nd
required that the pretended statute should be repealed, which was done
accordingly.* But it is remarkable, that notwithstanding this vigilance
of the commons, the clergy had so much art and influence, that the
repeal was suppressed, and the act, which never had any legal authority,
remains to this day upon the statute book;[*] though the clergy still
thought proper to keep it in reserve and not proceed to the immediate
execution of it.

But besides this defect of power in the church, which saved Wickliffe,
that reformer himself, notwithstanding his enthusiasm, seems not to have
been actuated by the spirit of martyrdom; and in all subsequent trials
before the prelates, he so explained away his doctrine by tortured
meanings, as to render it quite innocent and inoffensive.[**] Most of
his followers imitated his cautious disposition, and saved themselves
either by recantations or explanations. He died of a palsy, in the year
1385, at his rectory of Lutterworth, in the county of Leicester; and
the clergy, mortified that he should have escaped their vengeance, took
care, besides assuring the people of his eternal damnation, to represent
his last distemper as a visible judgment of Heaven upon him for his
multiplied heresies and impieties.[***]

The proselytes, however, of Wickliffe's opinions still increased in
England:[****] some monkish writers represent one half of the kingdom as
infected by those principles: they were carried over to Bohemia by some
youth of that nation, who studied at Oxford: but though the age seemed
strongly disposed to receive them, affairs were not yet fully ripe for
this great revolution; and the finishing blow to ecclesiastical power
was reserved to a period of more curiosity, literature, and inclination
for novelties.

* Cotton's Abridg. p. 285.

** 5 Richard II. chap. 5.

*** Walsing. p. 206. Knyghton, p. 2655, 2656.

**** Knyghton, p. 2663.

Meanwhile the English parliament continued to check the clergy and the
court of Rome, by more sober and more legal expedients. They enacted
anew the statute of "provisors," and affixed higher penalties to the
transgression of it, which, in some instances, was even made capital.[*]
The court of Rome had fallen upon a new device, which increased their
authority over the prelates: the pope, who found that the expedient
of arbitrarily depriving them was violent, and liable to opposition,
attained the same end by transferring such o