Walter Yonge, and John
Hazelwode, of Agmondesham (Amersham) and
John Fynche, of Missenden, had been sentenced
to death for favouring certain ' ' preachers against
the King's person," and their goods and chattels
confiscated to the Crown ; further, that the King,
compassionating their widows, Isabel Turnour,
Alice Yonge, Isabel Hazelwode, and Matilda
Fynche, granted the said goods and chattels to

52 THE LOLLAEDS
them for the support of themselves and children.
It does not appear whether these four men, evi
dently in a respectable position in life, had been
executed in Buckinghamshire, or whether, as is
more probable, they were among those put to
death in St. Giles's Fields. Turner and Finch
are still common names in the district.
A little later (Pat. 2 Hen. V. ii. 1 ; iii. 23) we
find the King pardoning certain persons who had
been sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quar
tered, for their complicity in the alleged rebellion.
Among those in the first list, numbering twenty-
seven, appear the names of John Angret, parson
of Isenhamstead Latimer, who had been presen
ted to the Hving by Eichard II. in 1396 ; Thomas
Sydyly, alias Sedely, of Wycombe Heath,
fletcher; and aso one Horton, alias Spycer, late
of Wycombe, but now of Coffin Lane, Dowgate
Ward, cooper. Another name is that of John
Wytheryn, parson of the church of Wydyngton,
perhaps Wiggenton , a parish in Herts,, but almost
surrounded by Buckinghamshire. At the head of
the second list stands the name of John Langacre
of Wycombe, formerly of London ; and the fourth
name (there are thirteen in all) is that of Eichard
Sprotford, of Agmondesham, carpenter. Out of
forty names in these two lists, there are thus five
belonging to Buckinghamshire. There appear to
be two from Ijondon, four from Oxfordshire (one
a student, and one a parish priest) five from
Northamptonshire, five from Leicestershire, two
from Yorkshire, and one from each of the counties

FALL OF OLDEE LOLLAEDY 53
of Warwick, Suffolk, Lincoln, Bedford, Derby,
Chester, Essex, and Somerset. Of the remaining
eight, one or two are illegible, and in the rest
the county is not stated. It will be noted that
the counties most numerously represented are
just those the road from which would enter Lon
don by St. Giles, and that the band would pass
through Buckinghamshire at the time when it
had probably swollen to formidable numbers, and
would thus encourage local sympathisers to join
it. Five out of the forty were priests. Oldcastle
himself is said to have been near London, to have
had a narrow escape from arrest somewhere close
to St. Albans, and to have fled again into Wales ;
but the accounts are vague and confused.
So far we have traced nine persons in Bucking
hamshire (including one who had removed to
London) as having been concerned in the move
ment ; and all of these belong to the district round
Wycombe and Amersham. Local tradition tells
of a Lollard who is said to have been put into a
barrel lined with tenter-hooks, and rolled down
a steep field to the north of Amersham Church.
Hence, it is said, the name of " Tenter Field "^
which it still bears. On the opposite side of the
town, close to the Upper Baptist Chapel (an
ancient Nonconformist meeting-house to which
we shall have occasion to refer again) is a meadow
known as Harbour Field. Here, till a few years
ago, was a clump of aged trees, wych-elm and
sycamore, pointed out by a vague tradition as a
I See note, p. 54.

54 THE LOLLAEDS
favourite resort of the Lollards. I once heard at
Amersham a curious story, the source of which I
have entirely forgotten, concerning a Lollard who
had climbed among the thick boughs of one of
these trees to read a MS. book, when the precious
scroll slipped from his grasp, fluttered to the
ground, and led to his arrest. We cannot attach
much importance to these vague legends, and the
story of the barrel of tenter-hooks seems particu
larly improbable.* If ever such an atrocity was
committed, it would probably be in some outbreak
of popular violence, such as might be expected to
follow the suppression of the revolt of 1414. In
any case, the Nonconformists of the neighbour
hood, with a true instinct, have never ceased to
regard their Lollard forefathers as the first
pioneers in the struggle for religious and civil
liberties, which was so nobly carried on upon the
same spot by their Quaker and Puritan successors
of the seventeenth century.
But the nine already named were not the only
or the most important Buckinghamshire men
charged with complicity in the rising. In
Eymer's Foedera (ix. 120) is preserved a docu
ment in which a general pardon is granted to the
Lollards, with certain exceptions. Among those
excepted are Sir John Oldcastle, Sir Thomas
1 Further, the name " Tenter Field " is common in old maps
of the 17th century, and earlier, {e.g. Ogllby and Morgan's
Map of London, 1677)35 the name of fields where cloth is
stretched on " tenters " (frames fitted with tenter-hooks) to
dry.

FALL OF OLDEE LOLLAEDY 55
Talbot, Thomas Cheyne, the younger son of Eoger
Cheyne, lord of Drayton Beauchamp, and Thomas
Drayton, rector of the some parish, both of the
last being prisoners in the Tower. Thomas
Cheyne seems to have made his submission, as
he was at liberty shortly afterwards. Browne
Willis says that Eoger Cheyne himself died and
was buried in the Tower about this time ; but
this seems doubtful, as a memorial slab, believed
to be his, exists in the parish church of Cassing-
ton, Oxfordshire, where the Cheynes had an
estate. It is not a little remarkable, however,
that there exists an inquisition of his extensive
property in the counties of Buckingham, Oxford,
and Herts, which seems to have been made during
his hfetime, as though his estates had been for
feited by some offence. If so, they were restored
to his elder son John, who was several times
Knight of the Shire and Sheriff of Bucks. John
Cheyne, like his younger brother, displayed
earnest religious zeal, although in an opposite
direction. He made a pilgrimage to the Holy.
Land, and received the honour of knighthood for
his exploits there. His epitaph states that he
endured great hardships among the Saracens, that
he slew a giant near the Holy Sepulchre, and
that he Uved fifty-five years after his return, and
reached the age of nearly a hundred. A few
years ago the grave of this Sir John Cheyne was
opened, when it was discovered that he must have
been nearly seven feet in height, and that his
teeth were sound and perfect to the last. After

66 THE LOLLAEDS
the death of his widow, who survived him twenty-
six years, the manor of Drayton passed to his
great-nephevy, John Cheyne of Chesham Bois,
grandson of Thomas Cheyne, the Lollard.
The grandson and great-grandson of this
John Cheyne, Eobert and John, were among
the staunchest Protestants in the district
in the days of Edward VI. and Elizabeth. It
was the latter who, in 1584, presented the illus
trious Eichard Hooker to the living of Drayton
Beauchamp , and there seems some reason to think
that he disinherited his own son for his adherence
to Eomanism. (See the account of this in
teresting family by the late Eev. W. H. Kelke,
in the Records of Buckinghamshire, i. 293-301 ;
ii. 128-135).
The movement of 1414, whatever its real aims
may have been, must have taken a deep roo1; in
the district to unite in its supportjthe tradesmen
and yeomen from Wycombe andfflnersham, the
squire's son from the manor-house of Drayton,
the priest from the secluded vale of Isenhamstead
Latimer, and the peasant who plucked, on the
lonely slopes of Wycombe Heath, the " grey goose
quills " which might be used next year by the
bowmen of Agincourt. Of course it is not certain
or likely that all of these Buckinghamshire sym
pathisers with the revolt were present at ' ' Thicket
Field " by St. Giles's. The actions which led to
their arrest may have taken place in their own
neighbourhood. In the same year (1414) Parliament, which

FALL OF OLDEE LOLLAEDY 57
met at Leicester, " for the great favour that the
Lord Cobham had in London," passed a crushing
Act for the suppression of Lollardy, known as
" the Merciless Statute." Everyone convicted
of heresy was to forfeit his possessions ; and an
oath was administered to all magistrates, from
the Lord Chancellor downwards, that he would
endeavour to extirpate " all manner of heresies,
errors, and Lollardies." It was not until 1625
that this oath was disused, the word " Lollardy "
being construed after the Eeformation of any doc
trines dangerous to public order. In the year
named, the great Sir Edward Coke, on being
appointed High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire,
declined to take the oath in this form, on the
ground (scarcely correct, by the way) that the
doctrines of the Lollards had been endorsed by
the Church of England ; and this led to the dis
continuance of the oath.
The later years of Henry V. were marked by
severe persecution. A prominent incident in
this was the cruel death of Sir John Oldcastle,
who, having been captured in Wales, was exe
cuted in St. Giles's Fields in February, 1418.
He was hanged in chains, and a fire was lighted
beneath him, so that he might be "hanged as
a traitor and burned as a heretic."
It is curious that not only did this intensely
Catholic King fail to suppress Lollardy, which
was still so strong at the close of his reign that
Archbishop Chichele said that nothing but an
armed force would put it down ; but owing to

58 THE LOLLAEDS
political exigencies, his reign was marked by the
first great step in the interference of the State
with monasticism. This was the suppression of
the "alien priories." In Buckinghamshire,
those of Newton Longville and Wing, with the
hospital at Ludgershall, were suppressed in this
reign. The property of Newton passed to New
College, Oxford, and Wing was granted to a nun
nery at St. Albans ; but Ludgershall became
Crown property. Tickford had already been
suppressed by Edward III., though Henry IV.
had restored it as a cell of a monastery near York.
The persecution continued after the accession
of the child-king Henry VI. in 1422. In 1428, the
year in which Wycliffe's bones were exhumed and
burned to ashes at Lutterworth, a number of
Lollards were compelled to abjure their belief in
London. Among them as we read in Wilkins'
Concilia (iii. 493) was one "Master Eobert,"
parish priest of " Heggeley, in the diocese of Lin
coln," who had formerly, it is said, been
confessor to a certain ' ' robber ' ' named William
Wawe, to whom other allusions occur at this
period. Eobert had long been imprisoned in
the Tower, and on July 20th he was brought
in chains before Chichele, sitting in Convocation,
and questioned on the sacrament of the altar,
pilgrimages, the worship of images, and the law
fulness of churchmen holding temporal lordships.
His answers being unsatisfactory, he was com
mitted to the custody of Bishop Fleming, and,
though he abjured at Paul's Cross, was imprisoned

FALL OF OLDEE LOLLAEDY 59
for life. There can be little doubt that " Hegge
ley " was Hedgerley in Bucks, a village about
seven miles south of Amersham.
About the same time Eichard Monk, vicar of
Chesham, made his submission (Wilkins, iii.
302), and his recantation was read at Paul's Cross
in December of the same year. Foxe (iii. 538)
speaks of both Chesham and " Heggeley " as in
Lincolnshire, confusing the county with the
diocese. In the spring of 1431, Humphrey^ Duke of
Gloucester, the uncle of the young king, and
Protector of the kingdom, rode with men-at-arms
to Abingdon, to suppress an alleged Lollard
revolt. He seized the Bailiff of the town, William
Mandeville, who was accused of having threat
ened a general massacre of priests, and who was
hanged, drawn, and quartered, his head being
set on London Bridge. Another leader, Jack
Sharpe, arrested at Oxford, shared his fate. This
movement occurred near enough to the Bucking
hamshire border to render it possible that
inhabitants of the county might take part ; but
we have no proof that such was the case.
Lollardy was now burdened with the odium
of a supposed connection with four successive
revolts. How far this odium was deserved, is
very doubtful. The earliest of the four, the great
peasant rising under Eichard IT., was mainly due
as we have seen, to social and economic causes,
and it is significant that John of Gaunt, who up
till then had becH Wycliffe's patron, was the

60 THE LOLLAEDS
object of the fiercest hatred of the commons.
Salisbury's rebellion against Henry IV. in 1400
was purely political, and was prompted by gener
ous loyalty to a fallen king. We have already
seen what uncertainty surrounds the real aims
of the St. Giles's Fields rising in 1414. And
it is impossible to say to what extent the obscure
movement headed by Mandeville and Sharpe was
really of Lollard origin, or whether, if it were
so, there was any foundation for the violent pur
poses ascribed to it. There may be traced all
through this period two distinct fines of influence
often confused by opponents, and sometimes both
affecting the same persons in varying degrees.
The one was theological, and commenced with
Wycliffe; the other socialistic, with a religious
tinge, and commencing with men like Langland
and Ball. Some of the Lollards seem to have
held the doctrine of non-resistance ; and if others
erred in taking the carnal sword, they terribly
atoned for their error. Anyhow, it is remarkable
that no accusation of treason or disloyalty is
brought against them after 1431. As with the
Puritans after the Eestoration, another work lay
before them, more pacific, more obscure, but not
less important.
Archbishop Trench, in his Lectures on Mediae
val Church History (pp. 322, 323) speaks of
1431 as the date at which the persecution of the
Lollards suddenly ceased. This is correct to a
certain extent, though later researches have
shown that occasional charges- of heresy were

FALL OF OLDEE LOLLAEDY 61
made all through the century. Trench is inclined
to ascribe the lull in the persecution to sheer
weariness on the part of the persecutors. He
admits that the ' ' aggressive force ' ' of Lollardy
was spent ; that the loss of Oxford, and the death
or recantation of one after another of its leaders,
had destroyed its academic and political influence,
and that it was no longer " a power claiming
recognition in Church and State, and in fact
demanding that both should be fashioned and
moulded according to its notions."
He goes on however to say : —
" But of its continued existence, not seeking
any more to transform England at once, but to
reach its ends by slower means, by the winning
of one convert after another, abundant evidence
remains. . . . Large and open gatherings for
the preaching of the Word were not indeed any
more attempted. The itinerant preacher had
given place to the itinerant reader, who was never
more active than at the close of the fifteenth and
beginning of the sixteenth century. There were
little assemblies or conventicles everywhere ; and
it might put to a wholesome shame our careless,
unthankful use of Holy Scripture, to read how
precious the Word in those days was ; how men
came together by night, at peril of their lives, in
lonely houses, in barns, in stables, to hear some
tract which should expound that Word .... or
oftener still, to hsten to Scripture itself, a Gospel,
or the Apocalypse, dear ever to those that suffer
tribulation, or a Pauline Epistle, or, which

62 THE LOLLAEDS
noticeably enough was a still more favourite
reading, the Epistle of St. James. And so the
Lollards lived on ; and when the Eeformation came
at last, these humble men did much, as we may
well believe, to contribute to it that element of
sincerity, truth, and uprightness, without which
it never could have succeeded ; while yet, as must
be sorrowfully owned, this element was miserably
lacking in many who, playing foremost parts in
the carrying of a Eeformation through, yet sought
in it not the things of God, but their own."
This estimate is far nearer the truth than that
of Froude, (i. 502), who speaks of the Lollard
movement as a mere " prologue " or "rehearsal^'
of the drama of the Eeformation , and asserts that
in the sixteenth century there remained no trace
of Lollardy save " a black memory of contempt
and hatred."
It must be borne in mind that there are few
periods of English history of which we have
scantier records than of the period from 1430 to
1480. The policy of the Inquisition had borne
its natural fruit in the suppression of all intel
lectual life. "Never before," says Mr. J. E.
Green, " had English literature fallen so low. A
few tedious moralists alone preserved the name
of poetry. History died down into the merest
fragments and annals. Even the religious enthu
siasm of the people seemed to have spent itself,
or to have been crushed out by the bishops' courts.
The one belief of the time was in sorcery and
magic." A most fearful picture of the state of

FALL OF OLDEE LOLLAEDY 63
the Church is drawn by Gascoigne, Chancellor
of Oxford, in a MS. referred to by Professor
Thorold Eogers in his Six Centuries of Work and
Wages (ch. xiii.). He says that many of the
monasteries deserved to be suppressed as dens
of gluttony, drunkenness, and vice; that the
Bishops of Sahsbury, Norwich, and Carlisle, who
held high offices of state, were greedy, negligent,
and scandalous ; and he casts serious imputations
on the moral character of the Archbishop of
Canterbury (John Stafford) himself. He also
denounces with Luther-like vehemence the action
of Pope Eugenius IV., who in 1440, sent to
England an agent, named Pietro di Monte, for
the sale of indulgences. Yet it must not be for
gotten that this dark period saw a seed sown in
Buckinghamshire soil, by the foundation of Eton
in 1440, which was destined to bear rich fruit in
after ages.
In 1439 a priest named Eichard Wyche was
burned for heresy on Tower Hill. Stow says
he was vicar of " Hermetsworth," by which he
no doubt means Harmondsworth , a parish in
Middlesex, bordering on the Bucks parish of Iver,
and within a few miles of Amersham and Ches
ham. It would be interesting to connect Wyche
with the Lollard district, but there is reason to
think that Stow has confounded him with another
Eichard Wyche, who was vicar of Harmonds
worth a few years later, and that the martyr was
vicar of Deptford. Wyche was over eighty years
of age. He was very probably a pupil of Wycliffe,

64 THE LOLLAEDS
and had almost certainly corresponded with John
Huss. Immense interest was awakened after his
death by the fact that a fragrant perfume arising
from his ashes was distinctly perceptible. Pil
grims flocked to the scene of his martyrdom, and
a rude stone monument was erected on the spot,
placed there by unknown hands at night. But
on inquiry it appeared that the vicar of the
adjoining parish of Allhallows Barking had mixed
spices with the ashes, in order to sell them to
the people. A proclamation was issued forbidding
resort to the place, and the affair was soon for
gotten.

CHAPTEE VII
under the white rose of YORK
One reason for the cessation of persecution
referred to in the last chapter was probably the
growing weakness of the House of Lancaster.
The losses in France, the rebellion of Cade in
1450 (when there is no mention of religious
grievances), and above all the outbreak of the
Wars of the Eoses in 1455, might all tend to
make its supporters feel it impolitic to add to
the number of its enemies. As Fuller beautifully
says of the Lollards, " The very storm was their
shelter." The murder by the populace of the
Bishops of Salisbury and Chichester in 1450
would also tend to alarm and restrain the prelates,
as they saw how thoroughly unpopular their order
had become.
In the struggle over the succession we may
be pretty sure that the sympathies of the Lollards
would be with the House of York. They had
assuredly no cause to love the Lancastrian kings ;
and it is noteworthy that the strength of the
Yorkists lay in the districts where the Lollards
were most numerous.
Yet as soon as Edward IV. was firmly estab-
65

66 THE LOLLAEDS
lished on the throne, we find signs of a renewal
of persecution, and this affects the very parishes
in Buckinghamshire where 'Lollardy had been
so strong in 1414 and 1428. In 1457, Edmund
Brudenell, lord of the manor of Amersham, had
bequeathed certain English Bibles (probably of
Wycliffe's version) to the University of Oxford
(See Records of Bucks, i. 297). Now, in or about
1462, as appears by the Lincoln Eegister of Bis
hop Chedworth (fol. 62, a.t.), proceeedings for
heresy were taken against persons who had
probably been tenants of Brudenell's — John
Baron, Geoffrey Symeon, John Crane, and Eobert
Body, of Agmondesham (Amersham). Their
confessions are very interesting.
Baron had been acquainted with one Hugh
Leche, who held "a damnable opinion against
pilgrimages and the worshipping of saints," and
who taught that it was sufficient for salvation to
keep the ten commandments, and that the sacra
ment of the altar was mere bread. He had also
listened many times to William Belgrave, and to
John White of Chesham, who " taught and held
many heresies against the seven sacraments of
Holy Church." Baron owned to the possession
of three books in English. The first contained
"The Life of our Lady," "The Mirror of
Sinners," and " The Mirror of Matrimony,"
with sermons on Adam and Eve and other sub
jects. The second was "a book of Tales of
Canterbury " (no doubt Chaucer's), and the third
was " a play of St. Dionise." The very posses-

UNDEE THE WHITE EOSE 67
sion of an English book seems to have been
regarded as suspicious. Questioned as to his own
views. Baron admitted that he had listened with
pleasure to Leche 's teaching, and had given
"faith, credence, and belief" to his views as
to pilgrimages and image- worship, holding that
to do good to the poor was better ' ' than to seek
or worship any saint or image on earth." But
he denied having held any heretical doctrine as
to the sacraments. He had kept his views to
himself, except when he had talked them over
with a friend named Spicer. Baron now sued
for mercy, and submitted to the correction of the
Church, as did also Symeon, Crane, and Body.
Geoffrey Symeon had learned his views from one
James Wylly, who had given him " an English
book of the Holy Gospels," and who had after
wards been burned as a heretic in London. He
had also known John White of Chesham, who
was ' ' diffamed of heresy ' ' ; and when William
Sparman, the Bishop's officer, had come to Amer
sham to seek for heretics , he and Body had given
White warning. His statement of his views was
similar to Baron's, with one curious addition. " I
have dogmatised," he said, " that bishops should
go on foot with twelve priests, clothed as the
sheep beareth all in white, teaching the people
the true Christian faith ; but they teach the people
that is false and untrue, against God's law."
There may be here a dim reminiscence of the
Poor Priests, whose gowns of "russet" were
made of undyed black wool.

68 THE LOLLAEDS
John Crane had been conversant with persons
"noised and suspect of heresy," and had even
found an heretical adviser in a parish priest, the
parson of Chesham Bois, by whose " counsel and
motion ' ' he had left off giving his alms.
Eobert Body (whose surname is still a common
one in the district) had been ' ' conversant with
heretics, hearing their dogmatizations, hiding and
keeping their counsels, and giving them warning
when William Sparman and other officers of the
Bishop's came into the country to seek them."
The Bishop of Lincoln had at this time a
stately country seat at Wooburn,in Buckingham
shire (to be carefully distinguished from the
better knoVvn Woburn in Beds) . Here on August
21st, 1462, John PoUey, of Henley-on-Thames,
abjured before Bishop Chedworth, and promised
to give information of any heretical persons or
books he might know of for the future, after
which he received the Bishop's absolution. PoUey
had disbelieved in purgatory and transubstanti
ation, had objected to images in churches, and
had held that the offerings made to them had
better be given to the poor. " Also that the
sacrament of Baptime doon with the observaunces
of the Churche and in the fonte is not necessary ;
but to crysten a child rather in a Eyver or a
ponde." On October 11th another Henley heretic was
cited before the Bishop in High Wycombe Church,
which had lately been greatly adorned and beauti
fied. " All the piers and arches, thfe roofs in the

UNDEE THE WHITE EOSE 69
nave, the aisles, and the clerestory windows,"
show early fifteenth-century work. It was about
four years later that the wealthy burgess William
Eedehode adorned the church with elaborately
carved oak screens. An inventory taken in 1475,
and preserved in Parker's History and Antiquities
of Wycombe (p. 106) gives a vivid idea of the
ritual of those days. It will be read with a sigh
of regret by those ecclesiastical sentimentalists
who mourn over the vanished glories of the past
(while they sometimes seem to have no regrets
to spare for the defacement of the living temples
of the Holy Ghost by the flame, the branding-
iron, and the quartering-knife). We read of
vestments of costly brocade, one suit of red,
embroidered with golden-damask foHage, with
birds and lions ; another of blue, wrought with
green branches and golden birds ; another with
golden birds on a ground of white. Other suits
were of stuff, with green and gold foliage ;
of red velvet, with golden crowns ; of
green velvet ; of red silk, with white
embroidery; of cloth of gold; of blue silk,
with golden rays ; and one of black for requiem
masses. There were seven chasubles, one embroi
dered with golden apes, sporting amid violet
branches ; another with golden birds on a red
ground. There were white and black copes, with
embroidery of blue and gold, presented by
William Eedehode ; long ' ' houselling ' ' towels
for the administration of the sacrament ; cushions
of silk and brocade ; palls, and veils, and lectern-

70 THE LOLLAEDS
cloths. Of the altar-cloths, one had golden
squirrels and green foliage on a blaek ground.
Another was similiar, but with hinds instead of
squirrels. Others were of imitation cloth of gold,
or of blue worsted with golden flowers and silver
spangles. There were silken banners, on one of
which the Trinity was depicted on a blue ground ;
silken pennons and pendants; rich canopies, one
of purple silk with gilded ornaments, another of
lawn, with a fringe of red and gold; curtains of
blue sarsenet and purple silk ; and a cloth of
gold to cover the " sepulchre." Six silver chali
ces, all but one gilt, were provided for the service
of the altar, with patens to correspond. Two
candlesticks of latten (fine brass) stood on the
high altar, two very large ones in the choir, and
two more in St. Nicholas' chancel. There were
various other ornaments of silver, as candlesticks,
basons, " shippes " and " crewettes," besides
censers with silver chains. The pax was of silver
gilt, set with jewels; and there were costly
reliquaries, and several crosses, one of which was
of copper gilt, set with precious stones. Lastly,
a number of service-books are mentioned, some
of them no doubt in costly bindings.
Into the midst of these imposing splendours
was brought, on the date above mentioned,
Wilham Aylward of Henley, master blacksmith.
The Wars of the Eoses were not ended. The
battle of Hexham had been fought a few months
before. But the pilgrims still went on their way
to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury. Some

UNDEE THE WHITE EOSE 71
little time before, as some of them were passing
Aylward's forge on their way through Henley
town, the smith, at work with his men, Eobert
Noris and William Assheley, bluntly remarked,
" They go offering their souls to the devil." He
also talked to his men about the Gospel of Nico-
demus, an apocryphal book which Wycliffe had
translated. From hearing it read (for he does
not seem to harve been able to read or write) he
had come to the conclusion that " the sacrament
of baptism at the font was only a token and
a sign," and " that no man ought to be baptised
till he came to old age." Other charges were
based on random utterances of his at different
times, coarse and blasphemous enough, but
showing the natural revolt of a vigorous but
untaught mind against the teachings of Eome.
The blood of Hales, he said, was that of a dog
or a duck, and the miracle of its liquefaction was
visible, not as the monks taught to the pure in
heart, but to those who paid a sufficient offering.
Of the Mass, he had spoken in terms which will
hardly bear transcription, and had said, " I can
make as good a sacrament myself between two
irons ; for a priest neither can nor may make God
that made him." Confession, he said, was only
maintained by the priests for purposes of, immo
rality. His audacious tongue had spared neither
the Pope nor the King. Of the former he had
said that " he would lie deeper in hell than
Lucifer;" and he declared that the King also
would go to hell ' ' because of his great support-

72 THE LOLLAEDS
ation of the Church." But this charge was passed
over in silence by the Bishop, with the consent
of the Lord Chancellor, the Bishop of Exeter.
Probably this was to prevent the intervention of
a secular court ; but whatever the motive, it was
an act of mercy on which Aylward might well
congratulate himself, since it probably saved him
from being hung, drawn, and quartered as a
traitor. Aylward had learned his views, he said, from
one named " Patryk." He had been in trouble
some years before for sorcery — in other words for
professing to cure children of the whooping-cough
by dipping his second finger into water into which
a red-hot steelyard had been plunged, and bidding
the parents say five Paternosters and five Ave
Marias. But the charges against him now were
much more serious. They were read over to
him, and as he pleaded "Guilty" to each in
turn, the word fatetur (he confesses) was entered
against it. Aylward had evidently nothing of the
martyr spirit, and readily abjured his reckless
utterances, which seem to have been prompted
more by a love of shocking his neighbours than
by any higher motives. Having thus abjured,
he received absolution, but would no doubt have
to do penance. It is a pitiful picture — priestly
intolerance on the one hand, and on the other
blind, ignorant fanaticism of that extreme type
which is generally fostered by persecution. But
a change was at hand. More than one of those
who were charged with heresy in the days of

UNDEE THE WHITE EOSE 73
Henry VII. and VIII. fixed the latter part of
the reign of Edward IV. as the period of their
conversion to Lollard views. And we shall soon
see indications that Lollard teachers were prob
ably at work in the Chiltern country at this time,
though all record of their labours has perished.

CHAPTEE VIII
THE REVIVAL OF LOLLARDY
When Henry VII. took the crown of the usurper
Eichard from the hawthorn-bush of Bosworth
Field in 1485, and when he afterwards ended the
strife of the Eoses by marrying the Princess
Elizabeth, he seems to have resolved not only
to unite the two Houses of York and Lancaster,
but to combine their characteristic policies — the
personal rule of Edward IV. with the rigid
churchmanship of the Lancastrian Kings.
At the very beginning of his reign, cases of
" heresy " are recorded at London and Coventry.
Lollard doctrines, toO, had once more found their
way into Oxford. In 1491, Bishop Eussell of
Lincoln, visiting that city, declared himself
" harassed and fatigued " with the multitude of
heretics he found there. He betook himself to
his episcopal seat at Wooburn, mentioned in the
last chapter ; and there he made a copy of a
work called the Doctrinale, by Thomas Netter
of Walden, which Tie considered would be of
service to his successors in dealing with heretics.
The MS. (according to Dr. Churton's Founders
of Brasenose p. 134) is preserved in the library
74

THE EEVIVAL OF LOLLAEDY 75
of University College ; it bears an autograph
injunction for its perpetual preservation in the
registry of Lincoln, with a curse on any one
defacing this injunction, which is dated " Woo
burn, on the Feast of the Epiphany, 1491 " (1492
of our present reckoning).
About eight miles from Wooburn, in another
lovely valley among the beech-crowned slopes of
the Chilterns, lies the little town of Amersham,
already more than once referred to. In Foxe's
account of Thomas Man, burned in Smithfield
in 1518, he mentions (iv. 213) that Man, after
many wanderings, came to Newbury from Wind
sor Forest, and was there told of the existence
of a number of Lollards at Amersham. Thither
he went accordingly, and found "a godly and
a great company," who had continued in their
behef for twenty-three years. This would take
us back to 1495 at the latest. Foxe did not know
that, as we have seen was the case, Lollard prin
ciples were strong in and around Amersham in
1414, in 1428, and again in 1462. No wonder
that the town should have become a stronghold
of Lollard principles — " the rendezvous of God's
children in those days," as Fuller calls it.
Everything seems to point to a great revival
of Lollard doctrine about this time (1495). The
date itself is suggestive. Henry VII. had been
ten years on the throne. The Papal Court had
sunk to its lowest depth of degradation in the
Borgia Pope, Alexander VI. Savonarola was at
the zenith of his influence at Florence. Luther

76 THE LOLLAEDS
was a singing boy in the streets of Eisnach.
Three years before, two great events had stirred
the heart of Europe with hopes unknown to it
for ages. The constant stealthy advance of
Mohammedanism, which had blasted three-fourths
of Christendom, had at last met with a check
in the capture of Granada ; and in the same year
the daring of Christopher Columbus had revealed
the New World of America. The discovery of
printing had marvellously aided the spread of
knowledge; and now the "New Learning,"
brought into Italy by Grecian refugees after the
taking of Constantinople by the Turks, had
reached the shores of England. Two years later
Colet commenced his New Testament lectures at
Oxford, and the long lethargy which had paralysed
the University since the time of Courtenay began
at last to be broken.
John Colet was of an old Buckinghamshire
family. Lipscombe (ii. 431) says that he was
born at Wendoyer ; but most authorities give Lon
don as the place of his birth. He certainly owned
extensive landed property in Wendover and the
adjoining parishes, which he bequeathed to St.
Paul's School. Here again we find ourselves just
on the borders of the old Lollard district ; and it
is impossible to say what influences may
have affected him from this fact. Erasmus
hints that Colet had made himself familiar
with Wycliffe's writings ; and though he
calls the Lollards " men mad with strange folly,"
Colet was not the first or the last ecclesiastic who

THE EEVIVAL OF LOLLAEDY 77
was far nearer than he suspected in spiritual affin
ity to despised sectaries whose real standpoint he
scarcely understood.
Colet's simplicity of life, his Scriptural teaching,
and his manly protests against the evils of the
day, would naturally commend him to the Lol
lards ; and hence we can quite believe Foxe when
he tells us (iv. 246) that " these ' known men '
about Buckinghamshire had a great mind to re
sort to his sermons ' ' after he was apponted Dean
of St. Paul's (1505). His friend and fellow-
reformer Grocyn, it may be noted in passing, at
one time had been rector of a Buckinghamshire
parish, Newton Longville.
' ' Heretics ' ' were being brought to light with
increasing frequency over various parts of the
south of England. In 1494 the first Enghsh
female martyr, Joan Boughton, was burned in
Smithfield. A priest was burned at Canterbury
in 1498, and another victim suffered at Norwich
in 1500. In the diocese of Sahsbury, numerous
persons were compelled to do penance in various
parts of Berkshire (1499). Their confessions,
preserved in the Diocesan Eegister, are mostly of
the ordinary Lollard type. Eight cases are re
corded at Eeading, six in and around Faringdon,
five in Wantage and the neighbourhood, and one
at Hungerford. We shall find presently that
there was constant communication between these
Berkshire Lollards and their brethren across the
Thames in Bucks.

CHAPTEE IX
THREE LOLLARD TEACHERS AND THEIR FATE
As we have now to a large extent to follow the
guidance of John Foxe, it vrill be necessary to say
a few words on the credibility of that author, who
has been so depreciated in modern days that one
is almost afraid to mention him —
Lest so despised a name should move a sneer.
It may be freely conceded that Foxe is in many
respects an unreliable writer, ever ready to put
the blackest construction on the actions of theo
logical opponents, and to gloss over facts which
tell against his own side ; but he lived in an age
which did not understand the meaning of critical
fairness. It must also be admitted that his work
absolutely swarms with blunders, especially as to
dates ; but it must be borne in mind that the
greater part of it was written on the Continent ,
in the altogether inadequate space, for a work of
such extent, in fourteen months ; and while Foxe
corrected some of his more glaring errors in subse
quent editions, the traces of its original hurry of
compilation still remain on the book.
No book has had stranger fortunes than th§
78

THEEE LOLLAED TEACHEES 79
Acts and Monuments. Christened as soon as it
appeared by a name (the " Book of Martyrs ")
which its author never gave it, and against which
he protested again and again as misrepresenting
its scope, it has had its rightful title entirely
supplanted by a nickname. Eeceived at first with
extravagant admiration, ordered to be set up in
every parish church, and in the common halls of
archbishops, bishops, deans, and heads of col
leges ; approved by the great Elizabethan prelates
(one of whom. Archbishop Grindal, furnished
Foxe with many of his details) ; quoted with
admiration by men like Camden, Strype, Fuller,
and Burnet ; it has come in our own day to be as
much undervalued as it was overvalued then. For
although the searching light of criticism has ex
posed Foxe's prejudices and inaccuracies, some of
the attacks upon him have been so grossly unfair,
and themselves so absolutely uncritical, as to make
one wonder whether, after all, the great offence
of the " lying Foxe," in the eyes of some modern
partisans, is not that he tellu more truth than is
convenient for them. Froude's testimony is
worth quoting : "I trust Foxe where he pro
duces documentary evidence, because I have in
variably proved his documents accurate." And
a careful reader of the elaborate notes in Pratt
and Stoughton's edition will observe that such
departures from his original documents as do occur
are almost always those which might arise either
from hasty transcription or from ignorance of
technical terms.

80 THE LOLLAEDS
Foxe's references to Buckinghamshire occur for
the first time in his second edition (1570). He
does not appear to have had any close personal
acquaintance with the county. Some local writers
have suggested that the John Fox who was Vicar
of Stewkley in 1545, may have been the same as
the martyrologist. This, however, seems impos
sible ; for in that year Foxe left Oxford, under
suspicion of heresy, and became a tutor at Charle-
cote Park, Warwickshire, whence, a year later,
he removed to Coventry.
Foxe tells us (iv. 123) how, in the year 1506,
the Amersham Lollards attracted the attention of
Bishop William Smith (the successor of Eussell in
the see of Lincoln, and founder of Brasenose Col
lege, Oxford), who instituted proceedings against
them. Amersham, or Agmondesham as it was
then called, is now one of the quietest and
sleepiest of towns , until recently seven miles from
a railway station. But it was then of greater
relative importance. Being twenty-six miles from
London on an important road, it would be a
favourite halting-place for wayfarers, and news
from the metropolis would reach it quickly. Thus
the Lollards there would soon get to know of the
preaching of Colet. We read (Foxe, iv. 228) how
" Thomas Grove, of London, butcher, William
Glasbroke, of Harrow-on-the-Hill, Christopher
Glasbroke, of London, and William Tilseworth, of
London, goldsmith (apprentice sometime to John
Barret) used to resort and confer together of
matters of religion in the house of Thomas Man,

THEEE LOLLAED TEACHEES 81
of Amersham," about this time. These visitors
from London would be glad of a secluded spot in
which to confer with their co-religionists ; and
they would be likely to follow the example of
Thomas Geffrey, of t^xbridge, who " caused John
Butler divers Sundays to go to London to hear
Dr. Colet " (iv. 230).
These Lollards were some of them men of
substance. Of Thomas Grove, we read (iv. 227)
that he was able to give £20, a large sum for
those days, to Dr. Wilcocks, Vicar-General of
the diocese of London, in order to be excused
from an open penance. He and his wife Joan
seem afterwards to have lived at Amersham (iv.
233) ; and the surname is still familiar in the dis
trict. As to William Tilseworth, the goldsmith,
it is curious to notice, all through the history of
the Lollards, how many goldsmiths belonged to
the body ; and the goldsmith in those days was
an important personage, for he frequently acted
as a banker. His master, John Barret, knew the
Epistle of James by heart, and repeated it on one
occasion before his wife Joan , and her maid Jude ,
and a visitor, John Scrivener, to whom Mistress
Barret also lent the Gospels of Matthew and
Mark, which he surrendered to Bishop Smith
(iv. 228).
The Amersham Lollards had at this time three
' ' principal readers or instructors ' ' — William
Tylsworth, or Tilseworth (Tylesley in the edition
of 1570), Eobert Cosin, and Thomas Chase.
William Tylsworth was very possibly the

82 THE LOLLAEDS
father of the young man who had been apprenticed
to the pious goldsmith Barret. He had called the
images of the saints ' ' stocks and stones and dead
things" (iv. 221). He was sentenced to be burned,
and the sentence was carried out in a field called
Stanley's CloSe, still pointed out on a slope north
of the town. About sixty Lollards, the names of
over twenty of whom are given by Foxe (iv. 123)
were ' ' put to bear faggots for their penance ' ' at
his burning. We can picture them climbing the
hill in slow and sad procession, while numbers
of the townspeople and even of their children
followed with faggots and sticks in order to merit
the forty days' indulgence which had been pro
mised to all who should assist at the burning of
the heretic (iv. 581). By a refinement of craelty
when the faggots had been piled around the stake,
his only daughter, Joan Clark, "a faithful
woman," was compelled to set fire to them with
her own hands, while her husband John Clark
was one of the faggot-bearers. Thus Tyls
worth met his end with every aggravation of ,
physical and mental agony, and of apparent utter
failure in his work ; but in his case, as in that of
countless others, the saying was to be verified :
"The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the
Church." A curious variation from Foxe's account occurs
in one of the numerous " Books of Martyrs "
based on his work, which was compiled early in
the nineteenth century by a Dr. Henry Moore.
We there read as follows : — " In 1506, William

THEEE LOLLAED TEACHERS 83
Tilfery, a pious man, was burnt alive at Amer
sham, in a close called Stony-prat." This evi
dently refers to the case of Tylsworth, and it is
curious that the name of Stony Prat is still given
to a field lying to the north of Amersham. The
local traditions, however, gather neither around
this nor around Stanleys, but around a field called
Euckles, or Martyr Field, which lies between the
two, not far from the railway station. It is pos
sible that the present enclosures did not then exist,
so that Euckles would form part of Stanleys.
Beyond Euckles to the westward lies the ' ' Tenter
Field " before alluded to, and beyond this again,
on the other side of the Chesham road, is Stony
Prat. As the traveller approaches Amersham from
the south , and looks across the valley in which the
quaint old town nestles, little changed in extent
and appearance, comparatively speaking, by the
four centuries which have elapsed, he sees a hilly
field (Euckles) under the beech-woods on the oppo
site slope, and in it a slight depression where, it
used to be said, the corn would never grow, but
always faded away. Some years ago as I learned
from the late Mr. E. West, so well and honourably
known in the town, the Eev. Joseph Burton, a
retired West Indian missionary, who was then
pastor of the Lower Baptist Chapel at Amersham,
employed a labouring man named Belch to dig
up the soil, and found that an old chalk-pit had
been filled up with large flints, thus accounting
for the barrenness of the site. Belch died shortly
after, and not a few looked on his death as a

84 THE LOLLAEDS
visitation of God I A few years later, a local
solicitor, the late Mr. Thomas Marshall, repeated
the experiment, and confirmed the conclusion
arrived at by the Baptist minister. This time the
flints were partly removed, and since then the
ground has been less barren, but it still shows a
difference from the surrounding soil in a dry
season. The spot was probably chosen for the
place of execution as a piece of waste ground,
visible from all parts of the town ; and its con
spicuous barrenness has preserved the memory
of the site to successive generations.
Several members of the Tylsworth family are
mentioned as suspected of heresy a few years
later. I have not traced the name in the district,
though " Tyldesley " occurs on a monument in
Burnham Church. The name of Clark, on the
other hand, is common in the county, and was
borne by an old Bucks family of Quakers.
In the same week as Tylsworth suffered, his
fellow-worker, Eobert Cosin, was burned at
Buckingham. He was a miller, living at Missen
den, and was familiarly known as "Father
Eobert." Cosin appears to have been condemned
for dissuading his neighbours from pilgrimages
and the worship of saints. At his burning
more than twenty persons were compelled
to bear faggots as a penance. Dr. Moore,
in the work just now alluded to, states,
on what authority does not appear, that Cosin,
or Eoberts as he calls him, " embraced the
faggots, and rejoiced that God had accounted

THEEE LOLLAED TEACHEES 85
him worthy to die for the truth of the Gospel."
The third Lollard leader in the district at this
time was Thomas Chase. Here again we come
upon a name familiar in the district. The Chases,
or one branch of them, lived for generations at
the quaint old manor-house of Hundridge, near
Chesham, and were connected with the Lower
Baptist Chapel in that town. This branch have
now removed to the States, and their American
home is, I am told, built on the plan, and bears
the name of Hundridge, while some of them visit
the Buckinghamshire homestead from time to
time. Thomas Chase appears to have been of a some
what more timid disposition than Tylsworth and
Cosin. He had exhorted one of the persons to
whom he taught passages of Scripture, " to keep
the things he spake of as secret in his stomach
as a man would keep a thief in prison " (iv. 225).
Like Barret the goldsmith, he could recite the
Epistle of James, and also part at least of the
Gospel of Luke (iv. 224). He seems to have
yielded before the first onslaught of persecution,
and bore a faggot at Tylsworth's martyrdom. But
a little later he was taken from Amersham to
Wooburn, and examined before Bishop Smith.
He now atoned for his previous weakness by a
courageous confession , and was imprisoned in the
" Little Ease " adjoining the Bishop's palace at
Wooburn, a prison in which it was impossible for
him to stand upright, or to lie down with comfort ;
although it is to be hoped that the ghastly picture

86 THE LOLLAEDS
of the Wooburn dungeon drawn by Miss Holt in
her Robin Tremayne does not quite correspond
with the actual fact. "Little Ease" was the
name of a well-known cell in the Tower of Lon
don, and was applied to others in various parts
of the country. Foxe states that Chase was loaded
with " chains, gyves, manacles, and irons,"
beaten, vhalf starved, and daily harassed with
threats and upbraidings by the Bishop's chaplains.
At last, finding that he would not recant, his
persecutors tortured him more severely than ever,
and finally strangled him. The woman who
attended to the prisoner was within earshot, and
heard his groans, and his dying cry, " Lord Jesus,
receive my spirit ! " It does not appear that his
death had been intended ; and his tormentors
were " at their wits' end " for means to conceal
their cruelty. They gave out that Chase had
hanged himself in prison — a physical impossi
bility, considering the height of the cell, and the
chains with which he was loaded. However, he
was buried as a suicide on the road from Wooburn
to Little Marlow, in tlje wood called Norland
(now Northern) Wood.
Such is Foxe's account, stripped of his usual
violent epithets of "stinging vipers," "bloody
butchers," etc., applied to Chase's persecutors. A
loqal writer, a few years ago, expressed his opinion
that Chase really hanged himself, and that the
' ' martyr-on- the-brain-affected Foxe ' ' supplied
" the agony accompaniment " out of his fertile
imagination. This may be a matter of opinion.

THEEE LOLLAED TEACHEES 87
but when the writer in question goes on to say
(quoting Lysons' Buckinghamshire, but not men
tioning his authority) that the Bishop is ' ' ably
defended by Dr. Churton, of Brasenose, and by
Fuller in his Church History," he gives a striking
example of the pitfalls in the way of a superficial
inquiry, for one of the authorities referred to
accepts Foxe's account implicitly ; and the other
does so hesitatingly, but seeks to exonerate the
Bishop, whom Foxe never accused of being con
cerned in Chase's death. The matter is worth
looking at more closely, as an example of the
facile way in which Foxe is sometimes discredited
on no evidence at all.
Fuller (Church History, book v., p. 164), after
speaking favourably of Smith's apparent cle
mency in substituting branding for burning in
certain cases, goes on to say : —
" They who desire further information of the
number and names of such as suffered about this
time may repair to the Acts and Monuments of
Mr. Foxe; only Thomas Chase, of Amersham,
must not be here omitted, being barbarously
butchered by bloudy hands in the Prison of
Woobume; who, to cover their craelty, gave it
out that he had hanged himself, and in colour
thereof, caused his body to be buried by the high
way's side, where a stake, knock't into the grave,
is the monument generally erected for Felons de
se. ' Fear not those ' (saith our Saviour) ' who
kill the body, and afterward have no more that
they can do.' But these men's malice endea-

88 THE LOLLAEDS
voured to do more, having killed his body, to
murder his memory with slanderous reports,
although all in vain ; for the prison itself did
plead for the innocence of the prisoner herein,
being a place so low and little that he could not
stand upright. Besides, the woman that saw his
dead body (a most competent witness in this case)
declared that he was so loaden with manicles and
irons that he could not well move hand or foot.
But we leave the full discussing and final deciding
to Him who makes inquisition for bloud , at that
day when such things as have been done in secret
shall be made manifest."
Turning now to Dr. Churton's Founders of
Brasenose (pp. 137 — 140), we find him simply
pointing out that Foxe cites no documents as to
the deaths of Chase and Tylsworth, that the
accounts he received were probably coloured and
exaggerated with the lapse of time, and that Foxe
himself elsewhere admits the comparative leniency
of Smith, as to whom Churton avows his belief
that " although the sentence might be his "
(probably referring to Tylsworth's case) " the
studied barbarity which disgraced the execution
was the result of baser minds, without his sug
gestion or concurrence."
A small recess or cell in the cellarage of Woo
burn House (which occupies nearly the site of
the Bishop's palace) is pointed out as the
" Lollards' Chamber ""or " Little Ease." But
it does not at all correspond with Foxe's descrip
tion ; and I believe that a more likely spot used

THEEE LOLLAED TEACHEES 89
to be shown in some outbuildings now pulled
down. An aged lady once told me of a story she
had heard from her mother when living at Woo
burn as a child, about certain martyrs who were
buried in the ground up to their necks in Northern
Woods, and left to starve — perhaps a distorted
version of the story of Chase.

CHAPTEE X
THE GREAT ABJURATION
We have seen that about eighty persons abjured
and did penance at the burning of Tylsworth and
Cosin. This wholesale abjuration of the Lollards
seems to have been that long remembered in the
district as Magna Abjuratio, " the Great Abjura
tion," and took place in 1507 (iv. 214). Another
followed in 1511 , and to this the name is applied
in a marginal note, only found in some editions
of Foxe ; but most of the passages seem evidently
to refer to the earlier date.
It must be confessed that it is somewhat dis
appointing, all through the history of the Lollards,
to notice the large proportion of abjurations.
Many of those who suffered during the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries were condemned for
"relapse," i.e., continuing in their views after
having once formally abjured. But it is probable
that some of the more stedfast souls were con
demned to imprisonment, the protracted sufferings
of which may have been harder to bear than a
fiery martyrdom. Nor is it easy for us to estimate
the courage required to stand against the force
90

THE GEEAT ABJUEATION 91
of an almost unchallenged authority. To quote
Coleridge's lines on the recantation of Berenga-
rius : —
Ye who, secure 'mid trophies not your own.
Judge him who won them when he stood
alone.
And proudly talk oi recreant Berengare,
O first the age, and then the man compare !
That age how dark ! congenial minds how
rare !
No host of friends with kindred zeal did burn !
No throbbing hearts awaited his return !
Prostrate alike when prince and peasant fell.
He only, disenchanted from the spell.
Like the weak worm that gems the starless
night.
Moved in the scanty circlet of his light ;
And was it strange if he withdrew the ray
That did but guide the night-birds to their
prey?
The Marian martyrs were sustained by the con
sciousness that a widespread and influential
public opinion, which often manifested itself in
active sympathy, was on their side. The "known
men " of Amersham had no such support, and
must often have doubted whether, after all, they,
a few unlettered people, could be right in holding
a belief which seemed contrary to that of all the
wise and learned of the land.
The writer of an article in the Spectator of

92 THE L0LLA:RDS
Dec. 17th, 1892, says of similar recantations,
recorded in diocesan registers : —
" We cannot help wondering in what spirit
most of these recantations were made. Some
times the profession of future orthodoxy may have
been genuine. A man may have been startled
to find that opinions he had held were heretical,
and when the bishop bade him recant
' Lest thou fleet
From my first to God's second death,'
he may have dreaded the spiritual penalty no
less than the temporal one. Yet it is difficult to
believe in the good faith of men who for years
had belonged to a secret sect, who had scoffed
at Church ordinances and avoided confession, but
who declare in the most innocent way that now
they understand their opinions to be false, and
accordingly forsake them  The spirit
of martyrs was not to be expected from these
men, who had been trained for years to shelter
themselves under an outward conformity ....
For the time all aggressiveness and open prosely-
tism had died out among the reformers, and it
needed a new. impulse to make them brave enough
to bear public witness to the truth that they prized
for themselves."
The Buckinghamshire Lollards did not escape
with merely bearing faggots at the martyrdoms
of Tylsworth and Cosin. Somte of them had to
do public penance in the market-places of Ayles
bury and other towns. They were compelled to

THE GEEAT ABJUEATION 93
wear badges of green cloth on their sleeves , as a
permanent mark of disgrace. Some werfe
branded on the cheek. Fuller's words may
be quoted here (Church History, book v., pp.
163, 164) :—
" At the same time sixty professors, and above,
did bear fagots for their penance, and were
enjoyned to wear on their right sleeve, for Some
years after, a square piece of cloth, as a disgrace
to themselves, and a difference from others. But
what is most remarkable, a new punishment was
now found out — of branding them on the cheek.
The manner thus : their necks were tied fast
to a post with towels, and their hands holden that
they might not stir; and so the hot iron was
put to their cheeks. It is not certain whether
branded with L, for Lollard, or H, for Heretick,
or whether it was only a formless print of iron
(yet nevertheless painful). This is sure, that
they bare in their bodies the marks of the Lord
Jesus. And no doubt they had so well learned
our Saviour's precept, that rather than they would
have revenged themselves by unlawful means,
to them that smit them on the one cheek they
would have turned the other also. Surely Eccle
siastical Constitutions did not reach thus far as
to impose any corporal torture ; and whether there
be any Statute of the Land that enjoyns (not to
say permits) such punishments, let the learned
in the Laws decide. This I am sure, if this was
the first time they fell into this (supposed)
Heresie, by the law they were onely to abjure

94 THE LOLLAEDS
their errours ; and if it were the second time,
upon relaps into the sarhe again, their whole
bodies were to be burnt. Except any will say,
that such as by these bloudy Laws deserved death
were branded onely by the favour of William
Smith , Bishop of Lincoln ; and one may have
charity to encline him to this belief, when con
sidering the same William (Founder of Brasenose
Colledg in Oxford) was generally a lover of
learning and goodness, and not cruelly disposed
of himself."
This is the passage already referred to in the
.previous chapter. Fuller goes on : —
"However,, some of God's children, though
burnt, did not dread the fire. And Father Eever,
alias Eeive, though branded at the time, did after
wards suffer at a stake ; so that the brand at the
first did but take livery and seisin in his cheek,
in token that his whole body should afterwards
be in the free and full possession of the fire."
Another portion of the penance enjoined was
a pilgrimage once or twice a year to certain
shrines. Some of these were in Buckinghamshire
— the shrine of Sir John Shorne at North Mars
ton, that of St. Eumbold at Buckingham, of Our
Lady at Missenden , or the famous crucifix known
as the Holy Eood of Wendover. Other penitents
had to take longer journeys, to trudge mile after
mile into the low-lying lands beyond the Ouse,
till they saw the towers of Lincoln rise before
them on the hill ; or to " Our Lady of Walsing
ham," the fashionable place of pilgrimage at this

THE GEEAT ABJURATION 95
date, where Queen Catherine returned thanks a
few years later for the victory of Flodden Field.
The little Norfolk town, the abode of " the Virgin
by the Sea ' ' ( Virgo Parathalassia) , was so
honoured that the country people, as they looked
up at the starry sky, pointed at the Galaxy as
"the Walsingham Way," intended to guide
pilgrims to "The holy land
Of blessed Walsingham."
It derived its chief title to reverence from a vial
containing a white substance, which was shown
as the Virgin's milk !
These pilgrimages were in some cases enjoined
for seven successive years , and it would seem that
on arriving at the shrines the penitents had again
pubhcly to bear faggots on their shoulders. Eobert
Bartlet, a wealthy farmer, was kept seven years
a prisoner in the College of the Precious Blood
at Ashridge. ' ' Father Eogers ' ' (the surname
occurs long after as that of a prominent Noncon
formist family at Amersham) was not only
branded on the right cheek, but confined for
fourteen weeks in the Bishop's prison, probably
at Wooburn, " where he was so cruelly handled
with cold, hunger, and irons, that after his coming
out of the said prison, lie was so lame in his
back that he could never go upright as long as
he lived."
Foxe gives as his vouchers for this persecution
of 1506-7 an aged man and womaii — William

96 THE LOLLAEDS
Littlepage and Agnes Wetherly, who were still
living when he wrote in 1570. Littlepage, whose
singular name occurs more than once in the list
of the Mayors of Wycombe, and in other local
records from 1475 to 1618, had borne a faggot,
while still a youth, at the martyrdom bf Tyls
worth, and had been branded on the cheek. He
had been apprenticed to John Scrivener, who did
penance at the same time (iv. 123, 225)., Agnes
Wetherly must have been already in middle life
at the time of these events, if, as Foxe says, she
was nearly a hundred when be wrote. We can
imagine with what reverent interest these vene
rable links with the past would be regarded in
the "spacious times of great Elizabeth;" but
their statements must evidently be received with
some reserve ; and in fact, the whole of this part
of Foxe's narrative is more confused and contra
dictory than we shall find it later on. For
example, he says (iv. 124), "After that" (i.e.,
the burning of Tylsworth and Cosin in 1506),
" by the space of two or three years, were burned
at Amersham, Thomas Barnard, a husbandman,
and James Morden , a labourer ; they two were
burned both at one fire." This would make the
date 1508 or 1509. Yet on page 245 the names
of Thomas Bernard and James Morden are given
among those who suffered for relapse in 1521.
As both gave evidence in the Bishop's court in
the latter year, the earlier date cannot possibly
be the correct one. But to make the perplexrty
greater still, on turning to vol. v., p. 454, we fi!nd

THE GEEAT ABJUEATION 97
the same two men described as suffering in the
persecution following the issue of the Six Articles
(1539-1542). In the Kalendar prefixed to vol.
i., too, 1542 is the date given for their death.
But Foxe goes on to say that they were burned ,
" the one for teaching the Lord's Prayer in Eng
hsh, and the other for keeping the Epistle of
St. James translated into English." Now, as
Maitland points out in his able but virulent criti
cisms on Foxe in his Essays on the Reformation,
neither of these acts was illegal at the time of
the Six Articles. We may pretty safely conclude,
not, as Maitland seems to think, that the whole
story was a myth, but that Bernard and Morden
suffered in 1521, when we shall see their story
more clearly outlined. Burnet, by the way, says
that they suffered at Lincoln ; but this is probably
a hasty assumption from Foxe's language in
vol. V.
The excitement which the persecution had
created in the little town of Amersham gradually
cooled down, but the "heresy" was far from
being stamped out. Thomas Holmes was heard
to mutter, " The greatest cobs are yet behind."
Eoger Squire, seeing one of the informers who
had " detected " the accused, bitterly exclaimed,
' ' This is one of them that make all this business
in our town with the Bishop ; I pray God tear
all the bones of him." As long after in Puritan
days, these informers became marked men.
People refused to have dealings with them ; and
the gossips pointed out how one and another of

98 THE LOLLAEDS
them was "brought now to beggary." Others
said that those who had recanted ' ' were good
men and perfect Christians, and simple folk who
could not answer for themselves, and therefore
were oppressed by power of the Bishop."
Further abjurations would seem to have taken
place in 1508 (iv. 221), and again in 1511 (iv.
226, margin). Thurstan Littlepage and Alexander
Mastall are mentioned as leaders of the Amer
sham Lollards about this period ; but Foxe is
never very strong on dates. Bishop Smith showed
himself increasingly averse to persecution, and
mitigated the penance of some of the abjurers.
Instead of the toilsome journey of a hundred miles
to Lincoln, they were permitted to go to " Our
Lady of Missenden," five miles only from Amer
sham. This indulgence, however, was refused to
others. One man was allowed to " buy out his
penance, and carry his badge in his purse."
In 1514 Bishop Smith passed away. The, news
was received by the Lollards with much anxiety,
for it was doubtful if his successor would be as
lenient. Eichard White, of Beaconsfield, was
heard to say, " My Lord that is dead was a good
man, and divers known men were called before
him, and he sent them home again, bidding them
that they should live among their neighbours as
good Christian men should do. And now there
is a new Bishop, who is called a blessed man ;
and if he be as he is named, he will not trouble
the servants of God, but will let them be in
quiet."

THE GEEAT ABJUEATION 99
This ' ' blessed man ' ' was possibly no other
than Thomas Wolsey, afterwards Cardinal, who
held the see of Lincoln as well as that of York.
But Wolsey was too much engrossed in his am
bitious political schemes to trouble himself much
about the obscure heretics of Buckinghamshire.
Besides, he only held the see for a few months,
and it may have been his successor, William
At water, whom White referred to. In any case,
the latter's hope was realised for the time. It
was not till Atwater died at Wooburn in 1520,
and was succeeded by John Longland, who had
been the King's confessor, that persecution recom
menced in the county. The bowels of Bishop
Atwater, by the way, according to the strange
old custom of the time, were interred in Wooburn
Church, as were those of his predecessors Eussell
and Smith, and of his successor Longland.
. While these events had been taking place at
Amersham, the persecution of the Lollards had
continued in other parts of the country. From
1501 to 1519, according to Foxe, five or six per
sons suffered in Smithfield, seven at Coventry,
five in Kent, five in the eastern counties, two
at Salisbury, one (if not more) at Newbury, and
one woman at Chipping Sodbury. All these, it
must be remembered, were Lollards; it is not
till some years later that we come to the first
Protestant martyrs properly so called.
Two out of this list, both burned in 1518, call
for special notice, from their connection with
Buckinghamahire. These were Thomas Man,

100 THE LOLLAEDS
burned in Smithfield, and Christopher Shoe
maker, who suffered at Newbury.
Thomas Man had a remarkable and somewhat
romantic career, though Foxe tells it in a very
confused manner (iv. 208-213). He was cited
for heresy before Bishop Smith at Oxford (1511) ,
and after a period of imprisonment, he recanted
in St. Mary's, did open penance, and was kept
as a kind of servant, with a faggot embroidered
on his sleeve, first at Osney Abbey, and then at
St. Frideswide's Priory. The charges against
him included the holding of some strange mysti
cal views about the true sacrament of the altar
being in heaven. He had called the priests'
pulpits "lying-stools," and had said that "holy
men of his sect were the true Church of God,
and the only true priests." After a while he
escaped from Oxford into the eastern counties,
and for several years led a wandering life. It
is impossible to tell whether some of the journeys
mentioned were before or after the abjuration
at Oxford ; but we trace him in London, at Strat
ford, Chelmsford, and Billericay in Essex, and
in Suffolk and Norfolk. Then he seems to have
come westward again, after a narrow escape of
arrest at Colchester. We find him at Uxbridge,
at Burnham (Bucks.), at Henley-on-Thames, and
at last at Newbury. Here he found " a glorious
and sweet society of faithful favourers, who had
continued the space of fifteen years together, till
at last, by a certain lewd person whom they
trasted and made of their counsel, they were

THE GEEAT ABJUEATION 101
bewrayed, and then many of them, to the number
of six or seven score, were abjured, and three or
four burnt." No trace of this holocaust is to be
found except in this isolated reference (iv. 213).
But elsewhere (iv. 217) we are told of one Chris
topher Shoemaker, a native of Great Missenden,
who met with a fiery death at Newbury in 1518.
He was charged with having read to Joan Say,
of Little Missenden, "out of a little book, the
words which Christ spake to His disciples," and
with having spoken against pilgrimages, image-
worship, and transubstantiation.
On leaving Newbury, Man made his way to
the neighbourhood of Windsor, where he heard
that there was ' ' a godly and a great company ' '
at Amersham, to which he betook himself, and
where he became a trusted teacher, being known
as " Doctor Man." In all his wanderings, while
working for his daily bread, Man was diligent in
the spread of his principles, and thanked God
that he had made seven hundred converts. He
also assisted several persons to escape from Amer
sham, and the neighbourhood to the eastern
counties, where he considered that there would
be greater safety for them. One of these may
have been Henry Miller, who had come to Amer
sham from Kent, where he had abjured and done
penance. At Amersham, he worked as a wire-
drawer, " taught many heresies," and after a
while fled to Chelmsford (iv. 228). The time
came when Man had to flee also. He seems to
have found shelter for a time in the house of

102 THE LOLLAEDS
Andrew Eandal of Eickmansworth (iv. 226). In
February, 1518, he was apprehended and brought
before Dr. Hed, Chancellor of the diocese of
London. It was asserted that he again recanted ;
but this seems doubtful. On March 29th he was
delivered to the secular power, with the usual
hypocritical request that he might not be put
to death ; but before noon of the next day, he was
committed to the flames in Smithfield. There
seem hopeless confusions as to dates in Foxe's
narrative; but some of these, perhaps, may be
due to the fact casually mentioned (iv. 234) that
there was at Amersham " another Thomas Man,"
probably a permanent resident ; and most likely
it was to the house of this latter that the visitors
before mentioned from London and Harrow were
accustomed to resOrt. One of the two was
charged with joining with the martyr Eobert
Cosin in dissuading Joan Norman from pilgri
mages, image-worship, fasting communion, and
auricular confession. " Also when she had vowed
a piece of silver to a saint for the health of a
child , they (Thomas Man and Eobert Cosin)
dissuaded her from the same " (iv. 214). This
must have been not later than 1506.

CHAPTEE XI
JOHN FOXE AND THE LONGLAND REGISTER
We have now reached the year 1521, when John
Longland, Bishop of Lincoln, instituted a strict
inquiry into the prevalence of heresy at Amer
sham and elsewhere. The account of this, with
copious extracts from the register, occupies
nearly thirty pages of Stoughton's edition of Foxe
(iv. 217-246). It possesses a special interest
from the date. 1521 was the year in which Luther
stood before the Diet of Worms ; and his views
were not only as yet but partially formulated,
but could only be known to very few in England.
We have here, therefore, the latest picture of
English Lollardy. A year or two more, and it
was greatly modified by Lutheran influences.
Foxe, with all his inaccuracies, had a keen per
ception of the broad aspects of history. He shows
this when he points to these records as a complete
answer to the question, " Where was Protes
tantism before Luther?" and goes on to say : —
"Although public authority then lacked to
maintain the open preaching of the Gospel, yet the
secret multitude of professors was not much un-
103

104 THE LOLLAEDS
equal : certes, the fervent zeal of those Christian
days seemed much superior to these our days and
times, as manifestly may appear by their sitting
up all night reading and hearing : also by their
expenses and charges in buying of books in Eng
hsh, of whom some gave five marks " (about £40
of present value), " some more, some less, for a
book. Some gave a load of hay for a few chapters
of St. James or of St. Paul in English 
To see their travails, their earnest seekings, their
burning zeal, their readings, their watchings,
their sweet assemblies, their love and concord,
their godly living, their faithful demeaning with
the faithful, may make us now, in these our days
of free profession, to blush for shame."
With express reference to the register here
cited by Foxe, Mr. Froude (History, i. 545, 546)
calls Longland " a wicked old man," " a person
in whom the spirit of humanity had been long
exorcised by the spirit of an ecclesiastic," and
describes him as ' ' staggering along the last years
of a life against which his own register bears
dreadful witness." The Eev. A. E. Maddison,
F.S.A., in a paper published a few years ago by
the Lincoln Diocesan Architectural Society, seeks
to defend Longland from the charges brought
against him by Foxe, and repeated by Froiide on
Foxe's authority. He says : —
"It is a remarkable fact that a vast number
of Foxe's references to Longland 's Eegister can
not be verified. I can vouch for this, as I have
myself carefully gone through the memoranda.

THE LONGLAND EEGISTER 105
which commence with the first year of Longland's
episcopate, and end with the last."
Mr. Maddison suggests various explanations of
the difficulty, as the existence of another register,
now lost ; that Foxe may have trusted to garbled
extracts made by others — from what documents ?
it may be asked; and finally, the hypothesis of
a deliberate forgery. The last conclusion appears
to be that which he personally favours, for he
goes on to say : —
" Had he not so persistently quoted Longland's
Eegister at Lincoln as the source of his infor
mation, his stories would probably never have
been discredited ; but unfortunately the temptation
to give an appearance of veracity has proved fatal
to his purpose."
I fear that it must be said of Mr. Maddison
that unfortunately the temptation to discredit
an unpopular writer has led him to attach impor
tance to the discovery of a mare's nest. If this
" register " is a forgery, it is one of the cleverest
the world has ever seen. Inimitably simple in
its delineations of life and character, consistent
in all its parts, full of minute local and family
details, which, as we shall see, are capable of
confirmation from all kinds of sources, it bears
every mark of genineness. With all due respect
to Foxe, I am sure that worthy and eloquent,
but terribly rambling old writer could never have
produced so complicated, yet so clear and consis
tent a document (though he has evidently
interpolated remarks of his own here and there).

106 THE LOLLAEDS
As regards the absence of any such document at
Lincoln, Mr. Maddison is not the first writer
who has called attention to it. Dr. Churton, in
his Founders of Brasenose (p. 137, note) accounts
for it by saying that ' ' Bonner had a famous com
mission from Queen Mary to search all registers,
and to take out of them everything inimical or
discreditable to Popery." But Bonner has quite
enough sins laid to his charge, without making
him responsible for the loss of this or any other
document. The good Doctor fails to show how,
if Bonner had destroyed the register in the time
of Mary, Foxe could have " turned it over," as
he tells us that he did, in the time of Elizabeth.
It is more to the point that Foxe's quotations
from the extant registers of other dioceses are
found to be substantially correct. Froude's
testimony on this point has already been cited.
We have seen, too, that it was possible for' a
document to find its way from Lincoln to Oxford
in spite of Bishop Eussell's anathema on any
one removing it from the diocesan registry. I
also learn, by a courteous communication from
Mr. Maddison himself, that Matthew Parker,
when Dean of Lincoln, is known to have removed
many MSS. from Lincoln to Oxford. On the
whole , it seems likely that the register may have
been the separate record of a special commission.
At least fifty surnaines which occur in this docu
ment, and in another short one purporting to be
an extract from the Eegisters, are still locally
familiar, almost all in the same or adjoining

THE LONGLAND EEGISTEE 107
parishes, though often with a sUght change in
spelling. Africke (now Affleck), Andrew, Atkins,
Bartlett, Bennet, Brown, Chapman, Chase,
Clark, Cooper, Dean, Dell, Dosset, Fastendich
(now Fassnidge), Frier, Garland, Gardiner,
George, Gray, Grove, Harding, Hawes, Hawkes,
Heme, Hill, Hoare, Hobbes, Jennings, Morden
(now Morten), Nash, Norman, Page, Potter,
Eeve (now Eeeves), Eogers, Saunders, Simons,
Smith, Squire, Taylor, Timberlake, Treacher,
Tred way. Ward, Webb, Wells, Weedon, White,
and Wingrove, have all their representatives in
the district to-day ; and it is very curious, and
characteristic of the strange separation which has
always been noticeable between the Chiltern
country and the Vale of Aylesbury, that scarcely
any of these surnames occur in the long list of
those prevalent in the county town, given by the
late Mr. Gibbs, in his History of Aylesbury. That
town is only sixteen miles from Amersham, yet
there is no trace of Lollardy in its annals. The
hill-country people, "the uplandish folk," were,
and long continued, almost a race by themselves.
There are names in the document, such as Gud-
game, Milsent, Widmer, and others, which seem
to have died out in the neighbourhood, but may
still be traced, either in authentic documents, or
in the names of farms formerly held by these
families. Applying another test, the parish registers of
Amersham commence in 1562 ; and a very cursory
examination of the first twelve years (in which

108 THE LOLLAEDS
I am indebted to the courteous assistance of Mr.
J. Cheese) reveals the names of Barnard, Bennett,
Clark, Dormer, Dossett, Harding alias Harden,
Littlepage, Morton, Norman, Saunders, and
Tredway, all given by Foxe as belonging to resi
dents at Amersham in 1521. It is even possible
that the Eoger Bennett, whose wife Joan was
buried July 21st, 1567, and the Alice Tredway,
buried February 20th, 1564, might be the persons
of the same names who gave evidence before the
commission ; but most of the names must be of
the next generation.
Again, in some extracts itora the Amersham
churchwardens' accounts, given by Dr. F. G. Lee
in the Records of Buckinghamshire (vii. 43-51)
we recognise in 1530 and 1541 the names of
Eobert Bartlett, John Gardiner, Henry, Thomas,
Edmund, and Eoger Harding, and John Hill, as
well as the surnames of Barnard, Bennett,
Dormer, Dossett, Milsent, Saunders, Stamp,
Timberlake, and Tredway. There is thus cumu
lative evidence that we are dealing with a veritable
historical document, not with a concoction of
Foxe's own.

CHAPTEE XII
THE JUSTFAST MEN OF AMERSHAM
The Bishops of Lincoln, in their visits to the
southern part of their vast diocese, were accus
tomed to leave the Great North Eoad at Hatfield,
and to pass along " the Bishops' Eoad " to Amer
sham, Wycombe, and Henley. It was along this
road, most hkely, that Bishop Longland passed in
1521. On arriving at Amersham, he commenced,
according to Foxe's account, by examining on oath
some of those who had abjured in 1506. These,
"on pain of relapse," that is, of death, were
compelled to denounce those who shared their
belief, and as one after another was denounced,
they also were summoned and examined, often re
peatedly, the subjects of inquiry going back some
twenty or thirty years, till the number of those
suspected of heresy amounted to some two hun
dred. The proceedings seem to have lasted for
several months, and give us a vivid idea of the
methods of "the Enghsh Inquisition." Hus
bands, wives, parents, children, brothers and sis
ters, were forced to betray one another. The
evidence impUcated persons in the dioceses of
London and Salisbury, as well as in that of
109

110 THE LOLLARDS
Lincoln ; but two districts were specially affected.
One was the Chiltern district in Buckinghamshire,
around Amersham, Wycombe, and Beaconsfield,
and including the Thames-side from Henley down
to Staines. The other lay some miles to the west,
in Berkshire and Oxfordshire, taking in both sides
of the Thames, with the valley of the Kennet.
The northern parts of Buckinghamshire and
Oxfordshire are never mentioned. To a large
extent. South Bucks was Lollard, but North
Bucks remained devoutly Catholic ; just as in the
next century, the former took sides with the Par
liament, and the latter with the King.
In these districts, it was found, there existed
a community known as " the Justfast Men," ot
"the Known Men," who were believed to regard
themselves as the only true Christians, and to
marry only among themselves. The name of the
' ' known men ' ' was one of old standing among
the Lollards. Seventy years earlier. Bishop
Peoock tells us that the test question which one
would put to another when he wished to learn if
a third party was trustworthy, was, "Is he a
known man?" He says that they used it in the
sense of being "known of God" — "the Lord
knoweth them that are His."
Longland came to Amersham, it appears, in
person, and understanding that a family named
Bartlet were among the most influential persons
suspected of heresy, resolved to make an example
of them. He summoned before him Eobert and
Richard Bartlet, well-to-do farmers, who, with

THE JUSTFAST MEN 111
their brother John, had abjured and done penance
at Tylsworth's martyrdom. They were the sons
of old Eichard Bartlet, of whom it was told that
one day, as he was threshing, a passer-by had
said to him, "God speed. Father Bartlet, ye
work sore." " Yea," answered the old man,
with a satirical reference to the doctrine of tran
substantiation, "I thresh God Almighty out of
the straw." The old yeoman's wife Katharine
seldom went to church, pleading ill health, and
it was noted that when she did attend, she did
not join in the prayers, but " sat mum." As to
Eobert Bartlet, we have seen that he was im
prisoned at Ashridge in the College of the
Precious Blood about 1506. He was released
about 1513. Unable to rest in the doctrines of
Eome, he told his neighbour Alice Harding that
' ' he had thought to have called William Tyls
worth false heretic, but now he was better
advised." Mistress Harding encouraged him to
stedfastness. " I am glad," said she, " that you
are converted to grace, and chosen to Almighty
God. Never forsake that you are called to ; for
if you do, there is no hope left for you." Of
Eichard she had said, " Here cometh a good man,
and I hope he will be a good man ; but he hath so
much mind of buying and selling and taking of
farms that it putteth his mind from all goodness."
The Bishop's officer made his way to Eobert
Bartlet's house, and summoned him to attend the
inquiry. His wife Isabel, standing " between the
threshold and the hall door," exclaimed in her

112 THE LOLLAEDS
anguish, "Alas! now you are but an undone
man, and I but a dead woman!" The two
brothers, when examined, refused to criminate
themselves. On this the Bishop went to the
house of William Chedwell, another person who
had abjured, and who was now lying " sore sick
in his bed." He administered an oath to him
on the Gospels (these ' ' known men " do not
seem to have shared the objection to oaths
expressed by some of the Lollards, as by those
burned at Coventry two years earlier than this) ;
and from him and several others he got sufficient
evidence to implicate the brothers. He also
examined their wives. From Eichard's wife he
easily obtained what he required ; but Isabel was
" somewhat more temperate of her tongue," and
tried her utmost to shield her husband. Eobert
was called again. " Did you know your wife to
be of the sect of heretics before you married
her"? asked Longland. " Yea," answered Bart
let. " If she had not been of that sect, would
you then have married her?" "I would," he
replied ; which seems to show that he at least
did not share the strict views on marriage
ascribed to the "Known Men." He had to
acknowledge that he had been conversant with
William Tylsworth, Thurstan Littlepage, and
Alexander Mastall. He had received the com
munion at Easter without confession, and he and
Littlepage between them had taught his sister
Agnes the Epistle of James. He and his brother
John (who was now probably d^d) had attended

THE JUSTFAST MEN 113
meetings addressed by the three leaders just
mentioned. " And if any came in among them
that were not of their side, then they would say
no more, but would keep all silence." He and
his brother Eichard "detected " (be it remem
bered in dread of a fiery death) their own sister
Agnes Wells, as guilty of the four great crimes,
on which all these examinations mainly
turned : —
(1). Eeading the Scriptures in English.
(2). Denying the bodily presence of Christ
in the Eucharist.
(3). Eejecting the worship of images.
(4). Speaking against pilgrimages.
The sister herself was next questioned, and at
first refused to criminate any one else, but was
forced to do so by a rigorous cross-examination.
Isabel Bartlet, summoned again, was asked about
her exclamation at the hall-door. She tried to
explain it away, but in so doing the poor creature
contradicted her husband's evidence ; and she
also ' ' detected ' ' several heretics both at Amer
sham and Hughenden. Ultimately the two
brothers and the sister had to do penance. Eobert
Bartlet held two pieces of land at Amersham in
1541, as appears by the churchwardens' accounts.
Another prominent family was that of the
Hardings, representatives of which, still mindful
of their Lollard descent, are to be found now
in Amersham and the neighbouring towns. The
"Old Meeting" or Upper Baptist Chapel was
built in the eighteenth century by members of

114 THE LOLLAEDS
this family, and several of them are interred in
its little burying-ground. In 1506, Thomas
Harding and Alice his wife, Henry, Eichard, and
Eobert Harding had carried faggots up the hill
to Tylsworth's martyrdom, William, Eoger, and
Edmund Harding were also suspected of heresy.
William and Eoger had failed to appear when
summoned by the Bishop's Chancellor. Roger
" could not say his creed in Latin." But Thomas
and his wife were the most conspicuous of all.
Esle where (iv. 580) Foxe tells us that after doing
penance in 1506, they wore badges till 1515,
when Bishop Smith mitigated their penance, but
enjoined them to go once a year on pilgrimage
to Ashridge, to fast on bread and ale upon Cor
pus Christi Eve, and never to remove from the
parish of Amersham. During this inquiry, it
seems, Thomas was examined, but refused to
detect others. "In penance for his perjury,"
Longland ordered him to resume his badge,
wearing for the rest of his life a patch of green
cloth, embroidered like a faggot, before and be
hind. It is difficult to understand how he and
his wife escaped so lightly, as several witnesses
implicated them. Perhaps some of the evidence
referred to matters prior to the Great Abjura
tion ; but Thomas, as we shall see, was not to
meet his fiery death for eleven years longer. It
was certainly deposed that he and his wife did
not join in the prayers at church, and that many
" known men " resorted to their house after the
abjuration. Alice Harding was evidently a

THE JUSTFAST MEN 115
woman of some energy and force of character.
We have seen how she exhorted the brothers
Bartlet; and Chedwell, the sick man, told how
' ' when the priest was coming to Eichard Bennet
to give him the housel ' ' (probably on his death
bed) Alice Harding ' ' went before , and instructed
him what he should do." Isabel Tracher, too,
had put her daughter to service with Alice Har
ding, " because she could instruct her better than
many others." The wives of Eoger and William
and the former's eldest daughter, also came under
suspicion. The Eichard Bennet just now mentioned, with
his brother Eoger, had been among the faggot-
bearers in 1506. Eoger was now examined, and
proved an important witness. He " detected "
nearly thirty persons in Amersham and else
where. Several women, he said, on their way
to and from church, "were wont to resort to
one J. Collingworth's house, and there keep their
conventicle." Mr. S. E. Pattison, by the way,
in his Religious Topography of England, refers
to this as " what appears to have been the first
mention of a conventicle in English history;"
but the word often occurs in fifteenth-century
documents. This "J. Coillingworth " was pro
bably the same as Joan Collingborne, who had
been denounced to Bishop Smith by Alice Tred
way in 1511, for speaking against pilgrimages
and image-worship. Bennet also mentioned that
his own servant Thomas Gray, with John
Jennings, James Morden 's servant, and " George,

lie THE LOLLAEDS
servant to Thomas Tochel," had " carried about
books in English." He himself had given or
lent one of these books to John, Butler, a car
penter, a leading "known man" at Uxbridge;
and he was also acquainted with a woman at
Henley, married to one David Lewis, who was
the daughter ef a man suspect of heresy. She
had been heard to say, " The churchmen in old
time did lead the people as the hen doth lead
the chickens ; but our priests do now lead the
people to the devil."
The next witness was Thomas Eowland, appa
rently a man-servant. He was suspected on
what seems a comically slight ground. He had
once said, " If I lie, curse, storm, swear, chide,
fight, or threat, then am I worthy to be beat ;
I pray you, good master of mine, if I offend in
any of these seven, amend me with a good scou
ring." It was more to the purpose that he had
been heard to say at another time to a friend,
'Ah, good Lord ! where is all our good conver
sation that used to be among us when your master
was ahve?" Eowland said that he had seen
Agnes Frank, Wilham Frank's wife (who had
been abjured before her marriage) " turn away
her face from the cross, as it was carried about
on Easter day in the morning of the resurrec
tion." He knew, too, that old John Scrivener
had " carried about books from one to another."
Mr. Pattison, referring to this, speaks of
Scrivener as "the first English colporteur on
record ;" but the reference is too vague to justify

THE JUSTFAST MEN 117
such a conclusion; besides, the charge was
brought against others at the same time. Eow
land also mentioned "J. Gardiner" who may
have been the .John Gardiner of Eaans, men
tioned in the Churchwarden's accounts in 1541.
James Morden next comes before us. He is
described in one place as a "labourer;" but if
he were the same person who had a servant,
John Jennings, in his employ, he cannot have
been a labourer in the ordinary sense. The term
was often very vaguely used ; and one remembers
how, within the nineteenth century, that fine
old relic of medisevalism. Bishop Philpotts of
Exeter, cited a newspaper editor before him as
a "labourer." Whatever his position, Morden
had been abjured by Bishop Smith, who found
that ' ' he had used his Paternoster and Creed so
much in Enghsh, that he had forgotten many
words thereof in Latin." The Bishop bade him
for the fiiture to say them in Latin only, and
enjoined on him a pilgrimage twice a year to
Lincoln. After a year or two, Morden had sub
stituted, without permission, a pilgrimage to
Missenden, and had also been working six months
out of the diocese, contrary to the injunction
he had received not to leave it. He was now
charged with this disobedience. The poor fellow
confessed that he had "learnt his doctrine" of
Thomas Chase, and of Agnes Ashford, of Ches
ham, to whom he had paid seven visits before
he could leam by heart a few verses of the fifth
chapter of Matthew. His sister Marian testified

118 THE LOLLAEDS
that he had taught her the Paternoster, Ave,
and Creed, in English, and that he had per
suaded her for the last six years not to go on
pilgrimages or worship images. There were two
brothers, Eichard and Eadulph, living at Ches
ham, and an uncle, John Morden, of Ashley
Green, who were all suspected of heresy. James
Morden, as we shall see, was ultimately burned,
and his sister Marian abjured. Morten, as the
name is now spelt, is a well-known name in the
later annuls of Amersham Nonconformity.
Another witness, Thomas Halfeaker, who
appears to have had no sympathy with the
" known men," mentioned a number of persons
as taking no part in the prayers when they
attended service at Amersham Church ; also others
who had removed to a distance.
Thomas Holmes, who had borne a faggot in
1506, horrified the townsfolk by the wholesale
manner in which he now betrayed his brethren,
and they came to the conclusion that he must
be "a fee'd man of the Bishop." He named
nearly sixty persons, not only in Amersham, and
in the neighbouring villages, but in various parts
of Herts, Middlesex, and Oxfordshire.
One John Sawcoat mentioned Eichard Sanders
as ' ' ever defending them that were suspected to
be known men," and as having "bought out
his penance, and carried his badge in his purse."
His wife Alice Sanders, according to another
witness, gave Thomas Holmes a shilling to buy
a book for her daughter,, when he told her that

THE JUSTFAST MEN 119
a noble (6s. 8d.) would not suffice to buy it.
Another time she had contributed 6d. towards
the purchase of a book which cost no less than
five marks (£S 6s. 8d.) — a glimpse, by the way,
at the method by which expensive books were
sometimes obtained. Of course these sums must
be multiplied ten or twelve times to get at the
value at the present day. One thinks of this
couple as well-to-do, but somewhat stingy people
— the parents, perhaps, of the Thomas Sanders
who is mentioned in the churchwardens' accounts
as holding three pieces of land at Amersham
twenty years later. He seems to have then
resided at the " Bywyre " (Bury Farm?) There
was a man named Thomas Houre, who some
times worked for Eichard Sanders, and was " a
holy water clerk " at the church. He had been
supposed to lean to the views of the " known
men," but had afterwards given evidence against
them before Bishop Smith. On his coming back
one day from Wooburn, Mistress Sanders asked
him, "What news?" He replied that "many
were there condemned of heresy, and therefore
he would lean to that way no more." She imme
diately told him that "he would gain nothing
by it." He got no more work for her husband,
and not only so, but he lost his " holy- water
clerkship " (this looks as if some of the local
clergy must have had Lollard leanings, and one
of them, John Barber, was actually accused of
Lollardy). Houre came down in the world, and
prohably considered iimself a sort of martyr of

120 THE LOLLAEDS
orthodoxy ; but his old mistress commented on
his downfall as a judgment for his informing,
and held him up as a warning to others. A
curious glimpse into the cross-currents of life in
the little town.
Two persons of the name of John Scrivener,
probably father and son, were examined. The
younger was prevailed on to denounce a nuniber
of persons ; but from the elder, the so-called
"colporteur," very little could be elicited. It
was no doubt the latter who had been abjured
in 1506, and who was afterwards burned for
relapse. The William Littlepage, before mentioned as
surviving till the reign of Elizabeth, was appren
ticed to one of these Scriveners, who seem to
have been blacksmiths. He had learned the
Lord's Prayer and the " Hail Mary " in Enghsh
from Thurstan Littlepage, who seems to have
been his grandfather, the Creed from his grand
mother, and the Ten Commandments from one
John Frier. He and his brother John were now
abjured. Several witnesses had implicated John Mor-
win's wife, laabel. She was examined, but
without much result. Her sister, Elizabeth
Copland, was then forced to appear against her.
She stated that as they returned from a visit
to their dying father, Isabel had said to her,
" All who die pass either to hell or heaven," to
which Elizabeth replied, " Nay, there is between
them purgatory."

THE JUSTFAST MEN 131
At another time, when Elizabeth had been on
pilgrimage to the " Eood of Eest," the following
conversation took place between the sisters : —
" If you knew as much as I have heard,"
said Isabel, "you would go no more on pil
grimage while you live ; for all saints be in
heaven." " Wherefore then is pilgrimage ordained by
doctors and priests?" asked Elizabeth.
"For gain and profit."
" Who hath taught you this, man or woman?
Your curate, I dare say, never learned you so."
' ' My curate will never know so much ; but
if you will keep counsel, and not tell your hus
band, I will say more."
"I will not tell."
" But I will have you to swear."
Elizabeth would not do this, so the conver
sation went no further. Isabel Morwin was now
abjured. Emme Tylsworth, either widow or sister of
the martyr, who had removed to Hawkswell,
near Eomford in Essex, was summoned, but
proved an intractable witness. She would neither
criminate herself nor others ; and the Bishop
ordered her, under pain of relapse, to " make
certain faggots of cloth, and wear them on, her
upper garment, as long as she lived."
The case of Thomas Bernard, " husbandman,"
was a pecuharly sad one. He had been abjured
in 1506, but had trained his children, Eichard
and Joan, in his views. Their evidence was now

122 THE LOLLAEDS
received against him, and probably sent him to
the stake.
Many other Amersham folks gave evidence,
and many more were suspected of heresy. We
read of John Milsent, Thomas Dorman, Eobert
Andrew, John Hill, and John Dosset, who had
all been abjured before. A man named Dorset
or Dosset was landlord of the White Hart Inn
a few years later. Thomas Dorman , ' ' Yeoman
Dorman," as he was called, was the uncle of a
Catholic controversialist of Elizabeth's time, who
became Foxe's bitter antagonist. Then there
were William Grinder, who " could not say his
creed in Latin;" William Eogers, perhaps the
Father Eogers ' ' who had been imprisoned in
the Little Ease, or more likely his son ; " Heme's
wife" and "Widow Heme;" John Stamp and
William Smith, "wheelers;" Alice Holting,
who had dined before taking the sacrament on
the plea of delicate health ; Joan Norman, a dis
ciple of old Eobert Cosin, and destined to share
his fiery death ; William Trecher, who had " kept
Thomas Grove in his house on Easter and Christ
mas Day, because he would not come to church ;"
Isabel, his wife, who, in spite of her husband's
rebukes, and though in good health, had refused
to go to church upon holy days for the last three
years ; Agnes Squire, who had boasted that she
would never be ashamed of having been abjured
for heresy; and Eoger Squire, -perhaps her hus
band, who had been heard to mutter a curse
on seeing one of the informers.

THE JUSTFAST MEN 123
In the little hamlet of Woodrow, a mile out
of the town on the Wycombe road, were two
"known men," Thomas Cowper and Eobert
Stampe. The later's wife used to attend the
" conventicle " at Joan Collingworth's, and had
neglected to perform the penance enjoined her by
Bishop Smith. Evidently a large proportion of
the inhabitants of Amersham parish failed to
come up to the standard of orthodoxy. Not all,
perhaps, of those who symnathised with the
" justfast men " did so from the purest motives ;
but a strong current of local sympathy was cer
tainly running in their favour.

CHAPTEE XIII
MORE OF THE JUSTFAST MEN
While Amersham, as we have seen, was the
centre and rendezvous of the Lollard rem
nant in this part of the country, we have
abundant evidence that they were widely scat
tered throughout the surrounding parishes. In
the town of Chesham, for example, three miles
north of Amersham, there were several persons
suspected of heresy. There was John Tracher
(probably the same as the ' ' John Cracher ' '
mentioned as doing penance in 1506), who had
taught Alice Brown the Beatitudes in English.
There was Agnes Ashford, who, as we saw, had
taught the same passage to James Morden.
Agnes, we are told, had once been bidden to
recite it before ' ' six bishops ' ' (a rather unlikely
thing, unless she had been taken up to London),
" who straightway enjoined and commanded h^r
that she should teach those lessons no more to
any man, and especially not to her children."
This Agnes seems to have lived with her son,
Eichard Ashford, a blacksmith, at whose house
she and some friends from Uxbridge once spent
two hours reading in ' 'a certain book of the Acts
124

MOEE OF THE JUSTFAST MEN 125
of the Apostles in English." Thomas Tredway,
who seems to have been her son by a former
husband, had been taught by her not to worship
the images of the saints. Other suspected per
sons were Eichard and Eadulph Morden, the
bi'othersof James Morden of Amersham ; WilUam
Norton ; Thomas Clement ; and Joan Grove, who
had instructed John Hill " in the Epistle of St.
James and other opinions."
The proceedings at Chesham were varied by
a case of witchcraft, which gives a vivid idea of
the superstition of the time. The wife of a man
named Sparke had lost some money, which had
evidently been stolen. Her husband sought the
counsel of two friars. They advised him to make
two balls of clay, and put them in water, enclo
sing in them the names of the persons he sus
pected. " And so doing, the said Sparke came
to his money again." Probably the thief was
afraid to face the direful consequences which he
looked for from this piece of sympathetic magic.
The Bishop's court declined to proceed in this
matter. We get a glimpse, too, of a quarrel
between this same John Sparke and one Thomas
Hutton. Sparke had called Hutton a thief, and
was fined ten shillings by the magistrates ; but
Hutton, who had called Sparke " heretic," " paid
nothing." In the little hamlet of Ashley Green,
on the Hertfordshire border, lived John
Morden, the uncle of James, Eichard, and
Eadulph, who had in his house a book of

126^ THE LOLLAEDS
the (jospels and "other chapters in English."
At Little Missenden, three miles from Amer
sham up the beautiful valley of the Misboume,
the Vicar himself was believed to be tainted with
heresy. So also were Elizabeth, the wife of
Henry Hover; John Say, to whom the martyr
Shoemaker had read Christ's words out of his
" httle book ;" William Say, his son ; two Edward
Popes (father and son) ; John Nash ; Henry Etkin
and his mother; as well as Joan Clark (perhaps
the unhappy daughter of William Tylsworth),
who had said ' ' she never did believe in the sacra
ment of the altar, nor ever would believe in it."
Two miles further up the Misboume lies the
village of Great Missenden, the abode of the
martyrs Christopher Shoemaker and Eobert
Cosin. Here heresy seems to have penetrated
not only so near to the walls of the Abbey, but
to the very shadow of St. Mary's shrine ; for one
of the Canons of the Abbey was accused of it,
with what result does not appear. Among tie
villagers, William Atkins, Eichard Dell, and
Alice Nash are mentioned as suspected. The
name of Dell occurs among the Bucks Quakers
of the next century. It is still familiar in the
parish. The little village of Hitchenden, well known
under its modern name of Hughenden as the
abode of Lord Beaconsfield, gave shelter to
several Lollards at this time. Their leader was
John Phip, described as a physician, who had
done penance in 1506. He is said to have Iseen

MOEE OF THE JUSTFAST MEN 127
"very ripe in the Scriptui^es," and had a valu
able collection of hooks, which he burned when
he found himself in danger. His neighbour
Eoger Parker told him that he was ' ' foul to
blame " for this, as they were worth a hundred
marks (J6600 or iG700 of present value) . "I had
rather burn my books," sagely answered Phip,
" than that my books should burn me." He
was now called before the Bishop, but was so
cautious in his replies that no relapse could be
proved against him by his own evidence. All
that could be elicited from him was a story about
one Thomas Stilman, who, when imprisoned in
the Lollards' Tower at St. Paul's, had managed
to climb into the belfry, where he cut the bell-
ropes, tied two of them together, let himself
down into the churchyard, and so made his
escape. Phip's sister Sybil, and her husband
Thomas Africk (who lived somewhere in the
county, but not at Hughenden), were also exa
mined against him, but with no better results.
This name survives in the district in the form
Affleck, but the original spelling is preserved in
Africk's Farm, Little Missenden. William Phip,
another member of the family, testified that John
had spoken against image-worship, and other
witnesses had heard him read the Gospels and a
treatise in English on the Lord's Prayer. His
daughter, too, had been heard to say that " she
was as well learned in all things as the parish
priest, save only the saying of mass." But
William Phip, with his daughter, and his son

128 THE LOLLAEDS
Henry, were under suspicion too. William
had spoken to one Eoger Dods about image-
worship, and then told him "it was good
to be merry and wise," meaning "he should
keep close that was told him, or else strait
punishment would follow." Eoger said that
once, in 1515, he had asked young Henry Phip
whether he was going to Wycombe. Henry
had just been chosen " keeper of the rood-loft,"
and carelessly answered, "I must needs go and
tend a candle before my Block Almighty." It
does not very clearly appear from this whether
the crucifix he referred to was at Wycombe or
Hughenden. Mr. Parker (History and Antigui-
ties of Wycombe, p. 136) says it was in the old
Guild Chapel of St. Mary. Henry was now
cited and compelled to own his words ; and both
he and John Phip afterwards abjured.
One little point in William Phip's evidence
ought not to be passed by without notice. He
stated that Thomas Africk, in asking for his
relations at Hughenden, enquired " How do my
cousin Widmore, and Clerk the elder, and John
Phip do at Hichenden? Do they keep the laws
of God, as they were wont?" Now this is a
way of speaking thoroughly characteristic of the
Lollards. In all the remains we have of them
the word " gospel " scarcely ever occurs, though
it was so constantly on the lips of the first Pro
testants a few years later. With the Lollards,
the Old and New Testaments were ' ' the Old
and New Law." More than a hundred years

MOEE OF THE JUSTFAST MEN 129
before, Knyghton tells us (col. 1664) that they
were constantly speaking of " Goddislawe," and
asserting that no one was acceptable to God who
did not keep it as they set it forth.
Africk's cousin Widmore (the name is also
spelt " Widemore " and " Wigmer ") was a
farmer, living perhaps at the hamlet now called
Widmer End. Thomas Widmore had married
another sister of John Phip, so that he was really
Africk's brother-in-law. His son Thomas and
his wife also came under suspicion. " Clerk the
elder " is Thomas Clerke, who, with his son of
the same name, is several times named. To the
house of one of these Clerkes there came one
day a tinker from Wycombe, called Christopher,
with whom he had some vague discourse about
the ' ' poverty ' ' and ' ' misgovemment ' ' of the
times. A week after, when the tinker came
again on his round, he asked Clerke "how his
last communication with him did please him?"
"Well," was Clerke 's reply, "I know more,
and can tell you more," said Christopher. " See
that you believe in God in heaven ; for there
be many Gods on earth, and there is but one
God; and He was once here, and was ill dealt
with, and will come no more till the day of
doom." He went on to say that " the sacrament
of the altar was a holy thing, but not the flesh
and blood of Christ that was born of the Virgin."
He begged him not to divulge his words to his
wife, whose brother was a priest. Not
long after, the priest got his sister to buy

130 THE LOLLAEDS
him some ' ' singing bread ' ' (sacramental wafers) .
It was damp, and the priest was laying it oiit
to dry, when his brother-in-law ventured to
suggest, " If every one of these is a god, then
there are many gods." "Till the holy words
are spoken over it," said the priest, "it is of
no power; and then it is very God, flesh and
blood ; but it is not meet for any layman to speak
of these things." The next time Christopher
came to Hughenden, Clerke told him of the talk
he had had with his brother-in-law , and asked his
opinion of the matter. The account closes with
the tinker's answer. " Let every man say what
they will, but you shall find it as I show you^
and if you will take laboui to come to toy house,
I will show you further proof of it." Other
persons who had come under suspicion at
Hughenden were Eoger Parker, who was now
dead ; Lawrence Heme ; the wife of Thomas
Potter, and three men named Hobbes or Hobs.
In the town of High Wycombe we read of no
accused persons except the tinker Christopher.
But at West Wycombe there was Elizabeth, the
wife of Eichard Dean, who had sometimes
attended the "conventicle" at Amersham; and
also William Hobbes, who had been denounced
as a heretic by his brother Eadulph to Bishop
Smith, but had escaped at the intercession of the
parish priest. In connection with him we read
of Oliver Smith and his wife of ' ' Newline ' ' —
possibly Newland, adjoining the town of High
Wycombe. In the remote village of Hambleden,

MOEE OF THE JUSTFAST MEN 131
almost at the south-west comer of the county,
John Home, a carpenter, was believed to be a
" known man."
In the town of Marlow several persons were
suspected of disaffection to the church. Thomas
Eave, a rough fellow, something of the type of
Aylward, the Henley blacksmith of sixty years
before, had been cited before Bishop "Smith, who
ordered him to do penance at Wycombe, and to
go on pilgrimage to Lincoln. At Wycombe, he
" bound his faggot with a silken lace," no doubt
out of bravado. On his way to Lincoln, he called
some other pilgrims whom he met returning from
the shrine of Sir John Shorne ' ' fools and idola
ters." Passing a ruined chapel, he sneered at
it as "a fair milk-house down;" and in the
cathedral itself he behaved with disgusting
indecency. Not the most creditable type of Lol
lard, it must be admitted.
Others detected at Marlow were John Gray
(whose name is still borne by a local Noncon
formist family of old standing) ; " Ward's wife ;"
and also John Simons, or Symonds, and his wife
Matild. The latter couple deposed to a prediction
uttered in their house by a certain John Hacker
(the name is also spelt Hakker and Haggar).
This man, who lived in Coleman Street, London,
was mentioned by several witnesses, and seems
to have been one of the wandering Lollard
teachers. The priests, he said, would bear rule for
a time, but would then be put down, with their
" false gods." " And after that we shall know

132 THE LOLLAEDS
more, and then shall be a merry world." The
people here would be in close touch with Henley,
that ancient seat of Lollardy, if not of Walden-
sianism, where nearly a dozen persons were now
"detected." Wooburn, as the bishop's residence, was likely
to be well guarded against heresy. Yet even here
" the wife of John Scrivener, smith," a relation
perhaps of the Amersham Scriveners, was under
suspicion. At Beaconsfield, Eichard White and his son-
in-law Bennet Ward carried on the uncouth pro
cesses of the old woollen manufacture, treading
or "walking" the cloth, bleaching it, and
teasing it with teasel-heads to raise a nap ; unless
indeed they had set up one of the fulling-mills
which were then looked on with dislike as a
new-fangled innovation. Both of them came
under suspicion, and had to abjure. Ward had
in his possession the Gospels of Matthew and
Mark, and the Ten Commandments in English.
He had sheltered one Thomas Pope in his house ,
and his wife and daughter had been heard to say
that Pope was ' ' the devoutest man that ever was
in their house, for he would sit reading in his
book till midnight many times." One John
Marston testified that Ward had said, "It
booteth no man to pray to Our Lady, nor to any
saint or angel in heaven, but to God only, for
they have no power of man's soul."
In the adjoining parish of Penn, Edmund Hill
and John Frier are named. Frier, who had

MOEE OF THE JUSTFAST MEN 133
taught the lad Wilham Littlepage the command
ments in English, was a servant of the Penn
family, the original stock of the Wiltshire house
from which, in the next century, sprang the great
Admiral, and his son, the founder of Pennsyl
vania. In the flat district at the south of the county,
with its green meadows and elm-fringed lanes,
numerous persons were " detected." At Dorney,
the charge of heresy was laid against John Sche-
pard and Eobert Eave, perhaps the " Father
Eeive" who had been branded in 1506. For
words spoken not long after that against tran
substantiation and image-worship, he was now
cited, and ultimately burned. One charge against
him was that , on hearing ' ' a certain bell in an
uplandish steeple," the old man had said, " A
fair bell to hang about any cow's neck in this
town!" At Chalvey one Matild Philby was accused.
At Horton Eobert Freeman, the parish priest,
had been seen reading a suspicious-looking book,
which, on seeing himself observed, he closed and
took to his room. In the adjoining parish of Iver,
the priest appears in a less creditable light. The
wife of Eichard Carder, a man who was cited
for heresy, confessed that her husband's suspi
cions as to her relations with the vicar were too
well founded, and Longland forbade her entering
the vicarage in future. It would seem that one
Jenkin Butler had been cited for heresy from
this village. Carder asserted that the Bishop had

134 THE LOLLAEDS
wronged Butler, and said that he would have
warned him had he known of his intended arrest.
He boasted that he was ready to face burning
for his views ; but his courage failed him when
it came to the test, and his name appears among
the list of those who recanted. A more conspic
uous ' ' known man ' ' in this parish was Eobert
Durdant, several times referred to as " Old Dur-
dant of Iver Court." The family was an old
one in the district, and had held land in Denham
parish from 1259 to 1414. Eobert seems to have
been a substantial yeoman-farmer, and had a son
Nicholas, living at Staines, and another, Davy,
at Ankerwyke. On one occasion, when his sons
and their wives had been dining with him, he
ordered a boy who was present to leave the room ,
"that he should not hear and tell," and "did
recite certain places unto them out of the Epistles
of St. Paul and of the Gospels." At another
time, a number of friends were present at the
marriage of his daughter. After the wedding
they met in the barn, and heard an Epistle of
Paul read. Among the guests were some with
whom we have met before— Henry Miller, the
Kentish wire-drawer; Mistress Barret, the gold
smith's wife from London ; and Isabel Harding.
They "well liked the reading, but especially
Durdant, and commended the same."
Iver Court was evidently a favourite resort of the
"known men." All one night in 1518, several
of them, from Uxbridge and the neighbourhood,
sat up there hearing/' a great book of heresy,"

MORE OF THE JUSTFAST MEN 135
apparently Wycliffe's New Testament, read by
Eichard Butler. Durdant implored them not to
divulge the fact of his possessing the book, " lest
he should be burned for the same;" but the
matter got abroad, and Butler and others were
cited before Fitzjames, the Bishop of London
(Foxe, iv. 178). A large number of persons were
now detected at Uxbridge. Some of these had
been among Colet's hearers at St. Paul's.
' ' Old Durdant ' ' was once asked by a woman
who seems to have been in his employment,
" Joan Cocks, the wife of Eobert Wywood," (the
maiden name being retained as in the old Scot
tish custom), "that he, being a known man,
would teach her some knowledge of God's law,"
which he appears to have done. Another ghmpse
is given us of one John Clerke of Denham, who
was eager to learn from the ' ' known men ' ' of
Uxbridge and the neighbourhood. One of these,
Eichard Vulford of Euislip, came by one day just
as Clerke had made a weele (a sort of osier trap
for catching fish). " Now you have made your
weele," asked Vulford, "can the weele turn
again and make you?" "No," replied Clerke.
" Even so hath God made all priests, as thou
hast made the weele," said Vulford; " and how
can they turn again and make God?"
A certain Eobert Pope, who had fled from
Amersham at the time of the Great Abjuration,
and was now living at West Hendred in Berk
shire, was examined by the court of inquiry. He
not only denounced a number of persons in Buc-

136 THE LOLLAEDS
kinghamshire (including his own father Edward
Pope of Little Missenden) but a number of persons
in the district in which he was now living ; and
this wholesale delation was confirmed by nume
rous witnesses, who " detected " numerous
persons at Newbury, Hungerford, Wantage,
Burford, Witney, and other places in Berkshire
and Oxfordshire.
The ' ' known men ' ' were largely poor and
ignorant folk ; they shared in many of the faults
and errors of the time ; but their faces were
towards the light, and it was in their lowly homes,
rather than in the palace or the cathedral, that
the promise and the potency of the coming change
really lay.

CHAPTEE XIV
the ARGUMENT OF FIRE AND FAGGOT
We may conceive something of the anguish, the
terror, and the shame, which must have been
caused by the pitiless inquisition of Longland.
Some fled rather than betray their loved ones ;
others, it it said, died of grief and remorse after
giving evidence ; and many Uves must have been
clouded ever afterwards. As the Bishop's " sum-
ners " went to and fro among the villages and
farms, they met with anything but a favourable
reception, and it would seem even with forcible
opposition in some cases. But Windsor was close
at hand ; and Longland obtained a letter from the
King, which is given by Foxe as follows : —
" Henry the Eighth, by the grace of God King
of England and of France, Lord of Ireland,
Defender of the Faith; to all mayors, sheriffs,
bailiffs and constables, and to all other our offi
cers, ministers, and subjects, these our letters
hearing or seeing, and to every of them, greeting.
Forasmuch as the right reverend father in God,
our tmsty and well-beloved counsellor, the Bishop
of Lincoln, hath now within his dioTiese no small
137

138 THE LOLLAEDS
number of heretics, as it is thought, to his no
little discomfort and heaviness : we therefore,
being in will and mind safely to provide for the
said right reverend father in God and his officers,
that neither they nor any of them shall bodily
be hurt or damaged by any of the said heretics
or their fautors, in the executing of justice unto
the said heretics, according to the laws of Holy
Church, do straitly command you and every of
you, as ye tender our high displeasure, to be
aiding, helping, and assisting the said right reve
rend father in God and his said officers, in the
executing of justice in the premises, as they or
any of them shall require you so to do ; not failing
to accomplish our commandment and pleasure in
the premises, as ye intend to please us, and will
answer to the contrary at your uttermost perils.
' ' Given under our signet at our Castle of
Windsor, the twentieth day of October, the
thirteenth year of our reign, 1521."
A curious point arises here, supposing the date
to be correctly given. The bull by which Leo
X. conferred on Henry VIII. the title of
" Defender of the Faith " bears date Oct. 11th,
1521. A courier could scarcely have reached
Windsor from Eome in nine days ; but the King
may have received private information of the
intended despatch of the bull.
Some in the long list of persons detected were
now dead ; others had disappeared ; and some
may have satisfied the Bishop of their innocence
of the charges brought against them. But a

FIEE AND FAGGOT 139
large number were abjured, being obhged to take
an oath on the Gospels that they ' ' did utterly
and voluntarily renounce, detest, and forsake,
and never should hold hereafter these or any like
opinions, contrary to the determination of the
holy mother church of Rome ; and further, that
they should detect unto their ordinary whomso
ever they should see or suspect hereafter to teach ,
hold, or maintain the same."
Foxe's account, now that he is no longer fol
lowing a document, becomes confused again. He
gives a list of forty-two men and eight women
who recanted, but implies that the list is not
complete. Some, he says, were condemned to
perpetual penance in various monasteries, at Ash
ridge and Notley in Buckinghamshire, at Abing
don in Berkshire, at St. Frideswide's, Osney,
Thame, Bicester, and Eynsham in Oxfordshire.
Here, it seems, they were kept in a kind of
slavery, and never allowed to pass the precincts
of the monasteries. Others retained their liberty
on condition of a humiliating penance , to be per
formed "under pain of relapse." The penance
exactly corresponds with that prescribed in extant
diocesan registers of the period. They were to
go thrice round the market-place of some town,
on a market-day, and then stand a quarter of
an hour on the highest step of the market-cross,
with faggots on their shoulders, to go before a
solemn procession to the church on a Sunday,
^ain carrying faggots, and kneel before the high
altar all the high mass time. They were to repeat
10

140 THE LOLLAEDS
the same penance in their own parish churches,
and once in a general procession elsewhere, and
to bear a faggot, if required, at the burning of
a heretic. Uxbridge, and Burford in Oxfordshire,
were especially named as scenes of these melan
choly processions. The penitents were also to
fast every Friday on bread and ale, and on the
eve of Corpus Christi upon bread and water.
They were to repeat "Our Lady's Psalter"
every Sunday and Friday during life. They
were ' ' never to haunt again together with
any suspected person or persons, unless it were
in the open market, fair, church, or common inn
or alehouse, where other people might see their
conversation." Lastly, it was ordered " that
neither they, nor any of them, shall hide their
mark upon their cheek, neither with hat, cap,
hood, kerchief, napkin, or none otherwise, or
shall suffer their beards to grow past fourteen
days." It is not clear from this whether the
cruel punishment of branding was revived at this
time, or whether the reference is only to— those
who had been branded in 1506.
Foxe next gives the names of six persons who,
having previously abjured, were now condemned
for relapse, and handed oyer to the secular power
to be burned. These are Thomas Bernard , James
Morden, Eobert Eave, John Scrivener, Thomas
Holmes, and Joan Norman.
We have already seen reason for believing that
this, and not either of the dates which Foxe gives
elsewhere, was the real time of Bernard and Mor-

FIEE AND FAGGOT 141
den's death. With regard to Holmes (who, It
will be remembered, had turned informer), and
to Joan Norman, Foxe seems a little doubtful
if the sentence was actually carried out. There
can be no doubt, however, that John Scrivener
suffered at this time, and with him "Father"
Eave of Dorney. Foxe elsewhere asserts (iii.
398) that Longland was present in person, and
preached a violent sermon before the stake, in
which he declared that ' ' whoever they were that
did but move their lips in reading of the Scrip
tures in English were damned for ever." This
seems scarcely credible ; but Erasmus and others
give us almost as glaring instances of the fanati
cal objection to a vernacular translation on the
part of the clerics of the day.
There was a close adherence in the methods of
the execution to the hideous precedents of Tyls
worth's burning. There was the procession of
faggot-bearers up the hill, and the same refine
ment of cruelty in forcing John Scrivener's
children to set fire to their father's pyre, as in
the case of Tylsworth's daughter. But this time,
as Fuller tells us in his Church History,
the infamy was not allowed to pass without a
vigorous protest. The clerical party, he says,
defended the act by quoting Deut. xiii. 6-9 ; " If
thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son,
or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy
friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee
secretly, saying, ' Let us go and worship other
gods,'  thou shalt surely kill him ; thine

142 THE LOLLAEDS
hand shall be first upon him to put him to death,
and then the hand of all the people." But, as
Puller points out, nothing is said of father or
mother here ; while even by the laws of pagan
Eome the evidence of the child could not be
received against the parent.

CHAPTEE XV
LOLLARDY PASSING INTO PROTESTANTISM
After the death of the Amersham martyrs in
1521, a period of comparative freedom from per
secution ensued throughout England. One man
suffered at Coventry the same year ; but after
this no other seems to have endured the ' ' trial
of fire and faggot " until 1530.
In the meanwhile the face of affairs was being
wholly changed. While Henry was warring with
France, and Wolsey was taxing the country to
the utmost limit of endurance, and intriguing for
the Papal tiara, the writings of Luther and his
fellow-reformers were being brought into Eng
land, and Tyndale was translating the New
Testament at Cologne and Worms , and afterwards
part of the Old at Antwerp. The vigilance of
the authorities proved all in vain to hinder the
circulation of the forbidden book. The parchment
scroll of the Lollard was gradually being super
seded by the quaint black-letter volume of the
Gospeller, with its more modernised version. The
better day for which the Lollards had long been^
looking, and the coming of which some of them
had vaguely predicted, seemed to be dawning at
143

144 THE LOLLAEDS
last. A strong reforming party was arising among
the clergy, and was to some extent favoured by
Archbishop Warham.
In nothing was the change in affairs more
noticeable than in the neglected condition of the
religious hoiises. Men had grown tired of en
dowing monks who were despised as lazy, and
often believed to be immoral. The church-tower
rose in all the beauty of the Perpendicular GtJthic ;
the priests ministered in gorgeous vestments,
singing masses for the souls of pious donors who
had bequeathed legacies for the purpose, and for
lights to burn perpetually before the altar, for
the repose of their souls. Meanwhile, in the
ruinous buildings of the neighbouring priory, two
or three monks were often all that remained of
the goodly brotherhood of days gone by.
Of the religious houses in Buckinghamshire,
since the alien priories were suppressed, those
at Chetwode and Brill had been annexed'to Notley
Abbey during the Wars of the Eoses. Luffield
had been suppressed on account of its poverty in
1494. And now, in 1524, Eavenstone, Tickford,
and Bradwell, having all become grievously
decayed, were dissolved by a Papal Bull, and
their revenues were given to Wolsey in aid of
his great foundation of Cardinal College (now
Christchurch) in Oxford. Of Bradwell we read
that the buildings were "in decay for lack of
pointing, tiling, walling, and thatching," and
"the chancel roof of very evil timber." The
fish-ponds, it is added, " now be wasted and little

PASSING INTO PROTESTANTISM 145
or no fish therein : ' ' and while the Commissioners
reported that the chancel and aisles might be
repaired, they added, " and right necessary is it
shortly to be done, for the salvation of the tile
and timber." (Dugdale, Monasticon, iv. 510).
Wolsey's principal agent in the suppression of
these priories was the man who was to give the
death-blow to the old monastic system in Eng
land — the Malleus Monachorum, Thomas Crom
well. In 1527 the question of the divorce from
Queen Catharine was raised. In 1529 came the
fall of Wolsey, and in the following year his
death. In 1531 Henry cast the die, and declared
himself " Supreme Head of the Church of Eng
land." The casting off of the Papal supremacy
had largely realised the political portion of
Wycliffe's aims ; but Henry was as little as ever
disposed to abandon the main features of Eornanist
doctrine, and after Wolsey's fall the policy of
persecution was resumed as bitterly as before.
An extract given by Foxe (iv. 584) from the
Lincoln Eegister of 1530 gives an interesting
glimpse of the manner in which Lollardy was
passing into Protestantism. A little company
had gathered in the house of John Taylor of
Hughenden, to hear a preacher from London, one
Nicholas Field, who had been in Germany, and
could tell them something of the new Eeformers.
It was probably by night, but some of those pre
sent had come for miles across the country. There
were Thomas Hawks, and Thomas Clerk the
younger, of Hughenden ; Eobert Hawes and

146 THE LOLLAEDS
Eichard Dean, of West Wycombe; Thomas
Hern, of " Cobshill " (Coleshill?) ; William
Hawks, of Chesham; William Wingrave,
and others. Of these, Thomas Clerk and
the wife of Eichard Dean had been under sus
picion in 1521. Field read a portion of Scripture,
probably out of Tyndale 's version, of which the
New Testament had reached England in 1526.
Perhaps some of the company had never seen a
printed Bible before. Then he addressed them,
telling them that ' ' they that went on pilgrimages
were accursed," and that " it booted not to pray
to images, for they were but stocks made of
wood, and could not help a man." He denounced
saints' days, and also fasting days, without which
he found that they got on very well ' ' beyond
the sea in Almany." It is curious to note that
he made an exception in favour of fasting on the
" Imbring " (Ember) Days. He spoke next of
the uselessness of offering?. One of the company
objected that " they maintained God's service."
" Nay," said Nicholas, " they maintain great
houses as abbeys and the like." He went on to
speak against Latin prayers, and recited the
Lord's Trayer, the Hail Mary, and the Creed in
English ; after which he proceeded to denounce
the doctrine of transubstantiation. One of those
present probably betrayed the others, for all of
them, including Field, were " examined, excom
municated, and abjured " (not " burned," as Mr.
Pattison, by an odd blunder, asserts in his Reli
gious Topography). The sweeping persecutions

PASSING INTO PEOTESTANTISM 147
of nine years before had evidently been far from
extinguishing the remains of Lollardy in the
district. Another interesting case (Foxe, iv. 583) is that
of a young man named John Eyburn, living at
" Eoshborough " (Eisborough) . He had met
with a priest named Thomas Lound, who had
spent two years at Wittenberg, and who was
afterwards cast into the -Fleet Prison in London.
Eyburn had eargerly adopted the reformed doc
trines, but his family were still devoted to those
of Eome. His sister Elizabeth, coming to him
on the eve of the Assumption, found him at
supper " with butter and eggs," and was horri
fied at his inviting her to join him. " God never
made such fasting days," said John; "but you
are so far in Umbo patrum that you can never
turn again." At another time she spoke of going
on pilgrimage to the Holy Eood of Wendover.
" You do wrong," said John ; "for there is never
a step that you set in going on pilgrimage but
you go to the devil ; and you go to church to
worship what the priest doth hold above his head,
which is but bread, and if you cast it to the
mouse, he will eat it ; and never will I believe
that the priest hath power to make his Lord."
He admitted that he kneeled down at the ele
vation of the host, but said " he had no devotion
nor believed in the sacrament." " The priests
do naught," said he, " for they should say their
service in Enghsh, that every man may know it,
for if we had our Paternoster in English, we

148 THE LOLLAEDS
would say it nine times against one now." He
had firmly grasped the doctrine of justification
by faith, on which the Lollard view had been
somewhat vague. " The blood of our Lord Jesus
Christ," he said, " hath made satisfaction for all
ill deeds that are done or shall be done ; and
therefore it is no need to go on pilgrimage."
" The Pope's authority and pardon cannot help
man's soul, and it is but cast-away money that
is given for pardon, for if we ask pardon of our
Lord Jesus Christ, He will give us pardon every
day." At another time John was with his sister
Alice " in a field called Brimmer's Close," a name
which is still preserved in the parish of Prince's
Eisborough, where we have Brimmer's Farm and
Brimmer's Hill, not far from Whiteleaf Cross. ' 'A
time shall come," he said to her, " when no
elevation shall be made." "And what service
shall we have then?" she asked. " That service,"
replied John, "that we have now." He was also
charged with " having Jesus' Gospel in English,"
and with having been present in John Taylor's
house at Hughenden, when one John Simonds
" read to them a lecture out of the Gospel, of the
passion of Christ, the space of two hours." This
may have been the John Simons, of Marlow,
accused in 1521.
Eybum's two sisters, his father, and even his
wife, were called before Bishop Longland, and
compelled to depose against the outspoken Gos
peller. It gives us a sad idea of the domestic
divisions of the times. "A man's foes" w^re

PARSING INTO PEOTESTANTISM 149
indeed " they of his own household." Eyburn's
father also "detected" John Eaton of Speen,
and Cicely his wife, who " were marked of cer
tain in the parish, on the Sunday last past, in
the sacring time, to hold down their heads, and
that they would not look upon the sacrament."
They had also been heard — heinous offence ! — to
say, " What a clampering of bells is herfe!" as
they stood in a butcher's shop while the bells
were ringing for Holy Cross Day.
John Simonds, the reader just now mentioned,
was himself cited. He gloried in having " con
verted eight priests to his doctrines, and holpen
two or three friars out of their orders." He was
charged with defending the marriage of the clergy,
and also with saying, " Men do walk all day in
purgatory in this world, and when they depart
out of this world, there are but two ways, either
to hell or heaven."
Under the next year (1531) we find a curious
passage in the first edition of Foxe (ed. 1563,
p^e 490). It may best be given in the quaint
original spelhng : —
' ' The Storie of a certaine olde man of Bucking
ham Shyre.
' ' I have found in a certaine place mention to
be made of a certaine olde man, which for eatyng
of Bacon in the Lent (dwelling in the countie of
Buckingham) was condempned to the fyre and
burned, in this yeare of our Lord 1531. As
touching his name and other circumstances which
p6rteine unto the trae setting fourth of the his-

150 THE LOLLARDS
tories, we cannot fynde or understande any more.
Notwithstandyng I have thought good not to
pass over this matter with silence, for the memo-
riall of the man hymselfe, albeit I know not his
name." This paragraph is omitted in the later editions.
Whether Foxe found it erroneous, or whether be
left it out to make room for more important
matter, can only be conjectured. The violation
of fasting days was not an infrequent ground of
prosecutions for heresy, but it could scarcely have
brought a man to the stake.

CHAPTEE XVI
THE LAST OF THE LOLLAED MARTYRS
One of those who had had to do penance at
Amersham, both in 1506 and in 1521, was Thomas
Harding. In 1532, the date at which we have
now arrived, he was an aged man; and his out
spoken wife Alice was probably dead by this time.
He continued to wear the green badge enjoined
him in 1521 , but he seems to have been allowed
to remove from Amersham to the adjoining parish
of Chesham, where a farm called Dungrove is
pointed out by local tradition as his abode. It
is important to note that the account now about
to be quoted from Foxe does not purport to be
quoted from the Diocesan Eegister, but "from
the written testimony of certain inhabitants of
Amersham." Foxe says : —
" At last the said Harding, in the year above
said (1532), about the Easter holidays, when the
other people went to church to commit their
wonted idolatry, took his way into the woods,
there solitarily to worship the trae living God in
spirit and in truth ; where, as he was occupied
with a book of English prayers, leaning or sitting
upon a stile by the wood's side, it chanced that
151

152 THE LOLLAEDS
one did espy him where he was, and came in
great haste to the officers of the town, declaring
that he had seen Harding in the woods looking
on a book ; whereupon a rude rabble of them ,
like mad men, ran desperately to his house to
search for books, and in searching went so nigh
that under the boards of his floor they found cer
tain English books of Holy Scripture. Hereupon
this godly father, with his books, was brought
before John Longland, Bishop of Lincoln, then
lying at Woburn, who, with his chaplains, calling
Father Harding to examination, began to reason
with him, proceeding rather with checks and
rebukes than with any sound arguments. Thomas
Harding, seeing their folly and rude behaviour,
gave them but few words, but fixing his trust
and care in the Lord , did let them say what they
would. Thus at last they sent hito to the
Bishop's prison, called Little-ease, where he did
lie with hunger and pain enough for a certain
space, till at length the Bishop, sitting on his
tribunal seat like a potestate , condemned him for
relapse to be burned to ashes, committing the
charge and oversight of his martyrdom to Eow
land Messenger, vicar of Great Wycombe. This
Eowland, at the day appointed, with a rabble
of others like to himself, brought Father Harding
to Chesham again, where, the next day after his
return, the said Eowland made a sermon in Ches
ham Church, causing Thomas Harding to stand
before him all the preaching time ; which sermon
was nothing else but the maintaining of the

THE LAST LOLLARD MARTYRS 153
jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome and the state
of his apostolical see, with the idolatry, fantsies,
and tradition belonging unto the same. When
the sermon was ended, Rowland took him up to
the high altar, and asked him whether he believed
that in the bread, after the consecration, there
remained any otheT substance than the substance
of Christ's natural body, born of the Virgin Mary?
To this Thomas Harding answered, ' The arti
cles of our belief do teach us that our Saviour
Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, and
that He suffered death under Pilate, and rose
from death the third day ; that He then ascended
into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of
God, in the glory of the Father.'
" Then was he brought into a man's house in
the town, where he remained all night in prayer
and godly meditations. So the next morning
came the aforesaid Eowland again, about ten
o'clock, with a company of bills and staves, to
lead this godly father to his burning ; whom a
great number both of men and women did follow,
of whom many bewailed his death, and contrary,
the wicked rejoiced thereat. He was brought
forth, having thrust into his hands a little cross
of wood, but no idol upon it. Then he was
chained unto the stake, and desiring the people
to pray for him, and forgiving all his enemies
and persecutors he commended his spirit to God,
and took his death most patiently and quietly,
lifting up his hands to heaven, and saying, ' Jesus,
receive my spirit.'

154 THE LOLLAEDS
" When they had set fire on him, there was
one that threw a billet at him, and dashed out
his brains ; for what purpose he so did it is not
known, but, as it was supposed, that he might
have forty days of pardon, as the proclamation
was made at the burning of William Tylsworth
above mentioned, where proclamation was made
the same time that whosoever did bring a faggot
or a stake to the burning of a heretic should have
forty days of pardon ; whereby many ignorant
people caused their children to bear billets and
faggots to their burning.
" In fine, when the sacrifice and burnt-offering
of this godly martyr was finished, and he burnt
to ashes in the dell going to Botley, at the north
end of the town of Chesham, Eowland, their ruler
of the roast, commanding silence, and thinking
to send the people away with an Ite missa est,
with a loud voice said to the people these words,
not advising belike what his tongue did speak,
' Good people ! when ye come home do not say
that you have been at the burning of a heretic,
but of a true Christian man ;' and so they departed
to dinner, Eowland, with the rabble of other
priests, much rejoicing at the burning of this good
man. After dinner they went to church to even
song, because it was Corpus Christi even, where
they fell to singing and chanting, with ringing
and piping of the organs. Well was he that could
reach the highest note, so much did they rejoice
at this good man's burning. He should have
been burned on the Ascension even, but the

THE LAST LOLLARD MARTYRS 155
matter was deferred unto the even of Corpus
Christi, because they would honour their ' bready
Messias ' with a bloody sacrifice. Thus Thomas
Harding was consumed to ashes, he being of the
age of sixty years and above."
The Eev. A. E. Maddison, in the paper on
" Longland's Eegister " already referred to,
says : —
" The register contains an account of Harding's
examination, but it was conducted, not by the
Bishop, but by his Vicar-General, John
Eayne, assisted by Eobert, Abbot of Thame
and Suffragan Bishop, and Thomas Water-
house, Eector of Ashridge. This com
mission found Harding to be guilty of re
lapse into heresy ; but Foxe does not mention
an additional circumstance of some interest.
According to the register, Harding craved for the
benefit of absolution, and thereupon Eayne, the
Vicar-General, pronounced him free from the
greater excommunication, and restored to the
bosom of the church. Again, the certificate sent
to the King, setting forth Harding as a relapsed
heretic, states that he had confessed his heresy
before Bishop Longland at the Old Temple, Lon
don, not at Wooburn, as Foxe asserts. This took
place on the 6th April, but the fuller examination
before Eayne and his assessors was on the 29th
May. Plainly, then, Foxe is not in harmony
with his authorities,  and his omission of
Harding's recantation renders one suspicious of
his trastworthiness."

11

156 THE LOLLAEDS
Considering that Foxe's authority was not the
Eegister, but the statements of the Amersham
folks, the discrepancies cannot be said to be of
much importance, or to throw discredit, as Mr.
Maddison seems to think they do, on Foxe's
references to the registers elsewhere. The inac
curacies as to date and place are just what might
be expected after the lapse of forty years ; and
it is perfectly natural that Harding's neighbours
should have slurred over the fact of that recan
tation, which, if it lessens his glory, throws into
clearer relief the injustice and inhumanity of the
authorities, when his memory had come to be
surrounded with a sort of halo of saintship among
them. It may even be that the recantation affords
the real explanation of Messenger's supposed
blunder in addressing the crowd.
This Eowland Messenger had been Vicar of
High Wycombe since 1511, and it was by him
that the beautiful tower of All Saints' Church in
that town, "the cathedral of Bucks," was
erected in 1522. He was also Cardinal Wolsey's
clerk of the works at the erection of the great
tower of Christ Church, Oxford. It is not likely
that either he and his clerical friends, in the midst
of the rejoicings Foxe describes, or Harding's
old neighbours, as they made their way home to
Amersham across the furze-clad common of Ches
ham Bois, and through the beech-woods in all
their summer splendour, called, to mind the fact
that the' persecution of the Lollards- had now
lasted exactly a century and a half. For it was

THE LAST LOLLARD MARTYRS 167
on Corpus Christi Day, 1382, that Philip Repyng-
don preached the sermon at Oxford which led
Archbishop Courtenay to take the first repressive
measures against Lollardy. And in a certain
sense, the story of that persecution ends with the
burning of Harding, who may fairly be called
the last of the Enghsh Lollard martyrs — the last,
that is, of purely Lollard training and sympathies.
Not only so, but with one exception (that of
John Frith, who was burned in Smithfield in
1533) he was the last who suffered under the ex
officio power of the bishops.
The spot of Harding's martyrdom is still
pointed out at Chesham, in a small chalk-pit,
not far from the police-station. When I saw it
a few years ago, it was fenced in, and occupied
by some very prosaic-looking sheds. On the hill
to the south of the town is a stile, leading into
a wood called Hodge Wood , which is said to mark
the site of that which Harding sat to
read. Little of the town can be seen
from this spot, except the church tower,
so that the view may be practically identical with
that on w.hich the martyr's eyes then rested. An
old house which formerly stood near the Broad
way at Chesham, lying back a little from the
road, and with a brook or ditch in front of it,
was pointed out as that in which he spent the
last night bf his life. The house was pulled
down about 1870, and the site is now occupied
by a brush factory. In some articles on local
history, by Mr. E. S. Downs, which appeared

158 THE LOLLAEDS
in the Chesham Examiner a few years ago, a
tradition was mentioned to the effect that Harding
was also confined for a time in the ' ' parvise ' '
over the church porch. Another tradition, it
must be said a very absurd one, tells how, as
Harding was being led up the hill, he hesitated
whether he would not recant after all, and uttered
the words, " Shall I mount?" whence, we are
told, the hill derived the name of " Shally
Mount," by which it is sometimes known. This
is just one of those philological guesses by which
local names are often accounted for, and is incon
sistent with the facts brought to light by Mr.
Maddison. A local authoress, the late Miss Werry, pub
lished about forty years ago, a book called
Memorials of Agmondesham and Chesham Ley
cester ; or. Two Martyr Stories. Though vrritten
in a charming style , these ' ' Memorials ' ' have no
pretensions to historical accuracy, and it is to
be feared that they have tended to confuse the
traditional accounts of the district. The first
story, "The Schoolmaster of Agmondesham,"
contains incidents culled from various narratives
in Foxe, especially his account of Thomas Benet,
burned at Exeter in 1531. These are located at
Amersham, and allotted to an imaginary Wilham
Chase. The second narrative, " A Memorial of
Chesham Leycester," gives a somewhat distorted
version of the trial and death of Thomas, or, as
he is here called, John Harding. An interesting
article on Harding's death appeared in the Quiver

THE LAST LOLLAED MARTYRS 159
for May, 1888, under the title, " A Bucks Martyr
Site and its Story." It was from the pen of the
late Mr. W. J. Lacey (to whose courtesy I am
indebted for some of the facts in this chapter),
and was accompanied by excellent engravings of
the site of Harding's death, and the view form
" the martyr's stile."
Another trace of the martyr times, till lately
existing near Chesham, may here be mentioned.
Between Chesham and Latimer, lies an ancient
building known as Blackwell Hall, possibly an
old rehgious house. Here, according to an inte
resting article in the Records of Buckinghamshire
(iii. 66, 67), human bones have been dug up
in the garden, as well as several gold coins. On
the walls of the kitchen might formerly be traced
rude drawings of men and women chained to
stakes and nailed to crosses ; and on each side
of the fire-place were texts of Scripture, which
appear to be citations from Coverdale's version,
given from memory. On the left, " Eeceive the
word of God, wherewith ye may learn to know
God ; happy are they that hear the word of God ' '
(Jas. i. 21; Luke xi. 28). On the right, "He
that is of God beareth God's words ; ye therefore
hear them not, because ye are not of God " (John
viii. 47) . ' ' Why do ye not understand my speech ?
even because ye cannot abide the hearing of my
word ' ' (John viii. 43) .

CHAPTEE XVII
THE TURN OF THE TIDE
A GREAT change in the relation of the State to
the Church is manifest when we come to the year
1534, the year of the Act of Supremacy, and of
the formal separation from Eome. In the same
year it was enacted that a heretic, instead of
being left to the arbitiary control of the
episcopal courts, must be proceeded against
by two witnesses in open court and tried
by jury, with the right of admission to
bail ; nor could he be burned without a
royal writ. "The poisoned chalice" which the
Papal party had mingled for the Lollards was now
commended to their own lips. In 1535, Sir
Thomas More, Fisher, Bishop of Eochester, and
others, were executed for refusing to take the
Oath of Supremacy. It was no longer possible
for zealots like Eowland' Messenger to preach
" the maintaining of the jurisdiction of the Bishop
of Eome, and the state of his apostolical see;"
for no priest could preach without a license, and
then, under heavy penalties, he was bound to
maintain Eoyal Supremacy.
In the same year (1535) fourteen Dutch Anabap-
160

THE TUEN OF THE TIDE 161
tists, who had come over to England, were burned,
two in Smithfield, the remainder in various towns.
Their execution was partly due to political
reasons. The excesses of John of Leyden and
Knipperdoling had made the name of Anabaptist
as much dreaded and hated as that of Anarchist
is to-day. Yet these poor unnamed Hollanders,
' ' who by no terror of stake or torture could be
tempted to say that they believed what they did
not believe," were, as Mr. Froude has said,
" assisting to pay the purchase-money for Eng
lish freedom." And from this time the Anabap
tists are often met with in English religious
history ; and it is noteworthy that at a synod of
their leaders held in Westphalia in 1536, deputies
from England were present. There was every
likelihood that some of the Lollards would join
the new sect, whose more moderate leaders held
views very similar to their own. And this may
account for the fact that in some of the districts
where Lollardy had been strongest, and notably
in South Bucks, we find Baptists numerous in
the next century.
The right of Englishmen to have the Bible in
their own tongue, for which the Lollards had
so long contended, was won by slow degrees.
Tyndale's translation had been condemned for its
alleged inaccuracy, though amply vindicated by
the verdict of later ages. In 1*530, Henry
promised to have the New Testament translated,
' ' to the intent he might have it in his hands
ready to be given to his people, as he might see

162 THE LOLLARDS
their manners and behaviour meet, apt, and con
venient to receive the same." But the Bishops
were divided on the matter. Gardiner had a
preposterous scheme for a version in a medley of
Latin and English. Cranmer petulantly wrote
that he saw no prospect of a version being agreed
upon "till a day after doomsday." But in the
eventful year 1535, Miles Coverdale was able to
issue the Bible, under the patronage of Cromwell,
and in 1537 he published a second edition, " set
forth with the King's most gracious license."
Thomas Cromwell was now " vicegerent of the
King in all matters ecclesiastical;" stern, relent
less, unpitying, and determined to humble the
Eomanist party to the utmost. Injunction after
injunction was issued to the clergy, for the abro
gation of holy days, the discouragement of
pilgrimages and image-worship, and the teaching
of the Creed, the Paternoster, and tte Ten Com
mandments in English. Commissioners were
appointed to visit the religious houses, and
presented to Parliament their report, the famous
"Black Book." Its revelations of the alleged
depravity of the monks were met by the Commons
with cries of ' ' Down with them ! ' ' The smaller
houses (all with incomes of less than £200 a
year) were now suppressed. In Buckingham
shire this only affected Little Marlow,
where there were but two nuns, Medmen
ham, where there was a single monk,
and the house was entirely ruinous, and
Ankerwyke. The revenues of all three were

THE TURN OF THE TIDE 163
annexed to the neighbouring abbey of Bisham in
Berkshire. But the Romanist party did not submit without
resistance. On October 4th, 1537, as the beech-
woods on the Chilterns were rich with their
mellow autumn tints, three wearied horsemen,
who had ridden day and night out of the far-off
Fen country, came across the hills, bearing evil
tidings to the King at Windsor. They were
Heneage, one of the Eoyal commissioners, with
Sir Marmaduke Constable and Sir Edward
Madyson. The day before, at Horncastle in
Lincolnshire, Heneage had been attacked by a
fierce mob of people, led on by monks and priests.
He had escaped from them, but the chancellor
of Lincoln, who was with him, had been cruelly
put to death. Bishop Longland had made him
self as obnoxious to the Catholics by his Eras-
tianism, as to the Gospellers by his persecution;
and his palace at Lincoln had been attacked and
plundered. The summons to arms immediately
went through the country ; and the men of Bucks
and the other counties where ' ' heretics ' ' had
most abounded, rallied to the support of the
King. The Lincolnshire rising, and the still
more serious revolt which followed in the North,
the "Pilgrimage of Grace," were stamped out
with rathless severity. The nobles who had led
the movement were sent to the block ; the abbots
and squires to the gallows. And still the work
of change went on. Images and rehcs were
removed from their gorgeous shrines, and in

164 THE LOLLAEDS
many instances were brought to London to be
burned. "Our Lady of Walsingham," "the
Blood of Hales," "the Eood of Grace," were
exposed to mockery and contempt, as mere
juggles and impostures. But so violent a move
ment could not fail to bring about a reaction,
and already there were ominous signs of a coming
change. Henry and his advisers seemed ner
vously anxious to prove that they were not to he
confounded with heretics ; and in 1538 was wit
nessed the not very creditable spectacle of
Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell assisting in the
condemnation of John Lambert for views but little
differing from their own.
In the same year, a man named Cowbridge,
of a wealthy family in Essex, which had held
Lollard views from the time of Wycliffe, was
brought before the aged Bishop Longland at " a
place beside Wickham ' ' (no doubt at Wooburn) ,
and charged with heresy. He had been
living for some time at Wantage, where,
as we have seen, Lollards were met with
in 1521. Here, says Foxe (v. 252) he had
"by a long season exercised the office of a
priest in teaching and ministering of the sacra
ments, but being no priest indeed, and had con
verted many to the truth." Longland com
mitted him to the Bocardo prison at Oxford,
where he is said to have lost his reason, and he
w;as burned in that city shortly after.
Mr. Maddison finds mention of this Cowbridge
in the Longland Eegister, where it is stated that

THE TURN OP THE TIDE 165
he had relapsed into heresy after solemnly
abjuring it under Bishop Smith. He objects
that no mention is made of his madness. Surely,
if the authorities had acknowledged him to be
mad, they would hardly have burned him ! Here
it must be noted that Foxe expressly says that he
had not seen the account of Cowbridge's trial in
the Register ; and this may surely be regarded as
a strong presumption that the register he quotes
elsewhere is a different one from that examined
by Mr. Maddison. Foxe was a student at Brase
nose at the time of Cowbridge's death, and took
his B.A. degree the same year. His account of
this poor man must have been drawn from his,
own recollections, or from University gossip.
We now come to the fateful year 1539, the
year of the final suppression -of the monasteries,
and of full liberty to read the Bible in English.
The "greater abbeys," which had been left
intact in 1536, were all dissolved, and their
revenues confiscated. In Buckinghamshire the
houses now suppressed were Ashridge (which
became the nursery of the infant Prince Edward),
Notley, Burnham, Missenden, Biddlesden,
Snelshall, Lavendon, Ivinghoe, and the Friary
at Aylesbury. The Grey Friars of Aylesbury
were in debt ; their revenues were only valued at
£3 2s. 5d. per annum, and their chapel was
meagrely adorned. They signed a document
stating, that they had ' ' profoundly considered
that the perfection of Christian living doth not
consist in dumb ceremonies, wearing of a grey

166 THE LOLLARDS
coat, disguising ourself after strange fashions,
ducking and becking, in girding ourself with a
gircjle full of knots, and other like Papistical cere
monies, wherein we have been most principally
practised and misled in times past ; but the very
true way to please God, and to live a true Chris
tian man, without all hypocrisy and dissimulation,
is sincerely declared unto us by our Master Christ,
His evangelists and apostles." A similar form
had to be signed by the friars in other parts of
England, e.g., at Leicester. It is satisfactory to
find that scarcely any of the Buckinghamshire
houses were charged with those revolting im
moralities which were ascribed to some in other
parts of the country, though Longland himself
had severely censured some of the Missenden
canons not long hefore.
The inmates of the religious houses received
pensions for life. The Abbot of Biddlesden,
for instance, had £40, the sub-prior £6, and the
eight monks £5 6s. 8d. each. The Abbot of
Notley had what was then the large amount of
£100 a year, and lived to enjoy it till 1538.
Sorne pensions continued to be drawn when
James I. came to the throne. One of the canons
of Missenden became vicar of the parish, and
another, who had been accustomed to take ser
vices at Lee, received an addition to his pension
on undertaking to continue them. But great
distress was caused by the wholesale way in
which the dependents of the monasteries were
thrown out of employment. More than forty

THE TURN OF THE TIDE 167
persons, mostly agricultural labourers, thus
suffered by the suppression of the nunnery at
Burnham, which is admitted to have been well
conducted. The new owner of the estate was
put in bodily fear by the threats of the unem
ployed men. However desirable the suppression
of the monasteries may have been from a religious
point of view, it is impossible to speak too
severely of the selfish and shameless greed with
which it was carried out.
Some of the dispossessed abbots and monks
embraced the Reformed doctrines. The Abbots
of Missenden and Bisham both married, and the
latter became a Protestant bishop.
In the same year (1539) the new edition of the
Scriptures, the "Great Bible," was issued, and,
by Eoyal authority, was placed at once in every
parish church, while the clergy were bidden to
" provoke, stir, and exhort " their people to read
it. We can imagine the joy with which the
Lollards would hail the newly-granted liberty,
though this joy may have been damped by the
discovery that the new version differed so much
from their long-prized parchment scrolls. Strype
says : —
"It was wonderful to see with what joy this
book of God was received, not only among the
leameder sort, and those that were noted for
lovers of the Eeformation, but generally all
England over, among all the vulgar and common
people ; and with what greediness God's Word
was read, and what resort to places where the

168 THE LOLLAEDS
reading of it was. Everybody that could bought
the book, or busily read it, or got others to read
it to them if they could not themselves, and
divers more elderly people learned to read on
purpose. And even little boys flocked among the
rest to hear portions of the holy Scriptures read."
But while multitudes shared the Lollard desire
for reading the Scriptures in English, many of
them still dreaded the Lollard doctrine on the
Eucharist. Alarmed by certain excesses on the
part of the extreme Protestants, and anxious that
his subjects should observe what he regarded as
the golden mean between Eoman superstition and
Lutheran fanaticism, Henry had a Bill intro
duced into Parliament, styled with delightful
simphcity " An Act for Abolishing Diversity of
Opinions." This was the famous Statute of the
Six Articles, or as the Protestants called it, " the
Whip of Six Strings." It rendered penal the
rejection of transubstantiation, of communion on
one kind, vows of chastity, celibacy of the clergy,
private masses, or auricular confession. Burning
was the penalty for a denial of transubstantiation ,
and'^n a second offence, for an infraction of any
of the other articles. Eefusal to confess or to
attend mass became a felony. Five hundred
were indicted in Londoj alone. Bishops
Latimer and Shaxton were imprisoned ; and
Cranmer himself narrowly escaped.
In Longland's diocese, persecution broke out
once more, but the charges were far less numerous
and varied than those in 1521. In Buckingham-

THE TUEN OP THE TIDE 169
shire, William Fastendich, of Wooburn, and
William Hart, of Great Brickhill, were charged
with a denial of transubstantiation ; the latter,
who affords a solitary instance of a North Bucks
heretic, having said, " Thinkest thou that God
Almighty will abide over a knave priest's head?"
Christopher Erles, of Eisborough, was indicted
for having looked down at his book instead of
bowing at the elevation of the host. He had
also been seen at work on a piece of fustian on
a holy day, and when taxed with it had replied
that ' ' it was better to do that than to sit at
the alehouse drinking drunk." Wilham Gar
land, of West Wycombe, had said that extreme
unction was a "godly sign," and not a sacra
ment. William Webb, of the same parish, had
set " the image of a headless bear," most likely
a broken piece of stonework, " in the tabernacle
of St. Eoke." Elenore Godfrey, of Great Mar
low, was summoned for " laughing and speaking
certain words against one Thomas CoHard," whom
she had characterised, it seems, as " a pope-holy
hypocrite," and described him as " crouching
behind the children in Marlow Church , and when
the priest crossed his head with the ' saucer ' he
would cross his head likewise." "For these
words she was con vented before the Bishop, and
miserably vexed." (Foxe, v. 454).
Foxe here introduces the burning of James
Morton (or Morden) and Thomas Bernard of
Amersham ; but we have already seen that this
must have taken place at an earlier date. Next

170 THE LOLLAEDS
he speaks of one Barber, an Oxford M.A., who
had been cited for heresy, and had defended him
self with marked ability, but who recanted about
this time , ' ' after which the good man long pros
pered not, but wore away." Was this person,
here joined with two Amersham men, the " John
Barber, clerk, of Amersham," accused of heresy
in 1521?
The closing years of the reign of Henry VIII.
afford a most perplexing spectacle of confusion
in religious affairs — Catholic and Protestant sym
pathisers among nobles and prelates intriguing
and counter-intriguing at the Council-board ;
Catholic priests saying mass in one part of a
church, while Protestant zealots were loudly
reading the Scriptures in another ; Catholics and
Protestants dragged to Smithfield on the same
hurdles, the first to be hanged for treason, the
other to be burned for heresy. The Protestants
of Bucks would hear at one time of a martyrdom
on their own borders, when three Windsor men,
Peerson, Filmer, and Testwood, were burned just
below the Castle. A few weeks later they would
hear how their accusers had been made to ride
round the streets of Windsor, with their faces
to the horses' tails, and papers on their heads
charging them with perjury, and then had had
to stand in the pillory. In the same year (1543)
Jacob Mallet, a canon of Windsor, and formerly
master of the hospital at High Wycombe, was
executed for treason. The charge against him
was that, speaking of the dissolution of the

THE TURN OF THE TIDE 171
abbeys, he had said, "The King hath brought
his hogs to a fine market ! ' '
The Act of the Six Articles was considerably
modified in 1546, and again in 1547. But on
the other hand Henry complained that ' ' that
most precious jewel, the Word of God, was dis
puted, rhymed, sung, and jangled in every ale
house and tavern;" and therefore he withdrew
the liberty of Bible-reading from every one
" under the degree ©f a gentleman," and pro
hibited Tyndale's and Coverdale's versions. This
reign of confusion and compromise lasted till
Henry's death in 1547. In the same year
'Bishop Longland passed to his account.
Edward VI. succeeded his father at the age
of nine. A child whose playground had been
among the deserted halls and walks of a Bucking
hamshire monastery (the College at Ashridge) was
not likely to have a very awful reverence for the
old system ; and his rapacious advisers had if
possible even less. Sweeping changes were the
order of the day. The Mass was changed into
a Communion service. The marriage of the
clergy was permitted. The churches were ruth
lessly stripped of their adornments. Not only
the Act of the Six Articles, but all the Acts
passed against Lollardy in the reigns of Richard
II., Henry IV., and Henry V., were repealed.
But the heart of the nation was iat as yet
from sanctioning the new reforms. In 1549
risings took place in Cornwall, Devon, York
shire, and Norfolk. They were due partly to

12

172 THE LOLLARDS
Romanist influence, and partly to agrarian dis
content. A less important outbreak occurred in
Oxfordshire, in which many inhabitants of Bucks
(probably of the Catholic districts in the North)
were concerned. It was led by certain priests,
but was quickly suppressed by Lord Grey of
Wilton, who marched through the disturbed
region with a force of German mercenaries, and
hanged several priests on their own church towers.
A spirit of bitterness was being engendered,
which" was preparing the way for a frightful re
action.

CHAPTEE XVIII
JOHN KNOX IN BUCKINGHAMSHIRE
In the spring of 1553 it became evident that the
delicate, precocious boy-king was passing away.
The Court removed to Greenwich, and the poor
lonely little Edward was soon confined to the
chamber of his last illness. On April 14th a
remarkable incident took place at the Council
table. John Knox, afterwards so famous in the
history of the Scottish Eeformation, was at this
time in England, and had been appointed one of
the King's chaplains. He had been offered first
the see of Eochester, and then a living in Lon
don, but had declined, owing to conscientious
scruples ; and he was now summoned before the
Council to state the grounds of his refusal. Having
explained his objections to the polity of the Eng
lish Church, he was courteously dismissed. As
he had no objection to undertake itinerant work,
he was asked shortly afterwards to go on a sort
of preaching tour through Buckinghamshire.
The following minute appears in the Council
Eegister : —
" At Grenewich, the 2nd of June, 1553. A
173

174 THE LOLLAEDS
letter to the Lord Eussell, Lord Windesour, and
the rest of the gentlemen within the Countie of
Buckingham, in favour of Mr. Knockes, the
preacher, according to the minute's."
Two leading members of the Council at this
time, the Earl of Bedford and Sir Thomas Cheyne,
were intimately associated with South Bucks.
Cheyne belonged to the old Lollard stock already
more than once referred to. It is noticeable that
Knox seems to have begun his labours near Bed
ford's seat of Chenies. He may very hkely have
been entertained at the old manor-house, still
standing, which was built a few years before his
visit, and perhaps at Lord Windsor's seat at
Bradenham. The Lord Eussell to whom he was
commended was probably Lord Francis, after
wards the second Earl, a man who not only
staunchly supported the cause of Protestantism,
but also cherished the traditions of the older re
forming movement. At his death in 1585, when
he left sums of money for ' ' godly sermons ' ' to
be preached in Chenies Church and elsewhere
he bequeathed his MSS. of Wycliffe's works, as
a valued possession, to his friend Lord Burleigh ;
and in the Countess Cowper's library at Wrest
Park is a vellum folio of Wycliffe's sermons,
copied about 1400, bearing the autograph " Fran
cis Eussell " and the date 1556.
Knox left London with forebodings gloomy as
Jonah's when he cried, "Yet forty days, and
Nineveh shall be destroyed." He saw that the
death of Edward meant the accession of Mary,

JOHN KNOX 175
an alliance with her uncle Charles V. of Germany,
and a deadly blow to the Protestant cause through
out Europe. We have scarcely any definite
records of his work in Buckinghamshire. It com
menced, as we have seen, early in June, and he
was back again in London on the 19th of July.
But he had visited the city during the interval,
for the earliest of his published letters is dated
from London on the 23rd of June. On
the 6th of July the young King died. The
unprincipled attempt of Northumberland to set
upon the throne Lady Jane Grey, whom he had
married to his son Lord Guildford Dudley during
Edward's illness, roused the spirit of the nation
on behalf of Mary. The county of Bucks, both
Catholic and Protestant, was enthusiastically in
her favour, and the boroughs of Wycombe, Ayles
bury, and Buckingham, owed their charters of
incorporation to the loyalty they displayed in her
cause at this time. Sir Edward Hastings, of
Denham, had raised the musters of the county
in Mary's name, and had been joined by Sir
Thomas Wharton, of Upper Winchendon, and
by Sir Edmund Peckham, Cofferer of the House
hold, who had abandoned the court of the
' ' Twelfth Day Queen ' ' with the treasure under
his charge. Knox knew that in opposing Mary's
succession he Would speak at the peril of his life
from the troopers of Hastings ; while even his
Protestant hearers Would be offended at the inter
ference of a foreigner with the claims of their
liege lady. But " he that never feared the face

176 THE LOLLAEDS
of man," as the Eegent Morton called him, was
not to be restrained by such considerations.
Wherever he went, he declared " that the last
trumpet was then in blowing within the realm
of England, and therefore ought every man to
prepare himself for battle. For if the trumpet
should altogether cease and be put to silence, it
should never blow again with the like force with
in the said realm, till the coming of the Lord
Jesus." On Sunday, July 16th, just before his return
to London, Knox preached in Amersham Church.
Among his hearers there might be survivors of
the Lollards who had been branded on the cheek
and forced to do penance in the dark days of
persecution, which he now foresaw were about
to return, little as his hearers realised their dan
ger. Writing at "Dieppe, two years later, he calls
to mind the agitated scene ; and in his Admonition
unto the Professors of God's Truth in England,
he makes the following reference to it, with the
marginal heading, " What was sayd in Hammer-
shame, when uproure was for establyshing of
Marye in authority " : —
' ' In wrytinge herof it came to mind that after
the death of that innocent and moste godlye
kynge, Edwarde the Sixte, whyle that great
tumulte was in Englande for the establyshing of
that most unhappye and wycked womane's
authoritie (I mean of her that now raigneth in
Goddes wrath) , entreatinge the same argument in
a towne in Buckinghamshyre, named Hammer-

JOHN KNOX 177
shame, before a great congregation, with sorrow
ful herte and wepynge eyes, I fel into this
exclamation : —
" ' 0 Englande ! now is Goddes wrath kyndled
againste thee. Nowe hath he begonne to puny-
she, as he hath threatened a longe whyle, by
his true prophetes and messengers. He hath
taken from thee the crowne of thy glorie, and
hath left thee without honour, as a bodye with
out a heade. And this appeareth to be onely the
begynnynge of sorowes, which appeareth to en-
crease. For I perceave that the herte, the
tounge, and the hande of one Englysh man is
bente agaynst another, and devision to be in the
whole realme, which is an assured signe of deso
lation to come.
"'0 Englande, Englande! doest thou not
consider that thy common wealth is lyke a shippe
sailyng on the sea ; yf thy maryners and gover-
nours shall one consume another, shalte thou not
suffer shipwracke in processe of tyme ?
"'0 Englande, Englande! alasse 1 these
plagues are powred upon thee, for that thou
wouldest not knowe the moste happy tyme of
thy gentle visitation. But wilt thou yet obey
the voyce of thy God, and submitte thy selfe to
his holy words? Traely, yf thou wilt, thou
shalt fynde mercye in his syght, and the estate
of thy common wealth shall be preserved.
" ' But, 0 Englande, Englande ! yf thou obsti
nately wilt returne into Egypt, that is, yf thou
contract mariage, confederacy, or league with

178 THE LOLLAEDS
such princes as do mayntayne and advaunce
ydolatrie (such as the Emperoure, which is no
less enemie unto Christe than ever was Nero)
yf for the pleasure and friendshippe (I say) of
such princes, thou returne to thyne olde abhomi-
nations, before used under the Papistrie, then
assuredly, 0 Englande, thou shalt be plagued,
and brought to destruction, by the meanes of
those whose favoures thou sekest, and by whome
thou art procured to fall from Christ, and to serve
Anti-Christ.' " This, and muche more, in the doloui?' of
myne herte, that day, in audience of such as yet
may beare recorde, God wolde that I should pro
nounce. The thinge that I then most feared,
and which also my tounge spake — that is, the
subversion of the true rehgion, and bryngynge
in of straungers to raigne over that realme — this
day I see come to passe in men's counsels and
determinations." (Works, iii. 307-309).
It was in vain that the ' ' Twelfth Day Queen ' '
ordered Sir John St. Lowe and Sir Anthony
Kingston to repair to Buckinghamshire and quell
the disturbances there. When Knox returned
to London, on July 19th, he found the city filled
with " fires of joy and riotous banquetings " at
the accession of Mary.
It would seem that his was not the only voice
uplifted at Amersham against the new order of
things. Foxe makes no mention of his sermon
(though it is alluded to by Strype) ; but in the
Acts and Monuments (yi. 392, 393) we read that

JOHN KNOX 179
on August 16th, just a fortnight after Mary's entry
into London, and upon the very day that Eogers
and Bradford were imprisoned, "a letter was
sent to the Sheriffs of Buckingham and Bedford ,
for the apprehending of one Fisher, parson of
Amersham, a preacher " (John Fisher, S.T.B.,
who had held the living since 1544). On the 22nd,
the day of Northumberland's execution on Tower
Hill, "Fisher, parson of Amersham, made his
appearance before the Council, and was appointed
the next day to bring in a note of his sermon."
Probably he submitted, but became once more
a Protestant at Ehzabeth's accession five years
later, for he held the living till 1570. It seems
strange that Knox should have escaped a similar
reprimand, especially as, though in Kent at the
time, he was in London again a month later.
But his words were not forgotten ; and when later
on, he had to leave the Imperial city of Frank
fort, it was owing to his bold denunciation of
the Emperor at Amersham.
The evil days which he had spoken of were
not long in coming. The ecclesiastical laws of
Edward VI. were repealed in December, but it
was not till the close of the following year that
the laws against Lollardy were re-enacted. It
should never be forgotten that thirty-seven inem-
bers. Catholics as well as Protestants, and num
bering among them the great lawyer Plowden,
withdrew from the House of Commons, to their
eternal honour be it recorded, rather than sanction
Mary's intolerant policy. Among the list of

180 THE LOLLAEDS
names given by Strype is that of " Thomas Moor,
of Hambleton " (Hambleden), " Bucks," in the
old Lollard district — a worthy precursor of .John
Hampden and other liberty-loving Buckingham
shire squires in the next century.
On the outbreak of Wyatt's rebellion in 1554,
the Princess Elizabeth, who was at Ashridge, was
brought up to London at the Queen's command
by Lord William Howard, Sir Edward Hastings,
and Sir Thomas Constable. Foxe's account of
the harsh treatment she received is not borne
out by the documentary evidence, from which it
appears that she was brought up to London by
easy stages on account of her illness, and treated
with every consideration. She was committed
to the Tower, but was soon sent to Woodstock,
and then to Hampton Court. On her journey
to and from Woodstock she passed through
Buckinghamshire, and was greeted with respectful
sympathy by the Protestant party. On each
occasion she stayed one night at the ancient seat
of the Dormers at Wing, and on the later joujney
slept at the George Inn at Colnbrook.
We may pass the more readily over the perse
cutions of the three following years, because their
rage does not seem to have extended to Bucking
hamshire. John Taylor, who had become Bishop
of Lincoln in 1552, on the death of Longland's
successor Holbeach, had refused to attend mass
at the Queen's coronation, and was deprived of
his see. He would perhaps have shared the fate
of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, lout for his

JOHN KNOX 181
death soon after at his Buckinghamshire resi
dence of Ankerwyke. His successors, John
White (translated to Winchester in 1556) and
Thomas Watson, seem to have been merciful
men ; for only two appear to have suffered in all
their vast diocese , and it is said that one of these
was burned at the instigation of Cardinal Pole.
It is significant that the greater number of the
Marian martyrs, among the laity at any rate,
came from Lollard counties. This is well shown
in the maps of Eev. W. H. Beckett's English
Reformation (E.T.S., 1890).
Three victims suffered as near the Bucks bor
der as the Lynch Green at Uxbridge — John
Denley and Robert Smith, on the 8th of August,
1555, and Patrick Packingham on the 28th of
the same month.
On a brass of Ehzabeth's time, preserved in
Beaconsfield Church, are the following lines,
which Foxe (vii. 369) says were written by Robert
Smith in Newgate :^
Content thyself with patience
With, Christ to bear the cross of pain.
Which can and will thee recompense
A thousandfold with lyke again.
Let nothing cause thy heart to quail ;
Launch out thy boote, haule up thy sail,
-Put from the shore ;
And at the length thou shalt attain
Unto the port that shall remain
For evermore.

182 THE LOLLARDS
At last, in November, 1558, the Fiery Terror
of the Marian persecution was brought to a close
by the death of Mary on one day and of Pole
on the next. Immediately on the accession of
Elizabeth, a " Commission of Lollardy," which
had been issued by Philip and Mary in 1556,
was called on to give in its report, but it was
only in order to stay further proceedings. Early
in 1559 the acts against Lollardy were finally
repealed; although, as we have seen, an oath
against it continued to be taken by magistrates
till 1625.
Our narrative has now reached the close of the
Lollard period, and we have only to refer to the
way in which Lollardy has influenced the sub
sequent religious history of the district we have
had in mind. This has been singularly marked.
The Lollard spirit, like the Lollard traditions,
has never entirely died out of its old haunts among
the ChUterns. It showed itself in the yeomen
who marched to London to protect John Hamp
den on the threatened arrest of the Five Members,
and in the Greencoats who marched under the
same patriot's banner, with its haughty motto,
Vestigia nulla retrorsum. It showed itself not
less clearly in the patient endurance of
persecution by the early Baptists, and by
the peaceful Quakers whose remains lie be
neath the linden-trees of Jordans, and many of
the peculiarities of both these sects may be traced
back to the Lollards. It shows itself to this day
in the deep-rooted love of religious freedom which

JOHN KNOX 183
marks the inhabitants of some of the upland vil
lages, a love ingrained in their very nature by
the habits and traditions of half-a-thousand years.
A very surprising statement appeared in a letter
to the Academy of April, 15th, 1893, by Mr.
Wentworth Webster. He says : —
"In the year 1849 or 1850 I was laid up
for a week from an accident in riding at a lonely
farm-house. Row Wood, between Chalfont St.
Giles and Chenies. The old woman who waited
on me, the only inmate of the house except a
friend of the same age as myseK, called herself
an Old Methodist. I soon discovered that she
looked upon the reformed Church of England as
a comparatively modern sect, and asserted that
the body to which she belonged had received the
Gospel long before, and that they were descen
dants of the old Lollards. She indignantly re
pudiated any connection with Wesley's Metho
dism. The only books in the house were two or
three tracts belonging to the old woman. These
I read. The oldest of them dated from the last
century, and referred to an attempt of Lady
Huntingdon to include these Old or Primitive
Methodists in her Connexion. Her advances had
been repelled, and the same statement made
which the old woman repeated to me. This
small sect had then some kind of chapel or
meeting-room in Chalfont and in Amersham,
and was said to be more numerous in the counties
bordering on Wales. How far this is historically
true, or whether the little body, with its tradi-

184 THE LOLLARDS
tions of descent from the Lollards still exists, I
cannot say. Only I distinctly assert that such a
body making such claims did exist, both in the
last century and about 1850."
There are several points in Mr. Webster's
account, and especially his use of the term " Pri
mitive Methodists," which would suggest to those
most f amihar with Nonconformist history that he
must have misunderstood the old lady and her
tracts. Nor have I been able to discover any trace
or memory of the sect he describes ; while the old
lady herself appears to have been a respected
member of the Congregational church at Chalfont
St. Giles ! Still I am far from asserting that all
his statements are erroneous ; and it is a curious
fact that both in the Tenison MSS. in the Lam
beth Library, and in the Browne Willis MSS. in
the Bodleian, there are vague indications of the
existence of some peculiar sect at Chalfont St.
Giles in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen
turies. But the most lasting heritage bequeathed by
the Lollards is not to be found in sects and
denominations, or even in doctrinal protests
against Romish error, but in the yet unspent
moral force which resulted from their life and
work. For after all, their protest was quite as
much ethical as doctrinal. The striking words
of Archbishop Trench in his Lectures on Medi-
aval Church History (p. 259) are almost as
applicable to the English Lollards as to the
Waldenses : —

JOHN KNOX 185
"If any one turns to these authoritative wri
tings of the Waldenses, expecting to find in them
the fulness and freeness of the Pauline teaching
on the propitiatory work of Christ, or the forgive
ness of sin on our justification by faith in Him,
he will be disappointed. He will find the supre
macy of Holy Scripture asserted as against every
teaching and tradition of men ; but the prevailing
type of doctrine is more that of St. James than
that of St. Paul. Nor is this very strange. That,
as we have seen, which constituted the very heart
and kernel of the Waldensian movement was not
opposition to any doctrine taught in the Church
of Rome, but a desire, first stirred, up through
the reading of the Holy Scriptures, after the
highest form of Christian life, and that nearest
to the apostohc ideal. Only by degrees, and not
until they had been cast out, did the Waldenses
discover that doctrinally also much was amiss in
that body which had so violently separated them
from itself. And even then it was the corruptions
standing in the way of a high and holy living
which called forth their strongest protests — indul
gences. Purgatory  it was these and
similar abuses, abating as they did the moral
earnestness with which men should work out
their salvation, which aroused their most indig
nant remonstrances."
The Lollards were pioneers in the path of
religious, social, and political reform. All Eng
land owes them a debt of gratitude for the liberties
which they purchased with their blood and tears,

186 THE LOLLARDS
and not the least should the county of Bucking
ham honour their memory along with those of
the worthies associated with her story at a
later day — Hampden and Sydney, Milton and
Penn.

YALE UNIVERSITY

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