Survival and Revival

Abstract

By 1430, the expansive phase of Lollardy was well and truly over. This is as plain in intellectual as in social terms. No new Lollard treatises were compiled after this date, and there is little evidence even for the continued copying of old texts. Thomas Netter had completed his monumental refutation of Wyclif, and nobody afterwards thought the task worth repeating — except Reginald Pecock, whose innovative attempt to refute the Lollards in the vernacular around the middle of the century struck his clerical contemporaries as a cure far worse than the disease. Nor is there any solid evidence of Lollard traditions being established anywhere new after this time. Cases of Lollardy are recorded from time to time in most of the areas already known for heresy, in a pattern which probably reflects rather the varying zeal of the bishops or of the local ruling elite than the innate strength of the movement. It has been argued that Lollardy suffered a sharp decline in the mid-fifteenth century, as very few Lollards turn up in ecclesiastical records between 1430 and 1480, followed by a dramatic revival under the early Tudors. Yet this is probably an optical illusion. Despite the paucity of records in this period (for which many episcopal registers are lost, and for which very few ecclesiastical court books survive), there are clear signs of the persistence of Lollardy in most of the areas where it had already become established.