the civil power; and sometimes one party, and
sometimes the other, prevailed. The friars became very fond of a notion
that Christ was a common beggar; that his disciples were beggars also;
and that begging was of gospel institution. This doctrine they urged
from the pulpit and wherever they had access.

Wickliffe had long held these religious friars in contempt for the
laziness of their lives, and had now a fair opportunity of exposing
them. He published a treatise against able beggary, in which he lashed
the friars, and proved that they were not only a reproach to religion,
but also to human society. The University began to consider him one of
her first champions, and he was soon promoted to the mastership of
Baliol College.

About this time, archbishop Islip founded Canterbury Hall, in Oxford,
where he established a warden and eleven scholars. To this wardenship
Wickliffe was elected by the archbishop, but upon his demise, he was
displaced by his successor, Stephen Langham, bishop of Ely. As there
was a degree of flagrant injustice in the affair, Wickliffe appealed to
the pope, who subsequently gave it against him from the following cause:
Edward the Third, then king of England, had withdrawn the tribute, which
from the time of king John had been paid to the pope. The pope menaced;
Edward called a parliament. The parliament resolved that king John had
done an illegal thing, and given up the rights of the nation, and
advised the king not to submit, whatever consequences might follow.

The clergy now began to write in favour of the pope, and a learned monk
published a spirited and plausible treatise, which had many advocates.
Wickliffe, irritated at seeing so bad a cause so well defended, opposed
the monk, and did it in so masterly a way, that he was considered no
longer as unanswerable. His suit at Rome was immediately determined
against him; and nobody doubted but his opposition to the pope, at so
critical a period, was the true cause of his being non-suited at Rome.

Wickliffe was afterward elected to the chair of the divinity professor:
and now fully convinced of the errors of the Romish church, and the
vileness of its monastic agents, he determined to expose them. In public
lectures he lashed their vices and opposed their follies. He unfolded a
variety of abuses covered by the darkness of superstition. At first he
began to loosen the prejudices of the vulgar, and proceeded by slow
advances; with the metaphysical