The discontent which had given rise to the peasants’ revolt, had been fanned by the attacks made by Wycliffe’s "simple priests" upon the rich and idle clergy. The revolt occasioned a bitter feeling among the landlord class against Wycliffe and his followers, and after its suppression the Lollards were made the object of much animadversion. Their preaching was forbidden,(643) and Wycliffe was obliged to retire to his country parsonage, where he continued to labour with his pen for the cause he had so much at heart, until his death in 1384. (M349) The majority of the citizens favoured the doctrines of Wycliffe and his followers and endeavoured to carry them out. The Duke of Lancaster had no real sympathy with the Lollards; he only wished to make use of them for a political purpose. It was otherwise with the Londoners, and with John de Northampton, a supporter of the duke, who succeeded to the mayoralty soon after the suppression of the revolt. Under Northampton—a man whom even his enemies allowed to be of stern purpose, not truckling to those above him, nor bending to his inferiors,(644)—many reforms were carried out, ecclesiastical as well as civil. The ecclesiastical courts having grossly failed in their duty, the citizens themselves, fearful of God’s vengeance if matters were allowed to continue as they were, undertook the work of reform within the city’s walls. The fees of the city parsons were cut down. The fee for baptism was not to exceed forty pence, whilst that for marriage was not as a general rule to be more than half a mark. One farthing was all that could be demanded for a mass for the dead, and the priest was bound to give change for a half-penny when requested or forego his fee.(645) Steps were taken at the same time to improve the morality of the city by ridding the streets of lewd women and licentious men. On the occasion of a first offence, culprits of either sex were subjected to the ignominy of having their hair cropt for future identification, and then conducted with rough music through the public thoroughfares, the men to the pillory and the women to the "thewe." After a third conviction, they were made to abjure the City altogether.(646) It was during Northampton’s first year of the mayoralty that the citizens succeeded in breaking down the monopoly of the free fish-mongers. A number of "dossers" or baskets for carrying fish were also seized because they were deficient in holding capacity, and on that account were calculated to defraud the purchaser.(647) But, although a mayor in those days exercised, no doubt, greater power in the municipal government than now, we must be careful to avoid the common mistake of attributing to the individuality of the mayor for the time being what was really the action of the citizens as a body corporate. (M350)