med
that the Bible was the one ground of faith, and he added to his heresy
by translating that Book into simple Saxon English, that men might
learn for themselves what was Christ's message to man.

Luther's protest in the 16th Century was but the echo of Wickliffe's in
the 14th,--against the tyranny of a Church from which all spiritual
life had departed, and which in its decay tightened its grasp upon the
very things which its founder put "behind Him" in the temptation on the
mountain, and aimed at becoming a temporal despotism.

Closely intermingled with these struggles was going on another,
unobserved at the time. Three languages held sway in England--Latin in
the Church, French in polite society, and English among the people.
Chaucer's genius selected the language of the people for its
expression, as also of course, did Wickliffe in his translation of the
Bible. French and Latin were dethroned, and the "King's English"
became the language of the literature and speech of the English nation.

{61}

He would have been a wise and great King who could have comprehended
and controlled all the various forces at work at this time. Richard
II. was neither. This seething, tumbling mass of popular discontents
was besides only the groundwork for the personal strifes and ambitions
which raged about the throne. The wretched King, embroiled with every
class and every party, was pronounced by Parliament unfit to reign, the
same body which deposed him, giving the crown to his cousin Henry of
Lancaster (1399), and the reign of the Plantagenets was ended.

{62}

CHAPTER V

The new king did not inherit the throne; he was _elected_ to it. He
was an arbitrary creation of Parliament. The Duke of Lancaster,
Henry's father (John of Gaunt), was only a younger son of Edward III.
According to the strict rules of hereditary succession, there were two
others with claims superior to Henry's. Richard Duke of York, his
cousin, claimed a double descent from the Duke Clarence and also from
the Duke of York, both sons of Edward III.

This led later to the dreariest chapter in English history, "the Wars
of the Roses."

It is an indication of the enormous increase in the strength of
Parliament, that such an exercise of power, the creating of a king, was
possible. Haughty, arrogant kings bowed submissively to its will.
Henry could not make laws nor impose {63} taxes without first summoning
Parliament and obtaining his subjects'