For a time they attained considerable success, notwithstanding the fact that the severe persecution to which they were subjected caused all of Wyclif's personal followers to recant.

[Sidenote: 1401] The passage of the act _De Haeretico Comburendo_ was not, however, in vain, for in the fifteenth century a number of common men were found with sufficient resolution to die for their faith.

It is probable that, as Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London wrote in 1523, the Lollards, as they were called, were the first to welcome Lutheranism into Britain.
But if the seed produced but a moderate harvest in England it brought forth a hundred-fold in Bohemia.

Wyclif's writings, carried by Czech students from Oxford to Prague, were eagerly studied by some of the attendants at that university, the greatest of whom was John Huss.
[Sidenote: Huss, 1369-1415] Having taken his bachelor's degree there in 1393, he had given instruction since 1398 and became the head of the university (Rector) for the year 1402.

Almost the whole content of his lectures, as of his writings, was borrowed from Wyclif, from whom he copied not only his main ideas but long passages verbatim and without specific acknowledgment.