ven something of the course which it was to
run.

[Sidenote: The Lollards forerunners, not fathers, of the Reformation.]

There was a quarrel with the pope upon the extent of the papal
privileges; there were disputes between the laity and the
clergy,--accompanied, as if involuntarily, by attacks on the sacramental
system and the Catholic faith,--while innovation in doctrine was
accompanied also with the tendency which characterized the extreme
development of the later Protestants--towards political republicanism,
the fifth monarchy, and community of goods. Some account of this
movement must be given in this place, although it can be but a sketch
only. "Lollardry"[1] has a history of its own; but it forms no proper
part of the history of the Reformation. It was a separate phenomenon,
provoked by the same causes which produced their true fruit at a later
period; but it formed no portion of the stem on which those fruits
ultimately grew. It was a prelude which was played out, and sank into
silence, answering for the time no other end than to make the name of
heretic odious in the ears of the English nation. In their recoil from
their first failure, the people stamped their hatred of heterodoxy into
their language; and in the word _miscreant_, misbeliever, as the synonym
of the worst species of reprobate, they left an indelible record of the
popular estimate of the followers of John Wycliffe.

[Sidenote: Changes in the mode of presentation to bishopricks.]

[Sidenote: Right of free election conceded in the great charter to the
chapters and the religious houses.]

The Lollard story opens with the disputes between the crown and the see
of Rome on the presentation to English benefices. For the hundred and
fifty years which succeeded the Conquest, the right of nominating the
archbishops, the bishops, and the mitred abbots, had been claimed and
exercised by the crown. On the passing of the great charter, the church
had recovered its liberties, and the privilege of free election had been
conceded by a special clause to the clergy. The practice which then
became established was in accordance with the general spirit of the
English constitution. On the vacancy of a see, the cathedral chapter
applied to the crown for a conge d'elire. The application was a form;
the consent was invariable. A bishop was then elected by a majority of
suffrages; his name was submitted to the metropolitan, and by him to the
pope. If the pope signifie