al, "the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church."
Wycliffism increased rapidly among the common people. Meanwhile Henry
was preparing for his French campaign; and at Constance the seventeenth
General Council of Christendom was just gathering, and John Huss, with
the Emperor's worthless safe-conduct in his pocket, was hastening
towards his prison--not much larger than a coffin--in the Monastery of
Saint Maurice. The Council ended their labours by burning Huss. They
would have liked to burn Wycliffe; but as he had been at rest with God
for over thirty years, they took refuge in the childish revenge of
disinterring and burning his senseless bones. And "after that, they had
no more that they could do."

The day that heard Huss's sentence pronounced in the white-walled
Cathedral of Constance, Edward Duke of York--accompanied by a little
group of knights and squires, one of whom was Hugh Calverley--walked his
oppressed horse across the draw-bridge at Cardiff. Life had agreed so
well with York that he had become very fat upon it. He had no children,
his wife never contradicted him, and he did not keep that troublesome
article called a conscience; so his sorrows and perplexities were few.
On the whole, he had found treachery an excellent investment--for one
life; and York left the consideration of the other to his death-bed. It
may be that at times, even to this Dives, the voice from Heaven
mercifully whispered, "Thou fool!" But he never stayed his
chariot-wheels to listen--until one autumn evening, by Southampton
Water, when the end loomed full in view, the Angel of Death came very
near, and there rose before him, suddenly and awfully, the dread
possibility of a life which might not close with a death-bed. But it
was yet bright summer when he reached Cardiff; and not yet had come that
dark, solemn August hour, when Edward Duke of York should dictate his
true character as "of all sinners the most wicked."

On this particular summer day at Cardiff, York was, for him, especially
gay and bright. Yet that night in the Cathedral of Constance stood John
Huss before his judges; and in the Convent of Coimbra an English
Princess [Philippa Queen of Portugal, eldest daughter of John of Gaunt],
long ago forgotten in England, yet gentlest and best daughters of
Lancaster, lay waiting for death. Somewhere in this troublesome world
the bridal is always matched by the burial, the festal song by the
funeral dirge. Men and w