[386] Their activity as wandering preachers is well shown by “The tenor of the complaint made to the Kinge and his councell against John Fox, Maior of Northampton, and others exhibited in French by Richard Stermersworthe, a wolman,” year 1392–3. According to the deponent the Mayor who welcomes every “errant Lollard,” has caused “the whole towne in manner to become Lollardes. . . . All ribauds infected with Lollardry, that come to the said towne are all courteously received and maintayned as yf they were prophetts before all others.” The day after Christmas, the Mayor “brought with him . . . an errant Lollard to preach within All Saints Church.” He did the same later, bringing the “parson of the church of Wynkpole, an errant Lollarde, to preach.” Powell and Trevelyan, “The Peasants’ risings and the Lollards,” London, 1899, pp. 45 ff. [387] G. M. Trevelyan, “England in the age of Wycliffe,” 1899, p. 199. [388] Statute 5 Rich. II, 2, cap 5. [389] He has often been considered as an adherent of Wyclif, for no reason save that both, at the same time, wanted radical reforms, not a few however of a different kind. Ball had some religious ideas peculiar to himself; thus, according to him, natural children could not go to heaven. [390] “Chronicon Angliæ,” 1328–1388, ed. E. Maunde Thompson, 1874, Rolls Series, p. 321. [391] Lord Berners’ “Froissart,” cap. ccclxxxi. [392] “Chronicon Angliæ,” 1328–1388, Thompson’s edition, 1874, p. 322. [393] “English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle of Hampole,” edited by Rev. George Perry, 1866, Early English Text Society, Preface, pp. ix, xv–xix. See before, p. 141. [394] The Dominicans in 1221; the Franciscans in 1224. See Dr. Jessopp, “The Coming of the Friars,” London, 1888, pp. 32–34, a work in which shine the ample knowledge and wide sympathies of the late rector of East Dereham, the “Arcady for better for worse” where he spent so many years. When Taine made his last visit to England I wanted, if I may be permitted to recall a personal souvenir, to give him a lunch where each of those invited would be a representative Englishman. Robert Browning represented poetry; Augustus Jessopp, who deeply impressed the chief guest, the country clergy. [395] “Vision,” Text C, pas. xi. l. 14. [396] Prologue to “Canterbury Tales.” [397] Jack Straw, according to the confession which his contemporary the monk Thomas Walsingham relates of him, would have liked to keep no other ecclesiastics on earth but the mendicant friars: “Soli mendicantes vixissent super terram qui suffecissent pro sacris celebrandis aut conferendis universæ terræ.” “Historia Anglicana,” vol. ii. p. 10, Rolls Series. [398] “Piers Plowman,” Skeat’s edition, Text C, pass. xxiii. l. 274. [399] “Ac it is ferre agoo · in seynt Fraunceys tyme.” Text B, pass. xv. l. 226. [400] “The Rule and Life of the Friars Minors,” in Dugdale’s “Monasticon Anglicanum,” London, 1817, vol. vi. p. 1504.