when the plague was supposed to be killing only heretics, infidels, and nonbelievers. The Church was hard pressed to find answers, especially when people began to die quickly, many of whom had not received their last rites and were doomed to spend millennia in purgatory. Priests, fearing they might catch the highly contagious pestilence, would not even perform last rites to the dying. The Church, like the rest of Britain, faced incredible strain during the plagues passing. The strain only became greater 30 years later, during the Great Schism when two - and later three - popes claimed legitimacy to the same position and began excommunicating each others supporters. The legitimacy of such actions was probably called into question by many of Britains people. Excommunication became blunted through overuse (Oxford History of Britain, p. 180). This blatant political act by the Church demonstrated to the British people that there was more to the Churchs actions than just the saving of souls. The actions of rebels during the Peasants Revolt of 1381 capped off a century of political problems for the Church in Britain. When the rebels burned the charters held within the Temple in London, they made an extremely loud comment about the common persons idea of the Church. This comment was further echoed when the rebel group put on trail and beheaded the archbishop of Canterbury, a leading religious figure. The rebel group acknowledged the Churchs deep involvement in the secular world. They also acknowledged that this involvement meant that the Church would sometimes fail to live up to its high moral standards, occasionally falling to the corrupt political level that might be expected of nobles but not of a religious institution. The Black Death, Great Schism, and Peasants Revolt all contributed to the heretical movement of Lollardy. John Wycliffe, the founder of Lollardy, gained much of his support through his criticism of th...
