[5] 38 Ed. III. stat. 2; 3 Ric. II. cap. 3; 12 Ric. II. cap. 15; 13 Ric. II. stat. 2. The first of these acts contains a paragraph which shifts the blame from the popes themselves to the officials of the Roman courts. The statute is said to have been enacted en eide et confort du pape qui moult sovent a estee trublez par tieles et semblables clamours et impetracions, et qui y meist voluntiers covenable remedie, si sa seyntetee estoit sur ces choses enfournee. I had regarded this passage as a fiction of courtesy like that of the Long Parliament who levied troops in the name of Charles I. The suspicious omission of the clause, however, in the translation of the statutes which was made in the later years of Henry VIII. justifies an interpretation more favourable to the intentions of the popes.
[6] The abbots and bishops decently protested. Their protest was read in parliament, and entered on the Rolls. _Rot. Parl._ III. [264] quoted by Lingard, who has given a full account of these transactions.
[9] This it will be remembered was the course which was afterwards followed by the parliament under Henry VIII. before abolishing the payment of first-fruits.
[10] Lingard says, that "there were rumours that if the prelates executed the decree of the king's courts, they would be excommunicated."--Vol. III. p. 172. The language of the act of parliament, 16 Ric. II. cap. 5, is explicit that the sentence was pronounced.
[15] If such _scientia media_ might be allowed to man, which is beneath certainty and above conjecture, such should I call our persuasion that he was born in Durham.--Fuller's _Worthies_, Vol. I. p. 479.
[16] _The Last Age of the Church_ was written in 1356. See Lewis, p. 3.
[20] Walsingham, 206-7, apud Lingard. It is to be observed, however, that Wycliffe himself limited his arguments strictly to the property of the clergy. See Milman's _History of Latin Christianity_, Vol. V. p. 508.
[24] _De Heretico comburendo._ 2 Hen. IV. cap. 15.
[26] _Rot. Parl._ IV. 24, 108, apud Lingard; Rymer, IX. 89, 119, 129, 170, 193; Milman, Vol. V. p. 520-535.
[28] There is no better test of the popular opinion of a man than the character assigned to him on the stage; and till the close of the sixteenth century Sir John Oldcastle remained the profligate buffoon of English comedy. Whether in life he bore the character so assigned to him, I am unable to say. The popularity of Henry V., and the splendour of his French wars served no doubt to colour all who had opposed him with a blacker shade than they deserved: but it is almost certain that Shakspeare, though not intending Falstaff as a portrait of Oldcastle, thought of him as he was designing the character; and it is altogether certain that by the London public Falstaff was supposed to represent Oldcastle. We can hardly suppose that such an expression as "my old lad of the castle" should be accidental; and in the epilogue to the Second Part of _Henry the Fourth_, when promising to reintroduce Falstaff once more, Shakspeare says, "where for anything I know he shall die of the sweat, for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man." He had, therefore, certainly been supposed to _be the man_, and Falstaff represented the English conception of the character of the Lollard hero. I should add, however, that Dean Milman, who has examined the records which remain to throw light on the character of this remarkable person with elaborate care and ability, concludes emphatically in his favour.