style="font-size:15px;"> And kakele of sumwhat elles, for your witIs al to feeble to despute of it!
To Clerkes grete / apparteneth þat aart
The knowleche of þat, god hath fro yow shit;
Stynte and leue of / for right sclendre is your paart. (144–52)114
Alisoun of Bath has done all this, and more—for she tells a tale in which the social order is challenged inasmuch as a poor woman of low birth manifests moral dominion over a churlish aristocrat. Nicholas Watson makes the point well that the Canterbury Tales, “playing, as they so disruptively do, with the most important contemporary arguments over teaching and religious authority,” are “a product” of “a world which is crucially pre-Arundelian.”115 The post-Arundelian world was very different—a narrower, more repressive one.
And yet—as already noted, Chaucer’s Friar does voice his concern about the Wife of Bath making arguments in holy writ and engaging in the “aart” of disputation which is the prerogative of “clerkes grete”: his admonition to leave the auctoritees “to prechyng and to scoles of clergye” probably had as much resonance in the 1390s as it would have had in the early 1400s. The contrast between these two eras should not be made too sharply. It would be imprudent to exaggerate the scope of Chaucer’s intellectual freedom and the extent to which he could safely play with “important contemporary arguments,” make game out of earnest, and/or say true words in jest. Take, for instance, Harry Bailly’s reaction to Chaucer’s “povre Persoun of a toun,” a man “riche . . . of hooly thoght and werk” (I(A) 478–79). When this highly idealized figure takes Harry to task for his virulent swearing, he exclaims, “I smelle a Lollere in the wynd,” and warns the Canterbury pilgrims that this “Lollere” is going to “prechen us somwhat” (II(B1) 1173–77). Harry seems to be in a jocular mood. He is not saying that the Parson is an actual Lollard, merely that right now this man is talking like one (the reference being to Lollard contempt for oaths).116 And he is perfectly happy to introduce the Parson’s “predicacioun” rather than making any move to censure or curtail it. The Shipman, who now insists on telling his own tale, continues Harry’s highly reductive comparison by imagining that the Parson will preach exclusively from Biblical quotations and introduce “difficulte” (hard and/or controversial material), sowing cockle (a weed) “in our clene corn” (1180–83). In other words, if the Parson continues to act like a Lollard they can expect the clean corn of orthodoxy to be infiltrated and sullied with the weeds of heresy. Here, then, two inveterate swearers join forces to combat what they construct as excessive religiosity, their weapon being ridicule—the Parson is being put down by having his religious zeal insultingly likened to Lollard extremism. But deadly earnest may be seen as underlying this game—an argument which may be supported by a complaint in Alexander Carpenter’s Destructorium viciorum (1429) about how those “who hear cursed transgressors of God’s commandments daily blaspheming God with lies and horrible oaths” are “ashamed to silence them and refrain from such transgressions themselves, lest they be called Lollards and heretics, or of the Lollard sect.”117 A more comprehensive protest had been made a little earlier, shortly before 1426, by John Audelay, priest to “þe lord Strange” (presumably Lord Strange of Knokin, in Shropshire).118 In the second of the poems which survive uniquely in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 302, Audelay objects to the way in which poor devout priests can be branded as Lollards and hypocrites, their ardent devotions and unceasing work for Holy Church being valued as nothing.
Of course, the remarks by Audelay and Carpenter are unequivocally serious, but the similarity between the contents of their texts and Chaucer’s, the level of intellectual consensus which they share, is quite remarkable. Devout and devoted priests can all too easily have their piety misrepresented by their opponents, devalued through glib accusations of heresy—and that is a chilling prospect in any circumstances. These passages seem equally aware of that prospect, despite the differences of date.
All the essential constituents of Wycliffite thinking were in place during Chaucer’s period of literary productivity, and their dangers had been broadcast within the élite group of which he was a member. While attempts to procure Wyclif’s formal condemnation in England were unsuccessful until the Blackfriars Council of 1382,in 1381 John of Gaunt—Chaucer’s patron as well as Wyclif’s—had disassociated himself from the schoolman due to his radical views on the Eucharist.120 Indeed, 1382 is a crucial year in the history of Lollardy for many reasons. Three of Wyclif’s major academic supporters, Nicholas Hereford, Philip Repingdon, and John Aston, publicized their similar eucharistic views in London by means of vernacular handbills and posters, and one of the greatest of the early Lollard evangelists, William Swinderby, had charges brought against him by Bishop Buckingham of Lincoln.121 Swinderby has been credited with converting Sir John Oldcastle to Lollardy. Another of his converts—or at least a person whom he influenced highly whilst proselytizing in western Herefordshire—was Walter Brut, whose heterodox views on women performing priestly functions will be discussed fully in Chapter 3 below. Brut was tried by Bishop Trefnant of Hereford during the period 1391–93.In 1395 a party of Lollards pulled off a major publicity stunt by affixing their Twelve Conclusions to the doors of Westminster Hall and St. Paul’s.122 According to the Annales Ricardi Secundi, among this group were four of the “Lollard Knights” as named by the chroniclers Thomas Walsingham and Henry Knighton: Richard Sturry, Thomas Latimer, Lewis Clifford, and John Montagu.123 The poetic texts on which this book focuses, the prologues and tales of the Pardoner and Wife of Bath, are generally believed to have been written in the mid-1390s. It is impossible to prove how much Chaucer knew or cared about historical events of the kind I have been illustrating, but the supposition that he was unaware of all of them strains skepticism too far. His friendship with at least some of the “Lollard Knights” (an exceptionally literate group) is surely significant, though the caveat must be entered that the extent of the Lollardy of such figures as John Montagu and John Clanvowe, impressive poets both, is debatable, and the slipperiness of what the authorities deemed to constitute as Lollardy in this period should also be recognized.124
Furthermore, the great appeal of early Wycliffism to the English aristocracy should not be underestimated. Indeed, according to Michael Wilks, Lollardy started out as a court-centered movement, Wyclif having “from the beginning considered himself to be the spokesman par excellence for the king and the court” in their fight against papal lordship.125 Or,to be more precise, the schoolman grafted “an appropriate theology” onto the existing “anti-papalism” of “the families who administered the king’s government as a court party.”126 Wyclif’s teachings on civil and ecclesiastical dominion had much to offer those families.127 In material terms, they would be the beneficiaries of the disendowment of church property, and in moral terms, they would serve as the guardians of the English church, ensuring that its officials did their job properly and that a stringent reform program was implemented.128 But this alliance of mutual self-interest between Wycliffism and state power was not to be. Seeking the support of the hierocratic clergy in a time of need,129 Richard II bit the hand that would have fed him. Thomas Walsingham recounts how, “inflamed by the holy spirit” and judging it more necessary to give succor to the imperiled church than pursue his temporal affairs to their end, the king returned home early from Ireland (in 1394),
