Oldcastle Revolt religious beliefs were considerably influenced by Lollard cleric William Swynderby, who preached in Almeley during his youth. Lollardy was a politico-religious movement initiated by prominent theologian John Wycliffe in the 1370s during his service in the University of Oxford. Lollard beliefs were outlined in the 1395 The Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards, which dealt with their opposition to capital punishment, rejection of religious celibacy, and belief that members of the Clergy should be held accountable to civil laws. The Conclusions also rejected pilgrimages, ornamentation of churches, and religious images because these were said to take away from the true nature
John Wycliffe far as his polemics accord with those of earlier antagonists of the papacy, it is fair to assume that he was not ignorant of them and was influenced by them. It was Wycliffe who recognised and formulated one of the two major formal principles of the Reformation – the unique authority of the Bible for the belief and life of the Christian. The battle against what he saw as an imperialised papacy and its supporters, the "sects", as he called the monastic orders, takes up a large space not only in his later works as the "Trialogus", "Dialogus", "Opus evangelicum",