The Archbishop sent down a commissary, Peter Stokes, a Carmelite friar, to Oxford, to prohibit the teaching of incorrect doctrines, but avoiding any mention of the teacher's name. The University authorities were by no means pleased at this invasion, so they held it, of their ancient privileges. The Chancellor Rygge had just appointed Nicholas Hereford, a devoted follower of Wycliffe, to preach before the University; he now appointed a no less loyal follower, Philip Repyngdon to the same office. His sermon was an outspoken defence of the Lollards. Stokes reported that he dared not publish the Archbishop's mandate, that he went about in the fear of his life; for scholars with arms concealed beneath their gowns accompanied the preachers and it appeared that not the Chancellor only, but both the Proctors were Wycliffites, or at least preferred to support the Wycliffites to abating one jot of what they considered the privileges of the University. And for once the Mayor was of the same opinion as the rulers of the University. Still, when the Chancellor was summoned before the Archbishop in London, he did not venture to disobey, and promptly cleared himself of any suspicion of heresy. The council met again at the Blackfriars, and Rygge submissively took his seat in it. On his bended knees he apologised for his disobedience to the Archbishop's orders, and only obtained pardon through the influence of William of Wykeham. Short work was made of the Oxford Wycliffites; they were generally, and four of them by name, suspended from all academical functions. Rygge returned to Oxford, with a letter from Courtenay which repeated the condemnation of the four preachers, adding to their names the name of Wycliffe himself. The latter was likened by the Archbishop to a serpent which emits noxious poison. But the Chancellor protested he dared not execute this mandate, and a royal warrant had to be issued to compel him. Meanwhile he showed his real feeling in the matter by suspending a prominent opponent of the Wycliffites who had called them by the offensive name of Lollards ("idle babblers"). But the council in London went on to overpower the party by stronger measures.[20] Wycliffe had apparently retired before the storm burst upon Oxford. John of Gaunt was appealed to by the preachers named. But the great Duke of Lancaster had no desire to incur the charge of encouraging heresy. He pronounced the opinions of Hereford and Repyngdon on the nature of the eucharist utterly detestable. The last hope of Lollardism was gone. Wycliffe himself retired unmolested to Lutterworth, where he died and was buried. "Admirable," says Fuller "that a hare so often hunted with so many packs of dogs should die at last quietly sitting in his form." Just as he owed his influence as a Reformer to the skill and fame as a schoolman which he had acquired at Oxford, so now his immunity was due to his reputation as the greatest scholastic doctor in the "second school of the Church."