Of course, the remarks by Audelay and Carpenter are unequivocally serious, but the similarity between the contents of their texts and Chaucer’s, the level of intellectual consensus which they share, is quite remarkable. Devout and devoted priests can all too easily have their piety misrepresented by their opponents, devalued through glib accusations of heresy—and that is a chilling prospect in any circumstances. These passages seem equally aware of that prospect, despite the differences of date.
All the essential constituents of Wycliffite thinking were in place during Chaucer’s period of literary productivity, and their dangers had been broadcast within the élite group of which he was a member. While attempts to procure Wyclif’s formal condemnation in England were unsuccessful until the Blackfriars Council of 1382,in 1381 John of Gaunt—Chaucer’s patron as well as Wyclif’s—had disassociated himself from the schoolman due to his radical views on the Eucharist.120 Indeed, 1382 is a crucial year in the history of Lollardy for many reasons. Three of Wyclif’s major academic supporters, Nicholas Hereford, Philip Repingdon, and John Aston, publicized their similar eucharistic views in London by means of vernacular handbills and posters, and one of the greatest of the early Lollard evangelists, William Swinderby, had charges brought against him by Bishop Buckingham of Lincoln.121 Swinderby has been credited with converting Sir John Oldcastle to Lollardy. Another of his converts—or at least a person whom he influenced highly whilst proselytizing in western Herefordshire—was Walter Brut, whose heterodox views on women performing priestly functions will be discussed fully in Chapter 3 below. Brut was tried by Bishop Trefnant of Hereford during the period 1391–93.In 1395 a party of Lollards pulled off a major publicity stunt by affixing their Twelve Conclusions to the doors of Westminster Hall and St. Paul’s.122 According to the Annales Ricardi Secundi, among this group were four of the “Lollard Knights” as named by the chroniclers Thomas Walsingham and Henry Knighton: Richard Sturry, Thomas Latimer, Lewis Clifford, and John Montagu.123 The poetic texts on which this book focuses, the prologues and tales of the Pardoner and Wife of Bath, are generally believed to have been written in the mid-1390s. It is impossible to prove how much Chaucer knew or cared about historical events of the kind I have been illustrating, but the supposition that he was unaware of all of them strains skepticism too far. His friendship with at least some of the “Lollard Knights” (an exceptionally literate group) is surely significant, though the caveat must be entered that the extent of the Lollardy of such figures as John Montagu and John Clanvowe, impressive poets both, is debatable, and the slipperiness of what the authorities deemed to constitute as Lollardy in this period should also be recognized.124
Furthermore, the great appeal of early Wycliffism to the English aristocracy should not be underestimated. Indeed, according to Michael Wilks, Lollardy started out as a court-centered movement, Wyclif having “from the beginning considered himself to be the spokesman par excellence for the king and the court” in their fight against papal lordship.125 Or,to be more precise, the schoolman grafted “an appropriate theology” onto the existing “anti-papalism” of “the families who administered the king’s government as a court party.”126 Wyclif’s teachings on civil and ecclesiastical dominion had much to offer those families.127 In material terms, they would be the beneficiaries of the disendowment of church property, and in moral terms, they would serve as the guardians of the English church, ensuring that its officials did their job properly and that a stringent reform program was implemented.128 But this alliance of mutual self-interest between Wycliffism and state power was not to be. Seeking the support of the hierocratic clergy in a time of need,129 Richard II bit the hand that would have fed him. Thomas Walsingham recounts how, “inflamed by the holy spirit” and judging it more necessary to give succor to the imperiled church than pursue his temporal affairs to their end, the king returned home early from Ireland (in 1394), following a plea by the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of London.130 The Lollard Knights soon felt the force of the new policy. Richard set about rebuking certain high-ranking individuals, “threatening them terribly” if they gave aid or comfort to the Lollards. He seems to have made an example of Richard Sturry, who was one of his chamber knights—at least, Walsingham singles Sturry out as having received a severe dressing-down from the king himself. On this occasion Sturry was ordered to renounce his heterodox views, and threatened with “a most horrible death” if he ever violated this judgment. It seems reasonable to suppose that Chaucer’s friends among the Lollard Knights (perhaps even Sturry himself )131 would have told him something about this traumatic event—which may have come as quite a shock to the old retainer, particularly if Wilks is right in supposing that hitherto royal servants had got the message that protecting Wycliffites and expressing sympathy with Wycliffite views (perhaps even holding them) was what their lords and masters expected.132 Long before Archbishop Arundel published his infamous Constitutions, Lollards and their supporters could feel— with good reason—in grave danger.133
Sturry’s indictment is dated 1395 by Walsingham. That was also the year in which, on a much happier occasion, Froissart presented the king with a luxuriously bound volume “about love.”134 Sturry had played a major role in organizing this audience, as the Frenchman gratefully acknowledges.135 But Froissart is silent on the subject of his patron’s supposed heresy, and of the specific views Sturry actually held, or is supposed to have held, we know nothing. We do know something about the (alleged) Lollard views of another chamber knight, Lewis Clifford, although the record is deeply frustrating because it leaves so much unexplained. When Clifford (again, according to Walsingham) recanted in 1402, he sent Archbishop Arundel a list of conclusions which, he claimed, were held by the Lollards.136 They include the propositions that the seven sacraments are only “dead signs” (the sacrament of the altar being a mere “morsel of dead bread”), that purgatory does not exist, that clerical celibacy was not ordained by God and hence all in religion can marry, and that consent alone is required for marriage (without any role being played by the church). K. B. McFarlane found this account slightly “fishy,” feeling that “the views Clifford is made to ascribe to the Lollards are wilder than usual.”137 Could it be, then, that, under duress, Clifford exaggerated such Lollard views as he knew of, in an attempt to distance himself far from them and impress upon Arundel the strength of his repudiation? Perhaps, but it should be noted that all the Clifford conclusions may be paralleled (in some shape or form) in other records of Lollard belief (and indeed can be traced back, however circuitously, to the thought of the arch-heresiarch himself ).138 For example, those relating to marriage find clear and substantial parallels in the Norwich heresy trials of 1428–31, and in the few surviving testimonies to the views of William White, a Lollard evangelist in that region who had practiced what he preached by taking a wife—quite illegally, since he was an ordained priest. Such beliefs will be discussed in Chapter 4 below, as part of a review of the (actually quite tenuous) Lollard theology of marriage, which was undertaken to ascertain whether or not any analogies may be found with Chaucer’s own treatment of the subject. Clifford’s conclusions indeed seem “wild,” but they may be deemed as being, in large measure, representative of certain strands of Wycliffite thought, and it is quite possible that Clifford himself once held views like that. Or something like that.
Clifford brought from France to England a copy of Deschamps’ poem in praise of Chaucer, wherein Clifford himself is named. Elsewhere Deschamps calls Clifford “amorous,” which presumably means that the Englishman is being complimented on his knowledge of the then-fashionable doctrine of fin amor.139 This seems very far from Lollard attacks on the use of “fables of the poets” in sermons,140 or the complaint of “William Thorpe” against those pilgrims who, en route to Canterbury, listen to pipes and bagpipes, sing loudly, ring their bells, and generally make more noise than if the king himself were passing through with his trumpeters and “manye oþer mynystrals.”141 Give them a month