Originally a follower of John Wyclif, a Lollard was later anyone seriously critical of the Church. Lollards probably owed their name to the Dutch word lollaerd, meaning a mumbler (of prayers). Lollardy began in the 1370s as a set of beliefs held by Oxford‐trained clerks who were keenly interested in Wyclif’s teachings on papal and ecclesiastical authority; in an age unsettled by war and threatened by disease (especially the Black Death), it also appealed to other educated sectors of society. They attacked clerical celibacy, indulgences, and pilgrimages. Richard II, who was himself an opponent of calls for ecclesiastical egalitarianism, none the less retained in his household some knights known to favour Lollardy. The nobility abandoned it only when Henry IV came to the throne and backed Archbishop Arundel in a vigorous persecution of Lollards; further reaction against it, among the gentry, also resulted from the abortive Lollard uprising attempted by Sir John Oldcastle in January 1414. Thereafter, Lollardy’s appeal seems to have been limited to craftsmen, artisans, and a few priests in the larger towns.