Note 159 — PART II TO THE CLOSE OF THE TROUBLES IN THE REIGN OF CHARLES I.

The Council of Constance condemned Wicliffe as a heretic, and issued an order that his remains should be exhumed, and burnt. "Accordingly, by order of the Bishop of Lincoln, as Diocesan of Lutterworth, his grave, which was in the chancel of the church, was opened, forty years after his death; the bones were taken out and burnt to ashes, and the ashes thrown into a neighbouring brook called the Swift." (Southey's Book of the Church, vol. i. p. 384.) "Thus this brook," says Fuller, "hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean; and thus the ashes of Wicliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over." (The Church History of Britain from the Birth of Christ until the year MDCXLVIII. endeavoured, book iv. p. 424.) In the note to the 11th Sonnet of Part I., Wordsworth acknowledges his obligations to Fuller in connection with this Sonnet on Wicliffe.

See Charles Lamb's comment on this passage of Fuller's, Prose Works (1876), vol. iv. p. 277.—Ed.