burst into the council-room eager to defend the man whose only
crime was that of trying to protect England from being robbed.
And thus the second trial came to an end as the first had done.

Wyclif now began to preach more boldly than before. He preached
many things that were very different from the teaching of the
Church of Rome, and as he was one of the most learned men of his
time, people crowded to Oxford to hear him. John of Gaunt, now
no longer his friend, ordered him to be silent. But Wyclif still
spoke. The University was ordered to crush the heretic. But the
University stood by him until the King added his orders to those
of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Then Wyclif was expelled from
the University, but still not silenced, for he went into the
country and there wrote and taught.

Soon his followers grew in numbers. They were called Poor
Priests, and clad in long brown robes they wandered on foot
through the towns and villages teaching and preaching. Wyclif
trusted that they would do all the good that the old friars had
done, and that they would be kept from falling into the evil ways
of the later friars. But Churchmen were angry, and called his
followers Lollards or idle babblers.

Wyclif, however, cared no longer for the great, he trusted no
more in them. It was to the people now that he appealed. He
wrote many books, and at first he wrote in Latin. But by degrees
he saw that if he wanted to reach the hearts of the people, he
must preach and teach in English. And so he began to write
English books. But above all the things that he wrote we
remember him chiefly for his translation of the Bible. He