Life of Edward the Black Prince Part 11

The panic caused by the revolt was over. For a week the insurgents had kept the country in terror. Now Richard made a progress through the counties with forty thousand men at his back, and the rebels suffered stern and terrible justice for their revolt. The charters granted to the peasantry in the first moment of terror were revoked, and they seemed to have gained nothing by their rising. But they had shown the landholders their strength; and though no immediate change was made, it became more and more clear that the old conditions of serfdom could not be enforced.

It is quite certain that Wiclif had nothing to do with the rising of the peasants. Still, at the time it caused him and his teaching to be regarded with terror by the respectable cla.s.ses of society. The communistic and socialistic views which had been spread among the people had in many cases been preached by men, who declared themselves followers of Wiclif. People were inclined to look upon the revolt as partly the outcome of his teaching, and so were no longer as ready as before to listen to his schemes for reform. Still Wiclif was not proceeded against with severity. Certain of his opinions were laid before a council of bishops and doctors of theology held in London, and were p.r.o.nounced erroneous; but Wiclif himself was left in peace. He stayed within the Church, living quietly in his vicarage of Lutterworth, and busying himself with his translation of the Bible till he died, on the 31st December, 1384. This translation of the Bible was the natural outcome of Wiclif's teaching. He had always insisted upon the necessity of the word of G.o.d being preached to every one, and had said that the Scriptures were the common property of all men. But as long as the Bible existed only in the Latin tongue, it was a sealed book to the great majority of men. Wiclif's earnest belief that all men should know and study it for themselves led him to conceive the idea of translating it.

It was a great undertaking for one man to contemplate, and single-handed he could never have accomplished it. He himself began with the New Testament whilst Nicholas of Hereford took the Old Testament in hand.

This man was a doctor of theology, and one of the chief leaders of Wiclif's party in Oxford. He got as far in his translation as the book of Baruch, when he seems to have been suddenly interrupted, probably by proceedings conducted against him on account of his opinions.

Wiclif himself translated the entire New Testament, and probably finished the translation of the Old Testament. The next step was to get copies of the translation made, that it might be distributed amongst the people. This was done rapidly, and in 1382 copies of the separate books and portions were circulated widely.

This English translation was made from the Vulgate--that is, the Latin translation--and not from the original Greek or Hebrew. Nicholas of Hereford stuck very closely to the Latin forms, and was almost pedantically literal; so that he was hardly successful in making his translation readable. Wiclif's translation is very different. He wished above all to put into his work the spirit of the English language; to write in such a way that he might strike home to the hearts of his readers. Of all his English writings, his translation of the Bible is the most remarkable for the force and beauty of the style.

Wiclif's writings mark an epoch in the development of the English language. Chaucer did much for it; but his poems could not influence the people in the same way that Wiclif's Bible did. Nothing else could have the same intimate relation with the spiritual life of the people as the Bible, a new book to most of them. No words could so firmly fix themselves in their memory as those in which their Saviour had taught them the meaning and the duties of their life.

The first translation of the Bible was soon found to be very faulty. It was revised with great care by Wiclif himself, and more especially by his friend John Purveys. It was not complete in its new and greatly improved form till after Wiclif's death.

The Lollards, as the followers of Wiclif were called, formed a strong party, and their fervour did not begin to die out till the end of Henry V.'s reign; but we cannot doubt that the movement would have had more permanent results, had it not been interrupted by the Peasants' Revolt.

With the remainder of Richard II.'s reign we have nothing to do. We have only thought it right to trace briefly the movement amongst the working cla.s.ses, which was the most important consequence of the Black Death.

In Wiclif's teaching and in the Peasants' Revolt we see the two most striking events of this epoch. In a certain way they were the results of the French wars, whose course we have been following. These wars produced a general stir and ferment; they gave the people new ideas and new life. The men who had earned such distinction by their brave fighting at Cressy and Poitiers were not content to settle down on their return home to the old state of things. They wanted greater freedom, better wages, an improved manner of living; their minds were open to receive new teaching. The result was the increasing discontent with their position, which led to the Peasants' Revolt, and the eagerness with which Wiclif's teaching was received on all sides.

But both Wiclif's teaching and the views expressed by the leaders of the Peasants' Revolt were premature. They were founded upon principles which could not at that time meet with general acceptance, and they were followed by a decided reaction. A period of darkness followed this great burst of intellectual life. In literature there were no worthy successors of Chaucer. The reforming views of Wiclif were slowly stamped out. The peasants failed in obtaining those results for which they had struggled. From the time of Chaucer till the days of the Reformation there is no great name in the history of English literature. It was not till then that intellectual life revived in England, and England took those great steps in advance which Wiclif had hoped she might take in his day. But we must not look upon the Reformation as in any way the result of Wiclif's teaching. By that time his ideas had faded away from men's remembrance, and the English Reformation received its impulse from Luther's teaching in Germany.

Even in this way the influence of the French wars was transient. The advantages which Edward III. and the Black Prince gained by their victories were lost, even in their own lifetime. In the same manner, the intellectual movement produced by these wars was stamped out, and was followed only by the long anarchy of the wars of the Roses.

[Ill.u.s.tration]