CHAPTER I. THE LIGHT OF A DARK AGE. "Fame's lasting register Shall leave his name enrolled as great as those Lines to the Memory of A. Marvell, 1678. No part of England is more rich in historical associations than its midland counties. Though neither statues nor obelisks mark the spots where our ancestors struggled for freedom or for truth, the scenes are sacred; and Buckinghamshire, Huntingdonshire, Northamptonshire and Leicestershire, offer points not less memorable than were Platea, Marathon and Thermopylæ, in Grecian story. Our first journey with the reader shall be taken to the last of the counties we have named, and to the secluded, yet not altogether inconsiderable, town of Lutterworth. The traveller is here in the centre of England. Not far distant is Leicester, where Richard III. buckled on his armor for the battle of Bosworth, - a conflict which delivered the country from a cruel tyrant and a disputed succession; and which, ending the wars of the Roses, introduced a new era. In the same town Wolsey breathed out his troubled spirit, when Protestantism, headed by Anne Boleyn, became for the moment triumphant, and the cardinal began to stand in the way of his master. There, too, John Bunyan's life was spared, when an accidental circumstance substituted a comrade in his place; and so saved the future saint from death, that he might devote a rich genius to the cause of religion and of truth. Not far from Lutterworth, in the village of Thurcaston, Hugh Latimer was born. And on another side of the town stand the height and village of Naseby, memorable for that great conflict which displayed the military prowess of Cromwell, changed the fortunes of a great empire, and proved the ruin of a despotic tyrant and a perjured prince. The scenery about Lutterworth is not of the highest order. But the country, though flat, is fertile; consisting of rich, level grazing land, interspersed with good trees. If, in visiting the town, the traveller shall expect many memorials of the past, he will be disappointed; few antiquarian curiosities remain. Five centuries are, in truth, a huge period in the history of man, and most human structures crumble down before it. "The lines where beauty lingers" are altogether swept away, so far as the town itself is concerned; and for the characteristic buildings of the period most in his mind, for the sharp gables with overhanging stories, and every rich adornment of carved wood and florid plaster, the visitant must draw upon his imagination. Instead of these, he will find only buildings constructed with the most mathematical precision, and of the reddest of red brick. Lutterworth is, in short, a quiet, well-to-do-looking town, exhibiting everywhere modern neatness and respectability, but totally unlike what it must have been in 1350; when, with more picturesqueness, it must have contained much squalid poverty, wretched ventilation, and deplorable agriculture. On the whole, though with some restiveness, we prefer the place as it is. But Lutterworth contains one building worth all the rest; having, it is true, little about it likely to prove attractive to a stranger, but full of interest when one is aware that this is the ancient church of John Wiclif.-The name of the reformer was spelt in many different ways, like those of Shakespear, Rawleigh and others, and perhaps was not written uniformly even by its possessor. We choose the form in which the name appears when the reformer was appointed papal delegate, in 1374. A grave, quiet sanctity, renders the old church at Lutterworth attractive, and even imposing. The walls are rent, patched, and buttressed. The windows, dim with age, admit a struggling and murky light. The old porch seems to have been constructed for the days when marriages were not yet celebrated within ecclesiastical edifices, but at their entrance. On the rectory side of the building, a low portal, which seems specially appropriated to the officiating clergyman, receives interest from the thought that by it, probably, Wiclif passed to the performance of his sacred duties. Though close to the town, the grave-yard is quiet and secluded; and when, towards evening, the overhanging trees are casting their thick shadows over the venerable pile, the gloom and silence answer well to the dusky memories of the period which renders the scene memorable. The exterior of the church is, however, its greatest attraction; the interior is scarcely worthy of its associations. A slovenly, semi-Grecian, but altogether barbaric hand, has been busy at the processes of restoration, removing, repairing and enlarging, Wiclif's pulpit, and leaving the interior of the church in a state of miserable and most unmeaning transformation. But the vestry still retains the table on which the reformer was once wont to dispense a primitive hospitality, a fine piece of old oak; and the vestment which he wore when officiating at the altar is still pre served, embroidered with angels, and now shut up in a glass case, like some relics of saints in continental churches. The first view of this popish habiliment is somewhat startling; for the world has learned almost to regard Wiclif as a Protestant,—which he was in fact, but not then in name; and, as one looks upon the time worn garment, it becomes invested with very peculiar associations, reminding us of him who has grown too large for his system, but is still obliged to keep within its narrow limits, and compelling us to pity the contest — the terrible contest - going on still, in many a mind, conscientious as Wiclif's was, between the claims of position on the one hand, and of convictions on the other. Those dingy rafters, too, over head, look as if they might once have ochoed to the reformer's voice. But this is rendered somewhat doubtful by the fact that, in 1703, a violent storm blew down the ancient spirea tapering and very lofty cone, surmounted by a ball into the nave, leaving it to be replaced by a structure bearing no kind of resemblance to the original erection. Though somewhat out of place, it may illustrate one peculiarity of a state church—its want of ready adjustment to circumstances as they arise to observe that the necessary repairs consequent on this accident involved the then existing rector - the Rev. H. Meriton in a prolonged chancery suit. He had collected money by brief, for the purpose of repairing the edifice, which the high wind had nearly destroyed. But, though personally above suspicion, he had applied part of that money to the repairing of the church; a condition "not in the bond." The troubles incident on this litigation shortened the poor man's life.* To this living of Lutterworth, John de Wiclif, so called from the place of his birth, on the banks of the Tees, Yorkshire, was presented by the crown in the year 1375, when about fifty years of age. He held the rectory about ten years. The services which led to his appointment may be briefly told. Wiclif, one of the best scholars of his time, had attained great distinction as the most advanced man in the University of Oxford *Nichols' Hist. and Ant. of Leicestershire. (which has not always been in arrear of the age). He had signalized himself by the offensive war he had carried on, in behalf of that university, against the mendicant friars. The fashion of monkery, which had been extremely popular during the reigns of the Anglo-Norman kings, had been for some time on the wane; and the disgust excited by the venality and licentiousness of the religious houses had called into existence the begging orders, who, abjuring monastic establishments, professed poverty, and, as wandering priests, subsisted on the alms of the devout. Yielding, in their turn, however, to the temptations of the times, these wandering friars soon began to wallow in the mire of corruption which had swallowed up their predecessors. These friars were divided into four principal orders, and indeed were, by the constitutions of Pope Gregory X., limited to that number: the Dominicans, established by St. Dominic, founder of the Inquisition; the Franciscan or Gray friars, established by St. Francis of Assisa, called also Cordeliers from the knotted cord which they wore suspended from their girdles; the Carmelites or White friars, and the Augustinian or Austin friars. Many cities were divided and mapped out among these four orders, each of which was licensed to beg within a given district; whence the mendicants were called "limitours." The doctrine of these friars was, that the Founder of the Christian religion was himself a beggar, and that mendicancy was a gospel ordinance. Every reader of Milton is familiar with the passage which Bentley would fain have expunged as an interpolation. 'Embryos and idiots, eremites and friars White, black and gray, with all their trumpery. Then might ye see * * * Cowls, hoods and habits, with their wearers tossed |