ohn of Gaunt, and which for long cast a deep shade upon
the effects of the teaching of Wyclif. The acquisition of a measure of
rights and power by the middle classes had caused a general swaying
upwards; and throughout the peoples of Europe floated those dreams and
speculations concerning the equality and fraternity of all men, which
needed but a stimulus and an opportunity to assume the practical shape
of a revolution. The melancholy thought which pervades Langland's
"Vision" is still that of the helplessness of the poor; and the remedy
to which he looks against the corruption of the governing classes is
the advent of a superhuman king, whom he identifies with the ploughman
himself, the representative of suffering humility. But about the same
time as that of the composition of this poem--or not long
afterwards--Wyclif had sent forth among the people his "simple
priests," who illustrated by contrast the conflict which his teaching
exposed between the existing practice of the Church and the original
documents of her faith. The connexion between Wyclif's teaching and
the peasants' insurrection under Richard II is as undeniable as that
between Luther's doctrines and the great social uprising in Germany a
century and a half afterwards. When, upon the declaration of the Papal
Schism, Wyclif abandoned all hope of a reform of the Church from
within, and, defying the injunctions of foe and friend alike, entered
upon a course of theological opposition, the popular influence of his
followers must have tended to spread a theory admitting of very easy
application ad hominem--the theory, namely, that the tenure of all
offices, whether spiritual or temporal, is justified only by the
personal fitness of their occupants. With such levelling doctrine, the
Socialism of popular preachers like John Balle might seem to coincide
with sufficient closeness; and since worthiness was not to be found in
the holders of either spiritual or temporal authority, of either
ecclesiastical or lay wealth, the time had palpably come for the poor
man to enjoy his own again. Then, the advent of a weak government,
over which a powerful kinsman of the king and unconcealed adversary of
the Church was really seeking to recover the control, and the
imposition of a tax coming home to all men except actual beggars, and
filling serfdom's cup of bitterness to overflowing, supplied the
opportunity, and the insurrection broke out. Its violence fell short
of that