Thus the greatest impulsion was
given to a reformation in doctrine; and thus, too, the exclusiveness and
arrogance of the clergy received the first of many sledge-hammer blows
which were to result in their confusion and discomfiture.
"If," says Froude,[19] "the Black Prince had lived, or if Richard II. had
inherited the temper of the Plantagenets, the ecclesiastical system would
have been spared the misfortune of a longer reprieve."
THE ASHES OF WICLIF.--The vengeance which Wiclif escaped during his life
was wreaked upon his bones. In 1428, the Council of Constance ordered that
if his bones could be distinguished from those of other, faithful people,
they should "be taken out of the ground and thrown far off from Christian
burial." On this errand the Bishop of Lincoln came with his officials to
Lutterworth, and, finding them, burned them, and threw the ashes into the
little stream called the Swift. Fuller, in his Church History, adds: "Thus
this brook has conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into
the narrow seas, they into the main ocean; and thus the ashes of Wiclif
are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world
over;" or, in the more carefully selected words of an English laureate of
modern days,[20]
.
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