denounced the mendicant orders as Satan’s own invention;--_non hæc satis inter se conveniunt_. Archbishop Usher has been at the pains to collect and compare the manifold accusations cast in their teeth and makes it manifest that “the testimony agreeth not together.”[153] Here, however, were many of the principal tenets of the reformed faith, long before the time of Luther:--in the fastnesses of these mountains (to use the language of bishop Jewel) were they found, even as it was in such places, that the older prophets prophesied from the Spirit of God. The Vaudois extended themselves. They sent forth a colony to Calabria which was basely and barbarously put to the sword, when the signs of the times foreboded a reformation in Italy; and struck the pope with “fear of change.” A settlement so distant could not affect England, or if so, very indirectly. But another division of the same people migrated to Bohemia; and the intercourse between England and that country in the time of Wickliffe was considerable. Natives of Bohemia were then students at Oxford;[154] and Richard II. chose a Bohemian princess for his queen. The partiality which she herself (as indeed her nation in general) manifested for the writings of our early reformer is an indication of some sympathy between the parties. The good seed must have fallen on ground prepared to receive it, or it would not have shot up so vigorously; and it is probable that the early heresy of Bohemia might help to raise up a Wickliffe for England, as he paid the debt back by giving to Bohemia a Huss and a Jerome. Certain it is, that catholic writers of the greatest authority, in treating of the doctrines of Wickliffe, have considered him as adopting those of the Waldenses, by whatever means he had become acquainted with them; and the Vaudois to this day claim a fraternal feeling as due to themselves from England, on the same ground.[155] Mr. Wordsworth, whose “Ecclesiastical Sketches” are in general scarcely more remarkable for their poetry than for their historical accuracy, points at this connection in his Sonnet on the Waldenses:-- These who gave the earliest notice, as the lark Springs from the ground the morn to gratulate: Who rather rose the day to antedate, By striking out a solitary spark, When all the world with midnight gloom was dark. These harbingers of good, whom bitter hate In vain endeavoured to exterminate, Fell obloquy pursues with hideous bark; But they desist not; and the sacred fire, Rekindled thus, from dens and savage woods Moves, handed on with never-ceasing care, Through courts, through camps, o’er limitary floods; Nor lacks this sea-girt isle a timely share Of the new flame, not suffered to expire.”