England, simply because he furnished a mouth-piece to those who had not as yet mustered courage to speak out for themselves, so mistaken is the conclusion of the Roman catholic, that the unity of his church is to be inferred from its silence. A third part of the clergy, Wickliffe himself tells us, thought with him on the sacrament of the Lord’s supper, and “would defend that doctrine on payne of theyr lyfe;” and Knighton, a contemporary writer, affirms, that you could not meet two people in the way but one of them was a disciple of Wickliffe.[161] Moreover, when he was cited before the bishops at Lambeth, it was not merely the influence of the Duke of Lancaster that protected him, as a useful partisan, but the multitude clamoured for his release, as a teacher of the truth; or “his person was saved out of the hands of his enemies,” (so says Fuller in his own inimitable manner) “as was once the doctrine of his godly namesake; they feared the people; ‘for all men counted _John_ that he was a prophet indeed.’”[162] The moment was peculiarly propitious to the extension of Wickliffe’s opinions. The schism in the papacy occurred a few years before his death; and the spectacle of two infallible heads of the church anathematising one another, could not fail to open the eyes of Christendom to the unwarranted pretensions of both. To this circumstance, probably, Wickliffe was indebted for permission to end his turbulent life in peace, in his own parish, and in his own bed; since the disposition of Rome towards this arch-heretic was sufficiently testified, when, forty-one years afterwards, the council of Constance, in impotent rage, condemned his bones to be exhumed, burned, and cast into the brook. But the Swift (such is its name) bore them to the Avon, that to the Severn, the Severn to the sea, to be dispersed unto all lands; which things are an allegory.