is no idolatry," cried William James, "save in
the Sacrament of the Altar." "You speak like a wise man," replied the
Chancellor, Robert Rygge. Courtenay however was not the man to bear
defiance tamely, and his summons to Lambeth wrested a submission from Rygge
which was only accepted on his pledge to suppress the Lollardism of the
University. "I dare not publish them, on fear of death," exclaimed the
Chancellor when Courtenay handed him his letters of condemnation. "Then is
your University an open _fautor_ of heretics," retorted the Primate, "if it
suffers not the Catholic truth to be proclaimed within its bounds." The
royal Council supported the Archbishop's injunction, but the publication of
the decrees at once set Oxford on fire. The scholars threatened death
against the friars, "crying that they wished to destroy the University."
The masters suspended Henry Crump from teaching as a troubler of the public
peace for calling the Lollards "heretics." The Crown however at last
stepped in to Courtenay's aid, and a royal writ ordered the instant
banishment of all favourers of Wyclif with the seizure and destruction of
all Lollard books on pain of forfeiture of the University's privileges. The
threat produced its effect. Herford and Repyngdon appealed in vain to John
of Gaunt for protection; the Duke himself denounced them as heretics
against the Sacrament of the Altar, and after much evasion they were forced
to make a formal submission. Within Oxford itself the suppression of
Lollardism was complete, but with the death of religious freedom all trace
of intellectual life suddenly disappears. The century which followed the
triumph of Courtenay is the most barren in its annals, nor was the sleep of
the University broken till the advent of the New Learning restored to it
some of the life and liberty which the Primate had so roughly trodden out.

[Sidenote: Wyclif's Bible]

Nothing marks more strongly the grandeur of Wyclif's position as the last
of the great schoolmen than the reluctance of so bold a man as Courtenay
even after his triumph over Oxford to take extreme measures against the
head of Lollardry. Wyclif, though summoned, had made no appearance before
the "Council of the Earthquake." "Pontius Pilate and Herod are made friends
to-day," was his bitter comment on the new union which proved to have
sprung up between the prelates and the monastic orders who had so long been
at variance with each other; "since they have ma