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‘Great Reasoners in Scripture’: the activities of women Lollards 1380-1530

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 June 2022

Claire Cross
Claire Cross*
Affiliation:
University of York
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Extract

RECENT historians have drawn attention to the influence of women in later lollardy, and it may also be that in parts of England as soon as lollardy moved out from the university some women immediately adopted its tenets, their involvement being largely hidden by the inadequacies of the contemporary sources. The attractions of lollardy for lay people in general and women in particular are not hard to understand. After a millennium during which a priestly caste had more and more been distancing itself from the laity certain discontented lay people, excluded from the mysteries of the church and especially from direct access to the scriptures, could scarcely have failed to respond to novel doctrines which stated that a lay man predestined to life stood equal in the eyes of God to any priest. These revolutionary ideas first propagated by Wyclif continued to be disseminated by some heretical clergy throughout the fifteenth century. One such priest, John Whitehorne, parson of the parish of Coombe Bisset in Wiltshire, in 1499 confessed to having taught, in addition to much else, that ‘when Christ should ascend into heaven, he left his power with his apostles and from them the same power remaineth with every good true Christian man and woman living virtuously, as the apostles did, so that priests and bishops have no more authority than another layman that followeth the teaching and good conversation of the apostles’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History Subsidia , Volume 1 , 1978 , pp. 359 - 380
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1978 

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References

1 I am heavily indebted to McFarlane, [K. B.], [John] Wycliffe [and the Beginnings of English Nonconformity] (London 1952) and Lancastrian Kings [ana Lollard Knights] (Oxford 1972)Google Scholar; Kightly, [C], [‘The Early Lollards 1382-1428’] unpubl University of York DPhil thesis (1975)Google Scholar; Thomson, [J. A. F.], [The Later Lollards 1414-1520] (Oxford 1965)Google Scholar, and Fines, [J.] [‘Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Coventry and Lichfield 1511-12’] JEH, 14 (1963)Google Scholar. Without their pioneering work this attempt to assess the contribution women made to lollardy would have been impossible.

2 Jenkins, C., ‘Cardinal Morton’s Register’, Tudor Studies presented… to A. F. Pollard, ed Seton-Watson, R. W. (London 1924) pp 47–50Google Scholar. Spelling in quotations has been modernised throughout.

3 Quoted in Aston, M., ‘Lollardy and Sedition 1381-1431’, PP 17 (1960) p 13Google Scholar.

4 Crompton, J., ‘Leicestershire Lollards’, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, 44 (Leicester 1968-9) pp 11–14Google Scholar; Foxe, [J.] [Acts and Monuments], 1 (London 1684) pp 576–7Google Scholar; McFarlane, , Wycliffe p 140Google Scholar.

5 McHardy, A. K., ‘Bishop Buckingham and the Lollards of Lincoln Diocese’, SCH 9 (1972) PP 131–45Google Scholar.

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7 Kightly pp 242-9; Thomson pp 22-3.

8 McFarlane, , Wycliffe, p 175Google Scholar.

9 McFarlane, , Lancastrian Kings, pp 214–15Google Scholar.

10 Foxe, 1, pp 730-1.

11 Ibid pp 750-8; Thomson pp 123-8.

12 Foxe, 1, pp 750-8; Welch, E., ‘Some Suffolk Lollards’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, 30 (Bury Saint Edmunds 1964) pp 154–65Google Scholar; Thomson p 131.

13 Foxe, 1, p 751; EHD 1327-1485, ed Myers, A. R. (London 1969) pp 864–5Google Scholar.

14 Foxe, 2 (1684) pp 531-3; Thomson pp 184, 187-8; B[ritish] Mag[azine], 23 (London 1843) pp 401-2.

15 Foxe, 2, p 533; BMag, 23, pp 394-5. 398-402. 631-3; 24 (1843) pp 638-41; 25 (1844) pp 142-5.

16 L[ichfield] R[ecord] O[ffice] B/C/13 fols 16r, 21r; Fines pp 163-4; Thomson pp 113-15.

17 LRO B/C/13 fols 1r, 6V, 14V, 22r ; Fines pp 162, 165, 168; Thomson pp no, 133; Luxton, [I.], [‘The Lichfield Court Book; a postscript’], BIHR, 44 (1971) pp 120–5Google Scholar.

18 LRO B/C/13 fols 4r, 18r; Foxe, 2, pp 181-2; Thomson pp no, in, 113, 116.

19 LRO B/C/13 fols 14r, 15v, 18v; Fines p 169; Luxton pp 120-5; Thomson p 110.

20 Foxe, 2, pp 18-21, 34, 36; Thomson pp 53-76.

21 Foxe, 1, pp 877-8; 2 pp 31-3.

22 Ibid 2, pp 26, 29.

23 Ibid p 26.

24 Ibid pp 26, 30, 31, 33, 34, 37, 38, 194-5.

25 Ibid pp 23, 27, 28, 29, 30, 37.

26 Ibid pp 31, 36, 195.

27 Ibid pp 27, 31, 32, 35-6.

28 Ibid pp 27, 32, 35, 453; LRO B/C/13 fol 2r; Fines p 166.

29 Pollard, [A. F.] [The Reign of Henry VII from Contemporary Sources], 3 (London 1914) pp 237–8Google Scholar; CalLP, 4, 2, no 4175.

30 Ibid nos 4029, 4850; Strype, , Memorials, 1 (London 1721) appendix, pp 36–7Google Scholar; Foxe, 2, p 268.

31 Cal LP, 4, 2; nos 2095, 4029, 4175; Strype, , Memorials, 1, app pp 36–7, 43Google Scholar; Foxe, 2, pp 266-8.

32 Cal LP, 4, 2, nos 4029, 4175; Strype, , Memorials, 1, p 84, app pp 36–7Google Scholar; Foxe, 2, pp 268-9; Houlbrooke, R.A., ‘Persecution of Heresy and Protestantism in the Diocese of Norwich under Henry VIII’, Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society, 25 (Norwich 1972) pp 308–26Google Scholar.

33 Foxe, I, p 829; 2, p 5; Thomson p 156.

34 Pollard, 3, pp 244-6; Thomson pp 160-1.

35 Foxe, 2, pp 5, 6, 17; CalLP, 4, 2, no 4029; VCH, London, 1 (London 1909) pp 234-5.

36 Foxe, 2, p 17.

37 Ibid pp 29, 32; CalLP, 4, 2, no 4029.

38 Foxe, 2, pp 449, 450.

39 Ibid, 1, pp 576-7, 751, 752-5, 877; 2, pp 18-19, 37. 268-9; CalLP, 4, 2, no 4029; Hill, C., The World Turned Upside Down (London 1972)Google Scholar esp chapters 9, 10 and 14.

40 Foxe, 1, p 880; 2, p 40; Mozley, J. F., John Foxe and his Book (London 1940) p 205Google Scholar.

42 Foxe, 2, p 448.