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No description available.

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No description available.

This thesis explores the potential influence of 'Lollardy' and reformist ideas on English legislation in the period c.1376 to c.1422. It focuses on a comparison between the ideas expressed in a variety of Wycliffite works, most especially the tracts that were reportedly presented to parliament, and the ideas contained within parliamentary legislative activity. The aim of the thesis is to shed light on the extent to which the political community shared the ideas expressed in 'heterodox' works and the extent to which the debate over 'Lollardy' informed the debates over other issues within parliament. It begins with an introductory section which explores the nature of 'Lollardy', the potential of the parliamentary and statute rolls as sources for the impact of reformist ideas, and an examination of what can be gleaned from other sources as regards the attitudes of the political community to reform. It then moves on to explore legislative activity on a variety of issues including papal provisions, vagrancy, appropriation, non-residence and pluralism, hospitals and fraternal recruitment practices - on a primarily chapter by chapter basis, exploring the ideas and arguments as they developed chronologically and mapping these, as far as possible, against the known chronology of 'Lollardy'. It also makes comparisons between the petitions and the government's response, in order to determine the dynamics of 'Lollardy's' influence. Did the commons have an underlying programme of reform? If so, did this programme bear any relationship to the programme of reform advocated by the Wycliffites and the protagonists of disendowment? How committed were the commons to the ideas they espoused? Did the Church accept a level of parliamentary interference to stave off the threat of 'Lollardy'? What was the government's attitude to reform? These are some of the central questions of this thesis.

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The Church was not the only progenitor and disseminator of ideas in medieval England, but it was the most pervasive. Relations between the ecclesiastical and lay realms are well documented at high social levels but become progressively obscure as one descends to the influence of the Church at large on society at large (and vice versa). The twelfth century was a time of great energy and renewal in the leadership and scholarship of the Church; comparable religious energy and renewal can be seen in late-medieval lay culture. The momentum was passed on in the thirteenth century, and pastoral care was the means of its transfer. The historical sources in this field tend to be either prescriptive, such as treatises on how to hear confessions, or descriptive, such as bishops’ registers. Prescription and description have generally been addressed separately. Likewise, the parish clergy and the friars are seldom studied together. These families of primary sources and secondary literature are brought together here to produce a more fully-rounded picture of pastoral care and church life. The Church was an inherently local institution, shaped by geography, personalities, social structures, and countless ad hoc solutions to local problems. Few studies of medieval English ecclesiastical history have fully accepted the considerable implications of this for pastoral care; close attention to local variation is a governing methodology of this thesis, which concludes with a series of local case studies of pastoral care in several dioceses, demonstrating not only the divergences between them but also the variations within them.