English Reformation was not, by itself, a Reformation. However, the political break with Rome was inseparable from the success of Protestantism. English Catholicism was strong and popular in the early 1500s, and while there were those who held Protestant sympathies, they would have remained a religious minority if political events had not intervened. An earlier reform movement that anticipated some Protestant teachings but remained outside the religious mainstream was Lollardy. Derived from the writings of John Wycliffe, a 14th-century theologian and Bible translator, Lollardy stressed the primacy of Scripture and emphasised the preaching of the word over the sacrament of the altar,
Henry Knighton philosophies). Knighton was the first historian of Lollardy. He writes that those voicing Church complaints and echoing the principles of Wycliffe in 1382, hence being associated with the principles of the Lollards, were every second man in the Kingdom of England. Knighton did not care for Wycliffe's church reform doctrines or the Lollards as both threatened his way of life. He respected Wycliffe although as an academic scholar, writing he was a famous and very important ecclesiastic clergyman and philosopher of the time. Henry Knighton Henry Knighton (or Knyghton) (died c. 1396, in England) was an Augustinian canon at the