nto the angels: but surely the angels
love.

Strange talk it was that Joan held with me yesterday. I marvel what it
may portend. She says, of late years many priests have put forth
writings, wherein they say that the Church is greatly fallen away from
the verity of Scripture, and that all through the ages good men have
said the same (as was the case with the blessed Robert de Grosteste,
Bishop of Lincoln, over two hundred years gone, and with the holy Thomas
de Bradwardine, Archbishop of Canterbury, and with Richard Rolle, the
hermit of Hampole, whose holy meditations on the Psalter are in our
library, and I have oft read therein): but now is there further stir, as
though some reforming of the Church should arise, such as Bishop
Grosteste did earnestly desire. Joan says her lord is earnest for these
new opinions, and eager to promote them: and that he saith that both in
the Church and in matters politic, men sleep and nap for a season,
during which slow decay goes on apace, and then all at once do they wake
up, and set to work to mend matters. During the reign of this present
King, saith he, the world and the Church have had a long nap; and now
are they just awake, and looking round to see how matters are all over
dust and ivy, which lack cleansing away. Divers, both clerks and
laymen, are thus bestirring themselves: the foremost of whom is my Lord
of Lancaster, the King's son [John of Gaunt], among the lay folk, and
among the clergy, one Father Wycliffe [Note 1], that was head of a
College at Oxenford, and is now Rector of Lutterworth in Leicestershire.
He saith (that is, Father Wycliffe) that all things are thus gone to
corruption by reason of lack of the salt preservative to be found in
Holy Scripture. Many years back, did King Alfred our forefather set
forth much of the said Scriptures in the English tongue; as much,
indeed, as he had time, for his death hindered it, else had all the holy
hooks been rendered into our English tongue. But now, by reason of
years, the English that was in his day is gone clean out of mind, and
man cannot understand the same: so there is great need for another
rendering that man may understand now. And this Father Wycliffe hopes
to effect, if God grant him grace. But truly, some marvellous strange
notions hath he. Joan says he would fain do away with all endowing of
the Church, saying that our Lord and the Apostles had no such provision:
but was that by reason it was right, or