Pecock, Reginald

bishop in succe ion of St. Asaph and Chi chester, born in Wales; the author, among other works, of the "Repre or of Over Much Blaming of the Clergy" and the "Book of Faith"; he wrote on behalf of the Church against Lollards, but he offended Churchmen as well as the latter—Churchmen because he agreed with the Lollards in regard to the Bible as the rule of faith, and the Lollards because he appealed to reason as the interpreter of the Bible; he displeased the clergy also by his adoption in theological debate of the mother-tongue, but figures since in literature as the first English theologian; he was accused of treating authority with disrespect as well as setting up reason above revelation, obliged to recant in a most humiliating manner, deprived of his bishopric, and condemned to solitary confinement, away from his books, all to a few, and denied the use of writing materials (1390-1460).