A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



sequent writers) that it met in 1380 and on several subsequent occasions in the 

 church of All Saints.^ Reference to the Fine RoUs^ however, shows that in 

 1380 the king and his Parliament met in the priory of St. Andrew, in the great 

 new dormitory, not as yet divided into cubicles/ There was indeed a meeting 

 held at the same time in All Saints', but it was composed of clergy assembled 

 in convocation, and the like is true of the subsequent occasions just alluded 

 to. This Parliament of 1380 was a memorable one, both for Church and 

 State. Opened by the young king, Richard II, and first addressed by the 

 chancellor, Simon of Sudbury, archbishop of Canterbury, it was chiefly 

 concerned with the raising of money for the wars then being waged in France. 

 The king asked for ^T 160,000. The Commons promised _^ 100,000, provided 

 that the clergy, as owners of a third of the kingdom, paid one-third of the 

 sum. The clergy, sitting in All Saints', where the message reached them, 

 demurred to this stipulation as an infringement of their rights, saying that, 

 ' their grant was never made in Parliament, neither ought to be ; and that 

 the laity neither ought nor had the power to bind the clergy, nor the clergy 

 the laity.' Nevertheless, they expressed their willingness to consider the 

 question independently, and eventually voted, approximately, the proportion 

 required. In the following month (December) the king formally notified the 

 southern archbishop of this clerical subsidy and of the times of its payment.' 



In the preceding year, when a graduated poll tax had been adopted, the 

 following scale had been imposed by convocation on the clergy : — Bishops and 

 mitred abbots ^4, beneficed clergy ^3 to 2s. according to the value of their 

 living, monks and nuns from 3J. 4^. to 4^. according to the value of the 

 house to which they belonged, and unbeneficed clerics 4^/. This had pro- 

 duced from the clergy >(^8,ooo. The exact method adopted to raise the far 

 larger sum of jr3 3,000, authorized by the convocation of Northampton, is 

 not known, but in all probability it took the form of a heavier poll tax. The 

 newly devised poll tax, passed on this occasion by the Parliament of 

 Northampton, was not graduated, and fell heavily on the poorer classes. It 

 was, indeed, the chief cause of Wat Tyler's rebellion of the following year.* 

 That rebellion, it will be remembered, was contemporary with, and by some 

 was even partially attributed to, the spread of the teaching of Wycliffe. A 

 great part of WyclifFe's work was done in this diocese and within a few miles 

 of the north-west border of Northamptonshire. He was the rector of Lutter- 

 worth, in Leicestershire, from 1375 till his death in 1384, and among his 

 conscientious supporters may be mentioned Sir Thomas Latimer, who bore a 

 well-known Northamptonshire name.^ 



It was where men most did congregate that Wycliffe's revolutionary 

 social tenets, still further emphasized after his death by his followers the 

 Lollards, gained the strongest hold. They caused considerable disturbances at 

 Leicester and at Northampton. In 1392 a formal complaint was made to the 

 king against John Fox, mayor of Northampton, who was charged with 

 infringing both ecclesiastical and civil rights by the headstrong character of 

 his proceedings. The complaint embodies so many vivid particulars, and 

 illustrates so well the extent and character of Lollardism in the county town, 



' Bridges, Hist. ofNorthants, i, 429. 



' Hartshorne, Memorials of Northampton, 163-7 > Serjeantson, Hist, of All Saints', 32. 

 ' Fine R. 4 Ric. II, m. 22. * Stubbs, Const. Hist, ii, 485-7. 



' Hen. Knighton (Rolls Ser.), ii, 181. 



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