er part of the history of the Reformation.
It was a separate phenomenon, provoked by the same causes which produced
their true fruit at a later period; but it formed no portion of the stem on
which those fruits ultimately grew. It was a prelude which was played out,
and sank into silence, answering for the time no other end than to make the
name of heretic odious in the ears of the English nation. In their recoil
from their first failure, the people stamped their hatred of heterodoxy
into their language; and in the word _miscreant_, misbeliever, as the
synonym of the worst species of reprobate, they left an indelible record of
the popular estimate of the followers of John Wycliffe.

The Lollard story opens with the disputes between the crown and the see of
Rome on the presentation to English benefices. For the hundred and fifty
years which succeeded the Conquest, the right of nominating the
archbishops, the bishops, and the mitred abbots, had been claimed and
exercised by the crown. On the passing of the great charter, the church had
recovered its liberties, and the privilege of free election had been
conceded by a special clause to the clergy. The practice which then became
established was in accordance with the general spirit of the English
constitution. On the vacancy of a see, the cathedral chapter applied to the
crown for a conge d'elire. The application was a form; the consent was
invariable. A bishop was then elected by a majority of suffrages; his name
was submitted to the metropolitan, and by him to the pope. If the pope
signified his approval, the election was complete; consecration followed;
and the bishop having been furnished with his bulls of investiture, was
presented to the king, and from him received "the temporalities" of his
see. The mode in which the great abbots were chosen was precisely similar;
the superiors of the orders to which the abbeys belonged were the channels
of communication with the pope, in the place of the archbishops; but the
elections in themselves were free, and were conducted in the same manner.
The smaller church benefices, the small monasteries or parish churches,
were in the hands of private patrons, lay or ecclesiastical; but in the
case of each institution a reference was admitted, or was supposed to be
admitted, to the court of Rome.

There was thus in the pope's hand an authority of an indefinite kind, which
it was presumed that his sacred office would forbid him to abuse, b