control of the religious life of the people. The Orders we find no longer
at the height of their influence, but still powerful by their wealth,
their numbers, their traditional hold upon the lower classes, and their
determination to retain this hold even by habitually resorting to the most
dubious of methods. Lastly, we find in the lower secular clergy, and
doubtless may also assume it to have lingered among some of the regular,
some of the salt left whose savour consists in a single-minded and humble
resolution to maintain the highest standard of a religious life. But such
"clerks" as these are at no times the most easily found, because it is not
they who are always running it "unto London, unto St. Paul's" on urgent
private affairs. What wonder, that the real teaching of Wyclif, of which
the full significance could hardly be understood, but by a select few,
should have virtually fallen dead upon his generation, to which the
various agitations and agitators, often mingling ideas of religious reform
with social and political grievances, seemed to be identical in character
and alike to require suppression! In truth, of course, these movements
and their agents were often very different from one another in their ends,
and were not to be suppressed by the same processes.

It should not be forgotten that in this century learning was, though only
very gradually, ceasing to be a possession of the clergy alone. Much
doubt remains as to the extent of education--if a little reading, and less
writing deserve the name--among the higher classes in this period of our
national life. A cheering sign appears in the circumstance that the legal
deeds of this age begin to bear signatures, and a reference to John of
Trevisa would bear out Hallam's conjecture, that in the year 1400 "the
average instruction of an English gentleman of the first class would
comprehend common reading and writing, a considerable knowledge of French,
and a slight tincture of Latin." Certain it is that in this century the
barren teaching of the Universities advanced but little towards the true