# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Crump, Henry

​CRUMP, HENRY (fl. 1382), theologian, was an Irishman by birth (Fasciculi Zizaniorum, pp. 343, 350). He entered the Cistercian order in the monastery of Balkynglas (ib. Bodl. MS. e Mus. 86, fol. 85 b, misprinted in Shirley's edition, p. 351, ‘Bawynglas’), that is, Baltinglass in the county Wicklow, but afterwards removed to Oxford, where he apparently became a fellow of one of the colleges (Wycliffe, De Civili Dominio, ii. 1, Vienna MS. 1340, fol. 153 a, col. 1), according to Anthony à Wood (Hist. and Antiq. of the Univ. of Oxford, i. 498) of University College. He made himself conspicuous by a sermon which he preached before the university in St. Mary's Church, and in which he opposed Wycliffe's views relative to the subjection of the clergy and of church property to secular control (Wycliffe, MS., l. c., fol. 154 b, col. 1). The date of this sermon is not known; but Wycliffe's rejoinder, which is contained in the first four chapters of his unpublished second book, ‘De Civili Dominio,’ was written before 1377, and in all probability later than 1371 (compare Shirley's introduction to the Fasciculi Zizaniorum, p. xxi, note 2). Crump next appears in 1381, having proceeded in the interval to the degree of doctor of divinity, in connection with the official condemnation of Wycliffe's doctrine of the sacrament pronounced by William of Berton [q. v.], the chancellor of the university. He ​was one of the twelve doctors who subscribed their names to the condemnation (ib. p. 113). By the following year, however, a change had come over university politics; and the new chancellor, Robert Rygge, as well as the two proctors, were disposed to favour Wycliffe. Repyngdon, a notorious Wycliffite, was appointed to preach before the university on Corpus Christi day, which in 1382 fell on June 5; and Archbishop Courtenay, as a sort of counter-demonstration, sent down a friar to publish the condemnation of Wycliffe's opinions, which had just been decreed by the provincial council held at the Blackfriars in London on 21 May, and to forbid any preaching of dangerous doctrines at Oxford. The chancellor, after at first refusing to publish the mandate, was soon brought to submission; he went to London and actually signed the decrees of the second congregation of the council in company with Crump, on 12 June (ib. pp. 288, 289). But he had hardly returned to Oxford before he showed his real inclination. He summoned Crump, who had raised an uproar through speaking of the Wycliffites by what was seemingly the opprobrious name of Lollards, and publicly suspended him from his academical ‘acts’ in St. Mary's Church. Crump forthwith went to London, laid his complaint before the archbishop and the king's council, and obtained the issue, on 14 July, of a royal writ commanding the chancellor and proctors to restore him to his position. Whether this was carried into effect or not we are ignorant. Crump appears soon afterwards to have returned to Ireland, where the next thing we read of him is that he, of all men, was accused of heresy before William Andrew, bishop of Meath, and condemned, 18 March 1384–5. It seems that Crump had joined in the old controversy of the regular orders against the friars; and seven of the eight heresies alleged against him concern the point as to whether friars were empowered to receive confessions from parishioners independently of the parochial clergy; which right Crump denied. His eighth heresy, ‘quod corpus Christi in altaris sacramento est solum speculum ad corpus Christi in cœlo,’ appears to imply that he had learned something from his old opponent Wycliffe. The bishop of Meath who condemned him, it may be noticed, was a Dominican (Cotton, Fasti Ecclesiæ Hibernicæ, iii. 113); whereas it is likely enough that Crump was really, as he professed (see the Fasciculi Zizaniorum, p. 355), only carrying on the controversy which had been waged a quarter of a century earlier against the mendicant orders by Richard Fitz-Ralph, archbishop of Armagh. In spite of his condemnation Crump, who went back again to Oxford, maintained his ground. The sentence against him was communicated to the officers of the university, but no action was taken upon it. At length the character of his opinions once more gave offence. They were brought before the notice of the king's council early in 1392, and a brief was issued 20 March 1391–2 (misdated by Shirley, ib. p. 359), directing his suspension from all scholastic acts in the university until he should clear himself in person before the council of the charges brought against him. On 28 May 1392 the council sat at Stamford in Lincolnshire, under the presidency of Archbishop Courtenay, and Crump was compelled to abjure. It is remarked by the Carmelite, John Langton, who was present and who has preserved an account of the proceedings (ib. pp. 343 et seq.), that Crump's previous condemnation by the bishop of Meath was discovered by accident at Oxford on 11 June, just after his appearance at Stamford, where the production of the document would have been very serviceable.
According to Bale (Scriptt. Brit. Cat. xiv. 98, pt. ii. 246), Crump wrote a treatise ‘Contra religiosos mendicantes,’ and ‘Responsiones contra obiecta,’ as well as the usual ‘Determinationes scholasticæ.’ John Twyne (De rebus Albionicis, Britannicis, atque Anglicis, lib. ii. 156, London, 1590) also cites a work by him, ‘De Fundatione Monasteriorum in Anglia’ (cf. Ware, De Scriptoribus Hiberniæ, pp. 73 et seq., Dublin, 1639). But none of these works is known to be extant.
[Fasciculi Zizaniorurm, pp. 311–17, 343–59, ed. W. W. Shirley, Rolls Series, 1858.]
R. L. P.