he is the ruthless denouncer of abuses, and is
thoroughly filled with the spirit which, four years after the second
recension of his book, found expression in the Peasants Revolt of 1381.
With all the archaism of his diction and metre, Langland, even more than
Chaucer, reflects the modernity of his age.

[1] _Vision of Piers Plowman,_ i.,220, ed. Skeat.

[2] _Ibid.,_ i., 222.

Even the universities were growing more national, for the war prevented
Oxford students from seeking, after their English graduation, a wider
career at Paris. William of Ockham, the last of the great English
schoolmen that won fame in the European rather than in the English
world, died about 1349 in the service of the Bavarian emperor. In the
same year the plague swept away Thomas Bradwardine, the "profound
doctor," at the moment of his elevation to the throne of Canterbury.
Bradwardine, though a scholar of universal reputation, won his fame at
Oxford without the supplementary course at Paris, and lived all his
career in his native land. As an English university career became more
self-sufficient, Oxford became the school of the politician and the man
of affairs as much as of the pure student. The new tendency is
illustrated by the careers of the brothers Stratford, both Oxford
scholars, yet famous not for their writings but for lives devoted to the
service of the State, though rewarded by the highest offices of the
Church. His conspicuous position as a teacher of scholastic philosophy
first brought John Wycliffe into academic prominence. But he soon won a
wider fame as a preacher in London, an adviser of the court, an opponent
of the "possessioner" monks, and of the forsworn friars, who, deserting
apostolic poverty, vied with the monks in covetousness. His attacks on
practical abuses in the Church marked him out as a politician as well as
a philosopher. His earlier career ended in 1374, the year in which he
first became the king's ambassador, not long after proceeding to the
degree of doctor of divinity.[1] His later struggles must be considered
in the light of the political history of the concluding episodes of
Edward's reign. In a few years we shall find the Oxford champion
abandoning the Latin language of universal culture, and appealing to the
people in homely English. With Wycliffe's entry upon his wider career,
it is hardly too much to say that Oxford ceased to be merely a part of
the cosmopolitan training ground of the schoolmen