"A turning point arrived in the history of the reforming party at the accession of the house of Lancaster. King Henry the Fourth was not only a devoted son of the Church, but he owed his success in no slight measure to the assistance of the Churchmen, and above all to that of Archbishop Arundel. It was felt that the new dynasty and the hierarchy stood or fell together. A mixture of religious and political motives led to the passing of the well-known statute 'De hæretico comburendo' in 1401 and thenceforward Lollardy was a capital offence." _R. L. Poole, Wycliffe and Movements for Reform, chapter 8._ "The abortive insurrection of the Lollards at the commencement of Henry V. 's reign, under the leadership of Sir John Oldcastle, had the effect of adding to the penal laws already in existence against the sect." This gave to Lollardy a political character and made the Lollards enemies against the State, as is evident from the king's proclamation in which it was asserted "that the insurgents intended to 'destroy him, his brothers and several of the spiritual and temporal lords, to confiscate the possessions of the Church, to secularize the religious orders, to divide the realm into confederate districts, and to appoint Sir John Oldcastle president of the commonwealth.'" _T. P. Taswell-Langmead, English Constitutional History (4th edition), chapter 11._ "The early life of Wycliffe is obscure. ... He emerges into distinct notice in 1360, ten years subsequent to the passing of the first Statute of Provisors, having then acquired a great Oxford reputation as a lecturer in divinity. ... He was a man of most simple life; austere in appearance; with bare feet and russet mantle. As a soldier of Christ, he saw in his Great Master and his Apostles the patterns whom he was bound to imitate. By the contagion of example he gathered about him other men who thought as he did; and gradually, under his captaincy, these 'poor priests' as they were called--vowed to poverty because Christ was poor--vowed to accept no benefice ... spread out over the country as an army of missionaries, to preach the faith which they found in the Bible--to preach, not of relics and of indulgences, but of repentance and of the grace of God. They carried with them copies of the Bible which Wycliffe had translated, ... and they refused to recognize the authority of the bishops, or their right to silence them. If this had been all, and perhaps if Edward III. had been succeeded by a prince less miserably incapable than his grandson Richard, Wycliffe might have made good his ground; the movement of the parliament against the pope might have united in a common stream with the spiritual move against the church at home, and the Reformation have been antedated by a century. He was summoned to answer for himself before the