s, and the proceedings soon degenerated into a quarrel between Lancaster and the Bishop of London. The Londoners took their bishop's side, but the council broke up in confusion. The papal authority was next invoked against Wyclif, and a series of Bulls were issued from Rome. Nothing much came of them, however; Oxford, on the whole, took Wyclif's part, and a council of doctors declared that the propositions attributed to him, though ill-sounding, were not erroneous. When Wyclif appeared, early in 1378, at Lambeth, both the Princess of Wales and the London crowd interposed in his favor. The summons, however, led to the formulation of eighteen articles which give a fair account of Wyclif's teaching at this period. But before his next summons in 1381 his heresies, or heretical tendencies, had developed rapidly. The Great Schism may partially account for this and also the fact that Wyclif was now becoming the leader of a party. It was about this time that he began to send out his "poor priests", men who, except quite at the beginning, were usually laymen, and to lay much more stress on the Bible and on preaching. In 1380 Wyclif took the momentous step of beginning to attack Transubstantiation. It was at Oxford that he did so, calling the Host merely "an effectual sign". This open denial of a doctrine which came home to every Christian, and the reaction which followed the Peasant Revolt, lost Wyclif much of his popularity. In 1381 an Oxford council of doctors condemned his teaching on the Blessed Eucharist and a year later an ecclesiastical court at Blackfriars gave sentence against a series of twenty-four Wyclifite propositions. The Government was now against him. Westminster and Canterbury combined to put pressure on the still reluctant university authorities. A number of prominent Wyclifites were forced to make retractations (cf. LOLLARDS), but nothing seems to have been demanded from the leader of the movement except a promise not to prea...
