Reginald Pecock, divine, born in Wales about 1395, was a fellow of Oriel, Oxford, and received priest’s orders in 1422. His preferments were the mastership of Whittington College, London, together with the rectory of its church (1431); the bishopric of St. Asaph’s (1444); and that of Chichester (1450). He plunged into the Lollard and other controversies of the day, and compiled many treatises, of which the “Donet” (c. 1440), on the main truths of Christianity, and his “Treatise on Faith” (c. 1456), are still extant. The object of his “Repressor of Over Much Blaming of the Clergy” (c. 1455) was to promote the peace of the church by plain arguments against Lollardy. His philosophic breadth and independence of judgment brought upon him the suspicions of the church. In 1457 he was denounced for having written in English, and for making reason paramount to the authority of the old doctors. He was summoned before Archbishop Bourchier, condemned as a heretic, and given the alternative of abjuring his errors or being burned. He elected to abjure, gave up fourteen of his books to be burnt, and, concussed into resigning his bishopric, spent the rest of his days in the Abbey of Thorney in Cambridgeshire, dying about 1460.
He shall have a secret closed chamber having a chimney, and convenience within the abbey, where he may have sight to some altar to hear mass; and that he pass not the said chamber. To have but one person that is sad (grave) and well-disposed to make his bed, and to make him fire, as it shall need. That he have no books to look on, but only a portuous (breviary), a mass-book, a psalter, a legend, and a Bible. That he have nothing to write with; no stuff to write upon. That he have competent fuel according to his age, and as his necessity shall require. That he be served daily of meat and drink as a brother of the abbey is served when he is excused from the freytour (i.e., from dining in hall), and somewhat better after the first quarter, as his disposition and reasonable appetite shall desire, conveniently after the good discretion of the said abbot.
For twenty years together he favoured the opinions of Wicliffe, and wrot many Books in defence thereof, untill, in a Synod held at Lambeth by Thomas Bourchier Arch-bishop of Canterbury 1457, he was made to recant at Paul’s Cross (his Books being burnt before his eyes), confuted with seven solid arguments, thus reckoned up, Authoritate, Vi, Arte, Fraude, Metu, Terrore & Tyrannide. Charitable men behold this his Recantation as his suffering, and the act of his enemies: some account it rather a slip then a fall, others a fall, whence afterwards he did arise. It seems, his recanting was little satisfactory to his Adversaries, being never restored to his Bishoprick, but confined to a poor pension in a mean Monastery, where he died obscurely, though others say, he was privily made away in prison. He is omitted by Pitseus in his Catalogue of Writers; a presumption that he apprehended him finally dissenting from the Popish perswasion.
It is a very memorable circumstance in the story of this extraordinary man, that his life was passed in a conflict with the errors of Wiclif, and yet that, after his death, his name was solemnly coupled with the name of the Reformer, and, in that company was, in due form, consigned to immortality. The foundation of King’s College, Cambridge, took place about fourteen years before Pecock’s conviction and imprisonment: and such was the zeal and orthodoxy of his Majesty, or his advisers, that a clause was added to the statues of the society, providing, that every scholar, on the expiration of his probationary years, should take an oath, that he would not favour the condemned opinions or heresies of John Wiclif, Reginald Pecock, or any other heretic, so long as he should live, on pain of perjury and expulsion, ipso facto.
Bishop Pecock’s answer to the Lollards of his time contains passages well worthy of Hooker, both for weight of matter and dignity of style.
The earliest piece of good philosophical disquisition of which our English prose literature can boast.
The works of Pecock afford a gratifying proof that the mantle of the reformer had fallen on worthy shoulders, though he who bore it was so little able to comprehend the scope and logical consequences of the principles on which he acted, that he knew not even in what direction he was marching…. While Pecock was grammatically behind his age, he was rhetorically far in advance of it.
The work appeals to reason, but is not open to the charge of deism. In tone it may be compared to Locke’s “Reasonableness of Christianity.”
He is almost a solitary instance of anything like spiritual or intellectual enlightenment combining with heretical leanings to provoke the enmity or jealousy of the clergy.
Few men have been so plainly in advance of their age, and seldom has the Church shown herself so decidedly hostile to liberty of thought. We may regret his cowardice, but we must thank England for being the first, not only to establish biblical authority, but to show how it could be struck down when it had served its end.
Pecock sympathised with ultramontane theories of Church government, and was one of those who wrote against Wyclif, but, at the same time, he was an ardent advocate of popular education. His views and arguments would lead us, indeed, to conclude that he would have been a vigorous supporter of the university extension movement of the present day.
The “Repressor” is one of the most valuable monuments of English theology, and one of the most important productions of English prose bequeathed to us by the fifteenth century. The method pursued by Pecock, of first letting his opponents thoroughly explain their own motives, and then driving them triumphantly from the field by their own arguments, affords us a most instructive glance into the religious views of those times. The rich intellectual resources, the logical energy, and the dialectic subtlety of the author, will be admitted even by those who take most offense at the sophistical application to which these talents are occasionally put. And although Pecock knew no Greek, and was even deceived as to the authorship of many of the works going under false names, we must nevertheless concede to him an amount of learning by no means despicable in that age, and, what is more, a clearness and boldness of critical perception far in advance of his times.
His diction is archaic for his own age, and is even affected in its discarding of all those stores with which not Chaucer only, but even Wycliffe, had enriched our language. The strained archaicism—because we can call it nothing else—is all the more curious when taken in connection with the elaborate statement of arguments in the logical forms of the schools, with his accuracy of definition, and with his careful recapitulation of terms, which might remind us of the iteration of a legal document.
The “Repressor” is a monument of fifteenth-century English, clear and even pointed in style, forcible in thought. The argument is logical and subtly critical, informed by wide, if not deep, learning. On the other hand, in the detailed application of his principles Pecock often fails to carry conviction, and his tendency to casuistry irritates the modern reader. He sets forth, however, the views of his opponents so clearly as to render his book an invaluable record of the theological opinions of his time.
Had Pecock confined himself to the Latin language, he might have closed a splendid career at Canterbury, instead of expiring like a starved lamp under the extinguisher of his prison at Thorney.
Though this compound of forms that never took permanent place in the language, with archaisms on the one hand, and Latinisms on the other, makes Pecock’s pages look very harsh and obscure, it is clear that his scheme was a possible one; that it actually did exercise English in form, and enrich it in matter, to no small degree; and that, though the classical reaction of the Renaissance prevented much of his vocabulary from receiving final letters of naturalisation, a good deal more than has actually been naturalised might have been admitted with no disadvantage.
