In the previous century begging had been proclaimed as a means of grace, and this new road to heaven was eagerly seized upon by the religious orders. Even men of rank and wealth turned Franciscan or Dominican and worked out their own salvation by standing barefoot, a rope around the waist, at the corners of the streets, holding out a box for the contributions of the devout. The widow’s mite entitled her only to the formal and general prayers of the convent; but those who would make a handsome gift, were presented with a document on vellum called a _letter of fraternity_ which gained for them special masses for the success of their schemes in this world, and for the tempering of purgatorial fires in the next. This traffic was profitable enough to attract a brisk competition among the different orders, for the monopoly; and each succeeding pontiff granted it to those who by their faith or works--chiefly the latter--had risen highest in his esteem. England swarmed with these sturdy beggars, and this gave handle to Wiclif’s attacks not only upon them but upon monks in general. He himself was a secular priest, that is a priest belonging to no monastic order; and Roman Catholic writers aver that Wiclif’s hostility to the monks arose from party spirit; and even protestant historians do not wholly exculpate him in that regard. We know that feelings quite mundane went for something occasionally in the measures of Luther and of Calvin; and it is not improbable that Wiclif had a touch of human nature as well as they. He had been made warden of Canterbury in the place of a monk named Woodhall. The archbishop from whom Wiclif had received this appointment died, and his successor dismissed him and reinstated the monk. Wiclif appealed to the pope at Avignon, who decided against him, saying that none but monks were entitled to such preferment. Wiclif sounded the charge. He denied the pope’s infallibility; he denied his right to excommunicate except for crime; his right to extend absolution except to the penitent; his right to any temporal power, especially his claim to be Lord paramount of England by the cession of king John. He admitted that the pontiff was Christ’s vicar on earth so far as he conformed to Christ’s precept and example and no farther. As for the monks, not only their begging but some other of their short-comings more questionable were the subject of his invective; and to show them what they ought to be and to do he sent forth his _poor priests_ as he called them, who clad in monkish garb, went into the streets and highways, not to beg but to preach the gospel and to read it to the people in English in the translation he was already making.