A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE to cook their dinner with." When Swynderby joined these two they soon gathered a large following, and the ex-hermit preached in the chapel till the bishop took alarm and inhibited him ; then he made the milestones on the high road his pulpit for a while. 96 The reason for his inhibition was the growing alarm at the boldness of the Lollard preachers. John Aston had preached on Palm Sunday, 1382, at Leicester, and openly denounced transub- stantiation, excommunication, the purchase of benefices, the wealth of the clergy, the idleness of the religious. 97 On Good Friday following Swynderby himself preached before the mayor, the vicar of Frisby-on- Wreak, the dean of Goscote, and many others, and went still further : he said that tithes were pure alms and should not be paid to bad priests, and that ordination does not confer priesthood unless a man were inwardly called of God ; nor did God order the mass to be celebrated ; indeed there were too many masses. 98 It was in July of this year that the Oxford leaders of the movement 99 were finally excommuni- cated, and about the same time, it may be supposed, Swynderby was inhibited. When he disregarded the inhibition and preached in the open air, he was brought before the bishop, and only escaped burning through the intercession of his old friend the duke of Lancaster. 100 Even so his life was spared only on condition that he made full recantation of all his past teachings in seven churches : at St. Margaret's, St. Martin's, and Newark College, as well as at Hallaton, Market Harborough, and Loughborough. 101 It is scarcely to be wondered that after his public humiliation his popularity waned ; in a little while he thought it best to leave the county. 102 His companions were not dealt with so promptly, and the new teaching still held its own in the neighbourhood of Leicester. Knighton even asserts, that of every two men you might meet in the public street, one was probably a disciple of Wycliffe. 103 Further repressive measures became necessary. In 1389 Archbishop Courtney himself visited the abbey of St. Mary de Pre, solemnly denounced the Lollard teaching, and summoned some of their leaders to trial. William Smyth and his companion, the chaplain Richard Wayte- stathe, and six others whose names show them to have been ordinary craftsmen and not of the upper classes, were of the numbers of those cited. As they did not appear, but hid themselves, ' desiring to walk in darkness rather than in light,' they were publicly excommunicated on the Feast of All Saints. On 7 November, an order was issued to the mayor and bailiffs for their arrest, and William Smyth, with a certain Roger Dexter and his wife Alice, were brought before the archbishop. They did penance and renounced their errors in the church of the Newark hospital, and in the market-place. William Smyth 15 There is no reason to doubt this story, as the penance given to William Smyth by the archbishop, without naming this offence, shows that he had been guilty of an outrage to the image of St. Katherine. 94 Chron. H. Knighton (Rolls Ser.), ii, 192. " Walsingham, Hist. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 53, says it was Wiclif himself who preached on Palm Sunday ; but Knighton, who was on the spot, is more likely to be correct. M Ibid. 55-6. Knighton does not give any detailed account of this sermon, but he quotes similar teachings repeatedly, saying that he had heard Lollard sermons many times. Chron. H. Knighton (Rolls Ser.), ii, 174. M Wilkins, Concilia, iii, 165. 10 Chron. H. Knighton (Rolls Ser.), ii, 192. " This account of his sentence given by Knighton is confirmed by Line. Epis. Reg. Memo. Buckingham, 240, where ' St. Martin's Church ' is substituted for ' The Holy Cross," a name which would be more familiar to Knighton. 10 * Chron. H. Knighton (Rolls Ser.), ii, 198. He is said to have gone next to Coventry ; and in 1391 a warning was issued against his preaching in the diocese of Llandaff. Wilkins, Concilia, iii, 215. 1(0 Chron. H. Knighton (Rolls Ser.), ii, 191. 366
