Tudor period an undertone of anti-clericalism that indicated a rightness for reform. A second, less powerful influence was the intellectual impact of certain English reformers, such as the long-term impact of John Wycliffe (1328–1384) and his “Lollardy” reform movement, together with a stream of Reformation treatises and pamphlets from Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other reformers on the continent. The interpretation by Geoffrey Elton in 1960 is representative of the orthodox interpretation. He argues that: Social historians after 1960 began in-depth investigations of English religion at the local level, and discovered the orthodox interpretation was quite mistaken. The Lollardy movement had largely
Lollardy be a derisive expression applied to various people perceived as heretics—first the Franciscans and later the followers of Wycliffe. Originally the Dutch word was a colloquial name for a group of the harmless buriers of the dead during the Black Death, in the 14th century, known as Alexians, Alexian Brothers or Cellites. These were known colloquially as ' (Middle Dutch for "mumbling brothers"), or ', from ("to sing softly"), from their chants for the dead. Middle English "" (akin to the verb "loll", "lull", the English cognate of Dutch "lollen" "to mutter, mumble") is recorded as an alternative spelling of