The Life of a Lollard

John Wycliffe was one of the earliest humanitarians and socialists as he felt extremely strongly that all human beings, whether they be rich or poor, should be treated as equals and in that respect campaigned for the extensively used Latin Bible to be converted to the native tongue which would make it accessible to all, rather than just to Latin readers who were primarily the higher orders of the church and the wealthy.

John’s following was not great initially, probably due in the main to a fear of the power of the Roman Catholic church, but those followers that he had were considered to be somewhat damaging to the Crown and the church and became a mild nuisance.

The most notable Lollards recorded at the time were a group of knights including Sir William Neville, Sir John Montague and Sir William Beauchamp.  However, Edward, the Black Prince (first son of Edward III) and John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (third son of Edward III) were also known to be Lollard sympathisers.

By the end of the 14^th century the Lollards were becoming a little more vociferous and as such were now beginning to really get under the skin of the Crown and the church so in 1401 King Henry IV who had not long been on the throne, passed the Statute De Heretics Comburendo (a law relating to the burning of heretics) which forbade anyone “to teach anything contrary to the sacrament or the authority of the church, under penalty of being burnt before the people” and hence the ‘kill fest’ began in earnest.

By Henry V’s reign, however, which began in 1413 the Crown and the church had united against the Lollards and had in the main driven them underground and so by around 1414 they had largely been contained.  The revolt rumbled on in the background of this unsettled period of the Middle Ages but thankfully the burnings at the stake fizzled out (no pun intended!).