In the earlier stages of Lollardy, when the court and the clergy managed to bring Lollards before ecclesiastical tribunals backed by the civil power, the accused generally recanted and showed no disposition to endure martyrdom for their opinions. They became bolder in the beginning of the 15th century, William Sawtrey (Chartris), caught and condemned, refused to recant and was burnt at St Paul's Cross (March 1401), and other martyrdoms followed. The victims usually belonged to the lower classes. In 1410 John Badby, an artisan, was sent to the stake. His execution was memorable from the part taken in it by the prince of Wales, who himself tried to reason the Lollard out of his convictions. But nothing said would make Badby confess that "Christ sitting at supper did give to His disciples His living body to eat." The Lollards, far from daunted, abated no effort to make good their ground, and united a struggle for social and political liberty to the hatred felt by the peasants towards the Romish clergy. Jak Upland (John Countryman) took the place of Piers Ploughman, and upbraided the clergy, and especially the friars, for their wealth and luxury. Wycliffe had published the rule of St Francis, and had pointed out in a commentary upon the rule how far friars had departed from the maxims of their founder, and had persecuted the _Spirituales_ (the Fratricelli, Beghards, Lollards of the Netherlands) for keeping them to the letter (cf. Matthews, _English Works of Wyclif hitherto unprinted_, Early Eng. Text Soc., vol. lxxiv., 1880). Jak Upland put all this into rude nervous English verse: "Freer, what charitie is this To fain that whoso liveth after your order Liveth most perfectlie, And next followeth the state of the Apostles In povertie and pennance: And yet the wisest and greatest clerkes of you Wend or send or procure to the court of Rome, ... and to be assoiled of the vow of povertie." The archbishop, having the power of the throne behind him, attacked that stronghold of Lollardy the university of Oxford. In 1406 a document appeared purporting to be the testimony of the university in favour of Wycliffe; its genuineness was disputed at the time, and when quoted by Huss at the council of Constance it was repudiated by the English delegates. The archbishop treated Oxford as if it had issued the document, and procured the issue of severe regulations in order to purge the university of heresy. In 1408 Arundel in convocation proposed and carried the famous _Constitutiones Thomae Arundel_ intended to put down Wycliffite preachers and teaching. They provided amongst other things that no one was to be allowed to preach without a bishop's licence, that preachers preaching to the laity were not to rebuke the sins of the clergy, and that Lollard books and the translation of the Bible were to be searched for and destroyed.