A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE 



to cook their dinner with." When Swynderby joined these two they soon 

 gathered a large following, and the ex-hermit preached in the chapel till the 

 bishop took alarm and inhibited him ; then he made the milestones on the 

 high road his pulpit for a while. 96 The reason for his inhibition was the 

 growing alarm at the boldness of the Lollard preachers. John Aston had 

 preached on Palm Sunday, 1382, at Leicester, and openly denounced transub- 

 stantiation, excommunication, the purchase of benefices, the wealth of the 

 clergy, the idleness of the religious. 97 On Good Friday following Swynderby 

 himself preached before the mayor, the vicar of Frisby-on- Wreak, the dean of 

 Goscote, and many others, and went still further : he said that tithes were 

 pure alms and should not be paid to bad priests, and that ordination does not confer 

 priesthood unless a man were inwardly called of God ; nor did God order the 

 mass to be celebrated ; indeed there were too many masses. 98 It was in July of 

 this year that the Oxford leaders of the movement 99 were finally excommuni- 

 cated, and about the same time, it may be supposed, Swynderby was inhibited. 

 When he disregarded the inhibition and preached in the open air, he was 

 brought before the bishop, and only escaped burning through the intercession 

 of his old friend the duke of Lancaster. 100 Even so his life was spared only 

 on condition that he made full recantation of all his past teachings in seven 

 churches : at St. Margaret's, St. Martin's, and Newark College, as well as at 

 Hallaton, Market Harborough, and Loughborough. 101 It is scarcely to be 

 wondered that after his public humiliation his popularity waned ; in a little 

 while he thought it best to leave the county. 102 



His companions were not dealt with so promptly, and the new teaching 

 still held its own in the neighbourhood of Leicester. Knighton even asserts, 

 that of every two men you might meet in the public street, one was probably 

 a disciple of Wycliffe. 103 Further repressive measures became necessary. In 

 1389 Archbishop Courtney himself visited the abbey of St. Mary de Pre, 

 solemnly denounced the Lollard teaching, and summoned some of their leaders 

 to trial. William Smyth and his companion, the chaplain Richard Wayte- 

 stathe, and six others whose names show them to have been ordinary craftsmen 

 and not of the upper classes, were of the numbers of those cited. As they 

 did not appear, but hid themselves, ' desiring to walk in darkness rather than 

 in light,' they were publicly excommunicated on the Feast of All Saints. On 

 7 November, an order was issued to the mayor and bailiffs for their arrest, and 

 William Smyth, with a certain Roger Dexter and his wife Alice, were brought 

 before the archbishop. They did penance and renounced their errors in the 

 church of the Newark hospital, and in the market-place. William Smyth 



15 There is no reason to doubt this story, as the penance given to William Smyth by the archbishop, 

 without naming this offence, shows that he had been guilty of an outrage to the image of St. Katherine. 



94 Chron. H. Knighton (Rolls Ser.), ii, 192. 



" Walsingham, Hist. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 53, says it was Wiclif himself who preached on Palm Sunday ; 

 but Knighton, who was on the spot, is more likely to be correct. 



M Ibid. 55-6. Knighton does not give any detailed account of this sermon, but he quotes similar 

 teachings repeatedly, saying that he had heard Lollard sermons many times. Chron. H. Knighton (Rolls 

 Ser.), ii, 174. M Wilkins, Concilia, iii, 165. 10 Chron. H. Knighton (Rolls Ser.), ii, 192. 



" This account of his sentence given by Knighton is confirmed by Line. Epis. Reg. Memo. Buckingham, 

 240, where ' St. Martin's Church ' is substituted for ' The Holy Cross," a name which would be more familiar 

 to Knighton. 



10 * Chron. H. Knighton (Rolls Ser.), ii, 198. He is said to have gone next to Coventry ; and in 1391 a 

 warning was issued against his preaching in the diocese of Llandaff. Wilkins, Concilia, iii, 215. 



1(0 Chron. H. Knighton (Rolls Ser.), ii, 191. 



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