preaching ministry; and looked to the secular power to restrain the vices and reform the manners of the clergy, and to govern the Church. He shows that "most of the English Reformers were acquainted with Wycliffe's works: Cranmer declares that he set forth the truth of the Gospel; Hooper recalls how he resisted 'the popish doctrine of the Mass'; Ridley, how he denied transubstantiation; and Bale, how he denounced the friars.... Bale records with triumph that, in spite of the efforts to suppress (the writings of Wicliffe), not one had utterly perished."[375] And Dr. Rashdall goes the length of saying: "It is certain that the Reformation had virtually broken out in the secret Bible-readings of the Cambridge Reformers before either the trumpet-call of Luther or the exigencies of Henry VIII.'s personal and political position set men free once more to talk openly against the Pope and the monks, and to teach a simpler and more spiritual gospel than the system against which Wycliffe had striven."[376] Even if it be admitted that these statements are somewhat strong, they at least call attention to the fact of the vigorous Lollard leaven which permeated the English people, and are a very necessary corrective of the misleading assertions of Dr. James Gairdner on the matter. Henry VIII. had other popular forces behind him--the rooted dislike to the clergy which characterised a large mass of the people, the effects of the teaching of the Christian Humanists of England, and the spread of Lutheran opinions throughout the land. The Bishop of London, writing to Wolsey about the proposal to try his Chancellor, Dr. Horsey, for complicity in the supposed murder of Richard Hunne, declared that if the Chancellor "be tried by any twelve men in London, they be so maliciously set _in favorem hæreticæ pravitatis_ that they will cast and condemn any clerk though he were as innocent as Abel."[377] This dislike was not confined to the capital. The Parliaments showed themselves anti-clerical long before Henry had thrown off his allegiance to Rome;[378] and Englishmen could find no better term of insult to throw at the Scots than to call them "Pope's men."[379]