Bishop Courtenay of London to answer for his heretical
propositions concerning the wealth of the Church.

The Duke of Lancaster accepted the challenge as really given to himself,
and stood by Wyclif's side in the Consistory Court at St. Paul's. But no
trial took place. Fierce words passed between the nobles and the prelate:
the Duke himself was said to have threatened to drag Courtenay out of the
church by the hair of his head; at last the London populace, to whom John
of Gaunt was hateful, burst in to their Bishop's rescue, and Wyclif's life
was saved with difficulty by the aid of the soldiery. But his boldness only
grew with the danger. A Papal bull which was procured by the bishops,
directing the University to condemn and arrest him, extorted from him a
bold defiance. In a defence circulated widely through the kingdom and laid
before Parliament, Wyclif broadly asserted that no man could be
excommunicated by the Pope "unless he were first excommunicated by
himself." He denied the right of the Church to exact or defend temporal
privileges by spiritual censures, declared that a Church might justly be
deprived by the king or lay lords of its property for defect of duty, and
defended the subjection of ecclesiastics to civil tribunals. It marks the
temper of the time and the growing severance between the Church and the
nation that, bold as the defiance was, it won the support of the people as
of the Crown. When Wyclif appeared at the close of the year in Lambeth
Chapel to answer the Archbishop's summons a message from the Court forbade
the primate to proceed and the Londoners broke in and dissolved the
session.

[Sidenote: Death of Edward the Third]

Meanwhile the Duke's unscrupulous tampering with elections had packed the
Parliament of 1377 with his adherents. The work of the Good Parliament was
undone, and the Commons petitioned for the restoration of all who had been
impeached by their predecessors. The needs of the treasury were met by a
novel form of taxation. To the earlier land-tax, to the tax on personality
which dated from the Saladin Tithe, to the customs duties which had grown
into importance in the last two reigns, was now added a tax which reached
every person in the realm, a poll-tax of a groat a head. In this tax were
sown the seeds of future trouble, but when the Parliament broke up in March
the Duke's power seemed completely secured. Hardly three months later it
was wholly undone. In June Edward the Th