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hand, these were men and women of strong religious commitment, and (one must assume) a deep sense of engagement with questions of faith, who nevertheless had not found what they were looking for in the established forms of living that the mainstream institutional church offered them. So perhaps it is not entirely surprising that one of the early preachers of Wycliffite heresy in Leicester should have been the hermit William Swinderby [ 60 ]. A few
fifteenth-century ballads – consisting in particular of a strong devotion to the Mass and the Virgin Mary – and the antagonism he displays towards monasteries. 158 It is argued that we should draw a distinction between lay attachment to the practices and devotions of late medieval religion on the one hand, and more negative perceptions of the institutional Church, particularly religious houses, on the other