2. Spreading to Scotland
Rev K M Watkins
Through his writings, Bible translation and preachers, Wycliffe’s teaching spread to many parts of England. It also went, notably, to Prague in Bohemia, in the modern-day Czech Republic, where John Hus adopted just about the whole theology of Wycliffe. Condemned by the Council of Constance in 1415, Hus was burned at the stake. The same Council also condemned Wycliffe, who had died a generation earlier. As a result, 12 years later, Wycliffe’s bones were dug up and burned, and the ashes thrown into the River Swift. The link from Wycliffe to Hus is important. Luther was a devoted disciple of the writings of Hus, and the writings of Hus were based
1This is the second part of a paper given at the Theological Conference in October 2014. The first part outlined Wycliffe’s life and witness.
on the works of Wycliffe. Thus Wycliffe prepared the way for the European Reformation of the sixteenth century, and is rightly called its morning star.
But what about Scotland? Many Scottish students attended Oxford University at the very time when Wycliffe was at the zenith of his teaching career there. They could not all have returned home uninfluenced by Wycliffe’s ideas and principles. Hay Fleming perhaps understates the case: “Through the Scotch students who studied at Oxford University in Wycliffe’s time, his influence was probably felt in Scotland before his death”.2
History gives no concrete record of Lollardy3 in Scotland until 23 years after Wycliffe’s death, when in 1407 an Englishman called James Resby was burned at the stake at Perth. It happened a year after the Duke of Albany became Scotland’s governor, and he was a great opposer of Wycliffe. Wyntoun wrote of him:
“He was a constant Catholic;
All Lollard he hated and heretic.”4
John Bower, a Romanist abbot, wrote some 40 years later in his expansion of Fordun’s Chronicle, that Resby was “of the school of John Wycliffe, who for some time was held in high repute by the simple, but mingled with his teaching most dangerous conclusions”.5 This good man Resby, clearly a Lollard, had fled from persecution in England, only to gain a martyr’s crown in Scotland.
Resby was condemned on 40 different counts, only two of which are recorded for posterity, and both of them doctrines of Wycliffe: that the Pope was not the vicar of Christ; and that a man of a wicked life was not to be acknowledged as Pope. Bower gives the Romanist point of view when he says that “his other heresies were similar or worse”, and that “such errors . . . were culled from the heresies of John Wycliffe, arch-heretic”.6
It was true that Resby’s beliefs came from Wycliffe. Vicar means one who stands in for another. To this day Rome claims that the Pope stands in Christ’s place as His substitute – to be head of the Church, with universal authority. The Roman Catholic Catechism says: “The Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, and as pastor of the entire Church has full, supreme and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he
7 Catechism of the Catholic Church, Geoffrey Chapman, 1994, para 882.
8 MacEwan, A History of the Church in Scotland, p 325.
9 Quoted in MacEwan, A History of the Church in Scotland, p 327.
10 Translated by MacEwan, A History of the Church in Scotland, pp 330-331, from the Latin quoted by Thomas M’Crie, Works, vol 2, p 405.
11 Encyclopedia Britannica, 1902, entry on Lollards by T M Lindsay, downloaded 21 October 2014 from: http://www.1902encyclopedia.com/L/LOL/lollards.html.
12 Quoted in Herbert B Workman, John Wyclif, a Study of the English Medieval Church, vol 1, Clarendon Press, 1926, p 11.
can always exercise unhindered”.7 Wycliffe rejected that. So did Resby. And for that, Resby had to die.
Back in the 1380s Wycliffe’s Lollards had been charged in England with teaching that “priests whose mode of living is ungodly are not priests”.8 The connection with Resby is clear, for he was charged with saying that Rome’s greatest priest, the Pope, is not to be acknowledged as Pope if his life is wicked. This went back to one of Wycliffe’s earliest teachings – that no one had a legitimate right to hold any office if they were not “righteous”.
Resby’s antagonist was Laurence of Lindores, who was appointed Scotland’s “inquisitor of heretical pravity” in 1411. Laurence had argued: “What is more heretical than to say that the Pope is not in fact the vicar of Christ? It must be clear to every one that some one is in fact Christ’s vicar; otherwise the Church would have no head for administrative purposes. Such a vicar of Christ is the Pope . . . the Pope alone has this full power, because to him alone is entrusted the universal charge of the whole flock of God. . . . By such arguments Master Laurence refuted both Resby and his writings, set them on fire and burned them to ashes.” That was Bower’s summary.9
In 1416, the new Scottish university at St Andrews passed an act requiring all who commenced Masters degrees to swear that they “will defend the Church against the insult of the Lollards, and . . . resist with all [their] power whosoever adheres to their sect”.10 No doubt Laurence of Lindores, one of the University’s founders, was involved in this, and it showed that the burning of Resby and his books had not put out the flame of Wycliffe’s teachings in Scotland. On the contrary, “Oxford infected St Andrews, and we find traces of more than one vigorous search made for Lollards among the teaching staff of the Scottish university”.11 This was true, for Gerson, a prominent French Romanist who led the condemnation of Hus at Constance, complained in 1415 that heretics “who claim that their sayings are founded on holy Scripture and on its literal sense, and who say that they follow and recognise Scripture only, are present in England, have destroyed the University of Prague, and have even reached Scotland”.12
Current editions of Knox’s History note a martyr burned in 1422, without
13John Howie, Scots Worthies, Edinburgh, 1870, p 8.
14Hume Brown, History of Scotland, Cambridge, 1902, vol 1, p 219.
15Quoted by MacEwan, A History of the Church in Scotland, p 380.
16David Calderwood, The History of the Kirk of Scotland, Wodrow Society, 1842, p 48.
giving the precise nature of the heresy. There is no independent information for a martyrdom in 1422, and Hay Fleming has shown that an early manuscript contained no date, and that the date was added later. Some think it may have been Resby that was meant, and David Buchanan in his version of Knox’s History published in 1644 inserted Resby’s name into Knox’s text, along with many other interpolations of his own. Others think it was a different, unnamed Lollard. But one thing is clear: Wycliffe’s teaching was certainly present in Scotland in the first quarter of the fifteenth century. Because of Wycliffe, John Howie could rightly assert in the introduction to his Scots Worthies: “In the beginning of the fifteenth century, the reformation from popery began to dawn in Scotland”.13
James I, newly returned from England in 1424, “displayed special zeal” “against heresy”.14 Accordingly, an Act of Parliament in 1425 required all the bishops to “cause enquiry to be made by the inquisition of heresy for any heretics and Lollards, and to see that they were punished as the law of the Holy Church requires, calling in if need be the support and help of the secular power”.15 For the enemies of truth to pass this Act shows that there must have been a number of Wycliffe followers in Scotland, as Calderwood concludes: “By this Act it appears that there were many in the country that had some knowledge of the truth, to whom the nickname of Lollards was imposed”.16
Within a decade, the Act was implemented in the case of a Bohemian doctor of medicine called Paul Craw. It was no coincidence that this took place in St Andrews, the location of Scotland’s only university at the time. Scholarly interaction, including exchange of students, was happening not only between Scotland and England, but also with continental places of learning – where Hussite and Wycliffite teachings were being spread. It was also no coincidence that Craw’s martyrdom took place in 1433, not too long after Cardinal Henry Beaufort had come from England in 1428, to secure Scottish support in stamping out Wycliffite heresy. Although Laurence of Lindores, the appointed inquisitor for Scotland, had pursued Lollardy indefatigably, no deaths were recorded since Resby’s in 1407, apart from the martyr in 1422 possibly mentioned by Knox.
Everything Paul Craw was charged with had its roots in Wycliffe’s teaching. Knox says: “His accusation consisted principally that he followed Hus and Wycliffe, who denied that the substance of bread and wine was changed
17John Knox, Works, edited by D Laing, Wodrow Society, 1846, vol 1, p 6.
18John Macpherson, A History of the Church in Scotland, Paisley, 1901, p 59.
19Knox, Works, vol 1, p 6.
20Quoted by MacEwan, A History of the Church in Scotland, p 381.
21Hay Fleming, The Reformation in Scotland, p 18.
22Quoted by MacEwan, A History of the Church in Scotland, p 382.
23Knox, Works, vol 1, p 6.
24MacEwan, A History of the Church in Scotland, p 326.
25Hill Burton, History of Scotland, vol 2, p 386.
by virtue of any words; or that confession should be made to priests; or yet prayers to saints departed”.17 Further, he administered the Supper in both kinds to the laity. He “insisted that the Scriptures should be put into the hands of the people . . . and that churchmen should be subject to the civil government like other men”.18 When, on 23 July 1433, they burned him, “they put a ball of brass in his mouth, to the end that he should not give confession of his faith to the people, neither yet that they should understand the defence which he had against their unjust accusation and condemnation”.19
It is recorded (by Bower, the Romanist) that Craw “had been sent by the heretics of Prague with papers which commended him for his medical skill, although his real purpose was to imbue the Scots with the Bohemian heresies which were at that time too prevalent”.20 Bohemian implied Wycliffite, so Bower was complaining that Wycliffe’s doctrines were “at that time too prevalent” in Scotland. Bower acknowledges Craw’s abilities, particularly in Scripture, but labels him an “arch-heretic” for his stubborn adherence to the Articles of Prague. These were four principles agreed by the Hussites in 1420, all of them from Wycliffe: freedom to preach God’s Word; partaking of the Lord’s Supper with wine as well as bread; excluding the Church from secular power; and equal punishment for lawbreakers, regardless of social position. The Bohemians, like Craw, had so imbibed Wycliffe’s doctrine, that Hay Fleming is right to note that “the Scots have to recognise another obligation to [Wycliffe] in the person of Paul Craw”.21
Bower claims that Craw was overcome by “that venerable man Master Laurence of Lindores, . . . who gave no rest to heretics or Lollards anywhere within the kingdom”.22 But Knox notes that although Craw was burned, the truth could not be extinguished.23
Bower’s account of Resby’s death was written up to 40 years after the event, between 1440 and 1447. Tellingly, he complained that the errors and heresies of Wycliffe “are still maintained in Scotland by some Lollards”,24 “but in extreme secrecy, by the institution of the devil working on those to whom stolen waters are sweetest”.25 There is legitimacy then in the conclusion that “undoubtedly a considerable number of the people must have
26Macpherson, A History of the Church in Scotland, pp 59,60.
27William M Hetherington, History of the Church of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1843, p 11.
28MacEwan, A History of the Church in Scotland, p 326.
29Hay Fleming, The Reformation in Scotland, p 23.
been secretly in sympathy with the Lollard doctrines. . . . The seed sown was growing secretly, and by and by, though not speedily, the good fruit will appear”.26 Hetherington agrees: “The spirit of religious reformation was diffusing itself silently but rapidly throughout the kingdom”.27
The spread of Wycliffe’s doctrine through Scotland continued in spite of persecution. Bower, who had dealt with many Lollards, was forced to acknowledge their constancy: “Those who have once been stained and rooted in the school of this most accursed doctrine scarcely or never come to the unity of the [Romanist] faith”.28 And it continued in spite of having little or no support from the clergy in Scotland. While noting that “the burning of Resby and Craw did not extinguish heresy or Lollardism in Scotland” among the people, Hay Fleming explains that “the testimony and constancy of these two martyrs do not seem to have had much practical effect in opening the eyes of Scottish churchmen”.29