Another major chronicler of the time, “the Canon of Leicester,” that is, Henry Knighton, also speaks of this Parliament’s concerns about Lollard books. Earlier, at the time of the condemnation of Lollard errors in 1382, Knighton asserted that Wyclif himself, or the Lollards in general, had translated the Gospel into English, and he expressed his disapproval of exposing the laity to Scripture without the mediation of the clergy.83 It is telling, then, that he does not refer to the English Scriptures in his account of Parliament in 1388, where he says that the king at the bidding of the whole Parliament ordered the archbishop of Canterbury (William Courtenay) and the other bishops to prosecute the Lollards and examine their English books more fully (“librosque eorum Anglicos plenius examinarent”). The king further appointed examiners of heretical books and their abettors in every county (“in quolibet comitatu certos inquisitores de hujusmodi libris et eorum fautoribus instituit”). Knighton records one of the commissions, to the dean of Newark (New Work, Novum Opus) College in Leicester, Thomas Brightwell, a former Wycliffite.84 This commission, dated May 23, mentions by name writings of Wyclif, Hereford, and John Aston, and speaks of writings both in English and Latin, and the name of Purvey is added in other versions of the commission; but an earlier commission to the sheriff of Nottinghamshire, dated March 30, specifies only Wyclif and Hereford and does not mention the “English and Latin” qualification.85
H. G. Richardson admits that the letters patent cited by Knighton are genuine enough, but he says that “the other details of the chronicler’s story have little basis.”86 There was, however, clearly some talk among the Lords and Commons about suspect writings at this time, but whether the subject of the Scriptures in English came up, we cannot tell. The tradition in circulation at the time of Against Them was that the clergy of the realm, led by both archbishops, Canterbury and York, attempted to suppress a current English translation of the entire Bible as well as other translations of the Gospels. Gasquet points out the Foxe reading of “Bible” for “bill” in his edition of Against Them and suggests that the incident referred to an attempt of the clergy to sanction an approved vernacular translation.87 Perhaps John of Gaunt and his partisans were objecting to the phasing out of the already beloved EV by the new-fangled LV! A valid objection to LV would have been that it was less faithful to the literal meaning of the Vulgate. We know that Gaunt’s brother Thomas of Woodstock, the Duke of Gloucester, possessed a lavish copy of EV. In fact, this was the Egerton Bible on display in the King’s Library at the British Museum, labeled as “The English Bible, Wycliffe’s Translation,” which originally inspired Gasquet to question the Wycliffite connections with the Middle English Bible.88 It is rubricated for public liturgical use and contains a lectionary, or table of liturgical readings, at the end.89
Gasquet considers Gloucester’s ownership of this and other English Scriptures (a Psalter and two books of Gospels) to be evidence of their non-Wycliffite nature, since Gloucester was a firm supporter of Archbishop Arundel.90 Others, of course, argue the other way round, assuming the Wycliffite nature of the Bibles and taking Gloucester’s possession of them as evidence of his connection with or interest in Lollardy.91 There is, as Forshall and Madden noted,92 a brief Wycliffite rant in the Egerton Bible lectionary, complaining about recent bishops, abbots, and others being honored as saints. This has been taken by Matti Peikola as evidence that Gloucester supported the Wycliffites’ cause.93 However, he points out that the common sanctoral that follows contains some of the objectionable saints, notably Thomas Becket and Swithun of Winchester;94 and, even though the scribes were aware of the passage, neither of them seems to have composed it (or the lectionary itself),95 and we cannot conclude that they, much less the duke, approved of it. Anne Hudson has recently given an example of a brief Lollard commentary, part of it quite strident, incorporated into Richard Rolle’s Psalter commentary, and copied by several orthodox scribes with no sign of hesitation or unease.96
Let me add here some support to Gasquet’s argument that the early and continued use of the English Bibles for the liturgy is one of the strongest indications for the widespread acceptance of the translations by the general populace.97 Peikola reports that 40 percent of all surviving manuscripts of the Middle English Bible contain lectionaries,98 and Gasquet’s explanation is surely more plausible than Peikola’s suggestion that these tables were placed in the Bibles by Wycliffites to persuade the ecclesiastical authorities of their orthodoxy,99 and that the practice was continued by orthodox bookmakers once the Wycliffites lost control of English Bible reproduction.100
If a dispute over vernacular Scriptures did take place in 1388, it is certain that the current archbishop of York, Alexander Neville, did not participate in it, since he was not there; he was on the run from the Lords Appellant and was convicted of treason in absentia.101 His replacement as archbishop was none other than the chancellor, Thomas Arundel, bishop of Ely; the papal provision was granted on April 3,102 and it could hardly have reached England by June 4, when Parliament was dissolved.
The other parliament suggested by Hanna for the Bible debate, that of 1394, which was in session from January to March, conflicts with the final anecdote of Against Them, which is said to have taken place at the funeral of Queen Anne later that same year, at the end of July 1394.103 In the former, the archbishops of Canterbury and York are said to have been opposed to Bible translation; in the latter, the archbishop of York at that time (1394), Thomas Arundel, identified as the current archbishop of Canterbury at the time of the writing of Against Them, is shown to be in favor of Bible translation. Here is the story:
Also the bishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, that now is, said a sermon in Westminster, there-as were many hundred people at the burying of Queen Anne, of whose soul God have mercy, and in his commendings of her he said it was more joy of her than of any woman that ever he knew, for notwithstanding that she was an alien born, she had on English all the four Gospelers, with the doctors upon them. And he said she had sent them unto him, and he said they were good and true, and commended her in that she was so great a lady and also an alien, and would so lowly study in so virtuous books. And he blamed in that sermon sharply the negligence of prelates and of other men, insomuch that some said he would on the morrow leave up his office of chancellor and forsake the world—and then it had been the last sermon that ever they heard.104
Note the word “last” in the final line. In Dove’s base manuscript, the Wycliffite Trinity version, the text reads: “and 3an it hadde be the lest sermoun 3at euere 3ei herde.” This makes sense: if Arundel forsook the world, this sermon would be his last, and he would never preach another sermon. Deanesly accepted this reading, but Bühler and Dove adopt the reading of the other, non-Wycliffite, medieval manuscript (Morgan), which has best instead of lest, producing a clause that does not make syntactic or semantic sense: “and then it had been the best sermon that ever they heard.” It has been taken to mean: “it would have been the best sermon they had ever heard if Arundel had carried out his impulse to forsake the world and never preach again.” This is how Mary Dove reads it: “It is difficult to gauge the tone of these words, but presumably those who thought Arundel would ‘forsake the worlde’ judged it ‘the best sermoun that evere they herde’ because he would no longer be in a position to prohibit the English Bible.”105 But this is just after they heard him praise Queen Anne to the skies for reading the Gospels in English! Rather, we must conclude that people thought it the best sermon they ever heard for two reasons: because he approved of the English Scriptures, and because he disapproved of unworthy clergy and laymen.106
Gasquet cites John Strype’s acceptance of the historicity of this account, which shows, Strype says, that Archbishop Arundel “was for the translation of the Scriptures into the vulgar tongue, and for the laity’s use thereof.”107 This certainly seems to be the purport of the story, as told by our author. His account of Arundel’s sermon on this occasion was taken as historical by Herbert Workman in his exhaustive work on Wyclif,108 and it is also accepted by Sven Fristedt,109 and by Jonathan Hughes in his recent life of Arundel in the