this William of Wykeham was expressly excepted.

[1] _Return of Members of Parliament_, pt. i., 193-97; _Chron.
Angliae_, p. 112, understates the case.

The convocation of Canterbury proved less accommodating than the
parliament. Under the able leadership of Bishop Courtenay, it took up
the cause of the Bishop of Winchester, refused to join in a grant of
money until he had taken his place in convocation, and, triumphing at
last over the time-serving of Sudbury and the hesitation of Wykeham
himself, persuaded the bishop to join their deliberations. Lancaster met
the opposition of convocation by calling to his aid the Oxford doctor
whom the clergy had already begun to look upon as the enemy of the
privileges of their order. Wycliffe was not as yet under suspicion of
direct dogmatic heresy. He had not yet clothed himself in the armour of
his Balliol predecessor, Fitzralph, to wage war against the mendicant
orders. But he had already formulated his theory that dominion was
founded on grace, had declared that the pope had no right to
excommunicate any one, or if he had that any simple priest could absolve
the culprit from his sentence, and he had shown a hatred so bitter of
clerical worldliness and clerical property that he was looked upon as
the special enemy of the great land-holding prelates and of the
"possessioner" monks, whose lands, he maintained, could be resumed by
the representatives of the donors at their will. The strenuous advocate
for reducing the clergy to apostolic poverty was not likely to find
favour among the prelates. Wycliffe's only clerical supporters at this
stage were the mendicant friars, from whose characteristic opinions as
regards "evangelical poverty" he never at any time swerved.[1] He was,
however, eloquent and zealous, and he had a following. Fear either of
Wycliffe or of his mendicant allies forced the bishops to take decisive
action. Even Sudbury awoke, "as from deep sleep".[2] The duke's
dangerous supporter was summoned to answer before the bishops at St.
Paul's.

[1] Shirley (preface to _Fasciculi Zizaniorum,_ Rolls Ser., p.
xxvi.) thought that Wycliffe was "the sworn foe of the
mendicants" in 1377, and E.M. Thompson's emphatic words
repudiating the contrary statement of the St. Alban's writer,
_Chron. Anglice,_ p. liii., illustrate the view prevalent in
England in 1874. Lechler's _Wiclif und die Vorgeschichte der
Reformation,_ published in 1873 prove