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 to the priesthood, Lollards thought confession to a priest was unnecessary since according to them priests did not have the ability to forgive sins. Lollards challenged the practice of clerical celibacy and believed priests should not hold government positions as such temporal matters would likely interfere with their spiritual mission. Although Lollardy is denounced as a heresy (by the Roman Catholic Church and the early pre-reformation Church of England), initially Wycliffe and the Lollards were sheltered by John of Gaunt and other anti-clerical nobility, who may have wanted to use Lollard-advocated clerical reform to acquire new sources of revenue from