I GIVE this title for want of a better, but the tract has no heading in the MS. It is a summary of the wishes of the writer as to reform in Church and State; the first thirteen points of the poor priests relating to the clergy, and the eighteen which follow (and which might almost be taken as a separate tract), having reference to the duties of secular rulers.
I am inclined to date it 1377. The first year of a new reign would be a suitable time for the issue of a programme such as this; and there is a stronger ground for the supposition in the correspondence of several 'points' with petitions of the Commons in Richard's first Parliament. The tract certainly belongs to the fourteenth century. The desire that no priest or religious should be prisoned without open doom (p. 279) marks a time when no Act of Parliament had sanctioned the burning of heretics, but when the bishops, alarmed at the spread of heresy, were taking the law into their own hands.
I can give no decided opinion as authorship, but all the points are within the scope of Wyclif's teaching.
The tract is to be found only in the Corpus MS. X.
