The so-called Lollard Disendowment Bill was an English Parliamentary

bill Bill(s) may refer to: Common meanings * Banknote, paper cash (especially in the United States) * Bill (law), a proposed law put before a legislature * Invoice, commercial document issued by a seller to a buyer * Bill, a bird or animal's beak Pl ...

proposed by the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the Bicameralism, bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of ...

in 1407 or 1410. The Bill gained its name from the fact that it was inspired by the thinking of

John Wycliffe John Wycliffe (; also spelled Wyclif, Wickliffe, and other variants; 1328 – 31 December 1384) was an English scholastic philosopher, Christianity, Christian reformer, Catholic priest, and a theology professor at the University of Oxfor ...

, who was also an inspiration to the anti-clerical movement known as the

Lollards Lollardy was a proto-Protestantism, proto-Protestant Christianity, Christian religious movement that was active in England from the mid-14th century until the 16th-century English Reformation. It was initially led by John Wycliffe, a Catholic C ...

. The bill proposed that

temporalities Temporalities or temporal goods are the secular properties and possessions of the church. The term is most often used to describe those properties (a '' Stift'' in German or ''sticht'' in Dutch) that were used to support a bishop or other religious ...

(secular lands held by the Church) should be removed from spiritually unworthy churches and monasteries—that is that these parts of the Church should be 'disendowed'—and that the temporalities should be transferred to the King (then Henry IV) and to a range of secular landowners. The King and other key decision-makers repudiated the bill and it did not become law.Andrew Breeze, 'The Lollard Disestablishment Bill and Rocester, Staffordshire', ''Selim'', 13 (2005–6), 255–57.

Editions

* 'The Lollard Disendowment Bill', in ''Selections from English Wycliffite Writings'', ed. by Anne Hudson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 135–37.

References

Lollardy 1400s in law 1400s in England Proposed laws of England {{England-statute-stub