In England from Wicliffe to Henry VIII - James Aitken Wylie

truth, says: "If any man will look down along the
line of early English history, he will see a standing
contest between the rulers of this land and the
Bishops of Rome. The Crown and Church of
England with a steady opposition resisted the
entrance and encroachment of the secularised
power of the Pope in England." From the days of
King John the shadow of the Vatican had begun to
go back on England; it was still shortening in the
fifteenth century, and its lessening line gave
promise of a time, for the advent of which the good
Lord Cobham had expressed an ardent wish, when
that ominous penumbra, terminating at Calais,
would no longer be projected across the sea to the
English shore.
While the English monarchs were fighting
against the Papal supremacy with the one hand,
they were persecuting Lollardism with the other.
At the very time that they were framing such Acts
as those of Provisors and Praemunire, to defend the
canons of the Church, and the constitution of the
State, from the utter demolition with which both
were threatened by a foreign tyranny, they were
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