sts" were active in the diffusion of their master's doctrines,
and how rapid their progress must have been we may see from the
panic-struck exaggerations of their opponents. A few years later they
complained that the followers of Wyclif abounded everywhere and in all
classes, among the baronage, in the cities, among the peasantry of the
countryside, even in the monastic cell itself. "Every second man one meets
is a Lollard."

[Sidenote: Lollardry at Oxford]

"Lollard," a word which probably means "idle babbler," was the nickname of
scorn with which the orthodox Churchmen chose to insult their assailants.
But this rapid increase changed their scorn into vigorous action. In 1382
Courtenay, who had now become Archbishop, summoned a council at Blackfriars
and formally submitted twenty-four propositions drawn from Wyclif's works.
An earthquake in the midst of the proceedings terrified every prelate but
the resolute Primate; the expulsion of ill humours from the earth, he said,
was of good omen for the expulsion of ill humours from the Church; and the
condemnation was pronounced. Then the Archbishop turned fiercely upon
Oxford as the fount and centre of the new heresies. In an English sermon at
St. Frideswide's Nicholas Herford had asserted the truth of Wyclif's
doctrines, and Courtenay ordered the Chancellor to silence him and his
adherents on pain of being himself treated as a heretic. The Chancellor
fell back on the liberties of the University, and appointed as preacher
another Wyclifite, Repyngdon, who did not hesitate to style the Lollards
"holy priests," and to affirm that they were protected by John of Gaunt.
Party spirit meanwhile ran high among the students. The bulk of them sided
with the Lollard leaders, and a Carmelite, Peter Stokes, who had procured
the Archbishop's letters, cowered panic stricken in his chamber while the
Chancellor, protected by an escort of a hundred townsmen, listened
approvingly to Repyngdon's defiance. "I dare go no further," wrote the poor
Friar to the Archbishop, "for fear of death"; but he mustered courage at
last to descend into the schools where Repyngdon was now maintaining that
the clerical order was "better when it was but nine years old than now that
it has grown to a thousand years and more." The appearance however of
scholars in arms again drove Stokes to fly in despair to Lambeth, while a
new heretic in open Congregation maintained Wyclif's denial of
Transubstantiation. "There