# John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers/Chapter 5

Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, in New York.
JOHN WYCLIF. (Hondius fecit.)
CHAPTER V.
WYCLIF'S EARLY DAYS.
HE evidence in regard to Wyclifs birthplace is extremely meagre, and, such as it is, it must be taken in connection with the other and better ascertained facts of his biography. Sundry considerations tend to show that he was a member of the family of Wycliffes who lived on their own land at the village from which they took their name; but it so happens that John Wyclif, though he wrote a great deal, made no reference to his earliest home or to his parentage. Thomas Walsingham, a contemporary chronicler, says that he came from the North; but ​no one appears to have made a more definite statement until John Leland (who travelled and wrote in the reign of Henry VIII., upwards of two centuries after the event of which he speaks) mentions as a matter of hearsay that Wyclif was born at Spreswell, a good mile from Richmond in Yorkshire. In another place he says that the Reformer derived his origin from the village of Wycliffe, which is on the river Tees, some ten miles from Richmond.
These two statements of the antiquary have caused no slight perplexity amongst later writers. Even if they are consistent with each other, which is not quite clear, a double difficulty is created by the facts that there is no such place as Spreswell, actually or historically, within a mile or so of Richmond, and that the people of Wycliffe-on-Tees have for many generations piously laid claim to a Spreswell—or Speswell—of their own.
It was Whitaker who first suggested, in his History of Richmondshire, some ninety years ago, that Spreswell was only Leland's incorrect rendering of Ipswell or Hipswell—a village of this name still existing near Richmond. Dr. Shirley preferred to think that Leland had made no mistake, having written Ipreswell, which a copyist subsequently converted into Spreswell. Mr. F. D. Matthew and Mr. Poole, relying upon Stow's transcript from Leland's work, maintain that the copyist actually wrote Ipreswell, and that the S first makes its appearance in Hearne's printed copy of the Itinerary.
All this looks natural enough; but it does not make the birth of a Wycliffe of Wycliffe at Ipreswell ​(assuming that Hipswell was once Ipreswell) any the more natural. If John Wyclif's Brith at that place was remembered more than two centuries later, one would imagine that it must have been on account of a continued residence of his parents there, and not on the strength of a casual visit of his mother at the time of his birth. There is a difficulty in reconciling the Hipswell theory with with the summaries which I shall presently venture to make in respect of the parentage of Wycliff—and mainly for the reason just stated. If Stow;s transcript of Leland be regarded as finally establishing the form "Ipswell" all that can be said is that we have one reason the fewer to hesitate over Leland's statement.
The Statment is not very definite in itself, and it is introduced with a couple of words which almost imply that Leland did not attach great weight to it—not so much weight, for instance, as he attached to his independent statment about the village of Wycliffe. "They say"—these are his words—"that John Wiclif Haereticus was borne at Spreswel [Ipreswel], a poore village a good myle from Richemont."If we accept the Ipsrewell and the "good myle," there is still room for doubt in the "Haereticus" and the introductory words. Leland merely repeats a rumour which he had not verified; and the fact of his stating it as a rumour implies that he thought it needed verification. His doubt may well have been the same as our own; it must have appeared strange to him that a Wycliffe of Wycliffe should have been born at Ipreswell; and, again, he would be quite alive to the possibility that any Wycliffe, or even ​Whitcliffe, reputed to have lived at Ipreswell twohundred years ago, would tend to become identified with the famous "heretic" who gave Englishmen their open Bible.
The local tradition of a Spreswell close to the village of Wycliffe, which has beeji accepted by Dr.Vaughan, and also by Professor Lechler, presents various difficulties, and must be treated with particular caution, because one would be decidedly glad to believe it. According to this tradition, Spreswell was no mere figment of a name, and still less Ipreswell or Hipswell, but an actual hamlet or thorp, within the manor of the Wycliffes, and about half a mile from the present village of Wycliffe-on-Tees. Certain evidence in support of this contention has been adduced by the Rev. John Erskine, now Rector of Wycliffe. The evidence consists of:
1. A letter from William Chapman, 133 Church Street, Monkwearmouth (January 14, 1884), to the Rev. J. Erskine:
"I saw an account of the intended 'Restorationof Wycliffe Church, which stands close to Wycliffe Hall, the supposed birthplace of Wycliffe.' Leland, the historian, says Wycliffe was born at Spreswell, near Richmond. I enclose a copy of a statement made by my great-grandfather, John Chapman, who died 1849, aged eighty-one years, at Alwent Hall, Gainford."
2. The statement of John Chapman:
"Spreswell or Speswell stood half a mile west from Wycliffe, and on the same side and close to the River Tees. The Plough has passed over its site, ​and all is quite level. There was a Chapel there, in which were married William Yarker and Penetent Johnson, and there [sic] son John Yarker has many times related the occurance to his Grandson, the Writer of this. The above coupel were the last married there, for the Chapel soon after fell down. Francis Wycliffe of Barnard Castle, the last of the Wycliffes in the Neighbourhood, said John the Reformer was born at the above Village.—John Chapman, Headlam, June 2ist, 1839."
3. Mr. Erskine says:
"The tradition of Wycliffe having been born in this parish [Wycliffe-on-Tees] has existed for over two hundred years, while there is no trace of him or tradition at Hipswell . . . Might not Spreswell be a corruption of Thorpeswell? There is a manor house in the township of Thorpe, and there are ruins of a village close to it. I have also in my possession part of the mullion of a church window, and a piscina, which were found in the pulling down of an old wall on the property. The former might have been carried away from the east window of our church, but the latter could not, as it is in perfect preservation, while two in the church are broken close off by the wall. The property of Thorpe belonged to the Wilkinsons of Richmond, who purchased it from the Wycliffes . . . The man who gave me the piscina said that his great-grandfather spoke of the chapel at Thorpe, and that after the marriage of the two persons named in Mr. Chapman's letter the roof fell in . . . There was a village close to Thorpe Hall, as there are traces of ​foundations of houses, and, as some believe, also of the village stocks."
Now, of course, this theory of a Speswell-on-Tees imposes on its advocates the necessity of explaining away Leland's "good myle from Richemont." Some have evolved an Old Richmond on the river bank, three or four miles below Wycliffe, and have interpreted the "good myle" in the sense of a Scot's "mile and a bit," where the bit is apt to be more than the mile. There is now on the same spot a village called Barforth, which, according to Lewis's Topographical Dictionary, was "formerly called Old Richmond"; and a place of this name appears in Carey's map of the North Riding of Yorkshire. The evidence is very recent,—and as "Richemont" was in its present position long before Leland's time we should hardly be any better off if we were to accept it. Others say that the antiquary was well informed as to Spreswell, but ill informed as to the distance from Richmond; and with respect to this alternative it is only fair to remember that Leland or his informers made some curious mistakes in matters of locality and distance. There are at least two of these mistakes in the Itinerary within fifty lines of the passage which has given so much trouble to the biographers of Wyclif, from which it would seem that Leland had no very clear and precise picture of the Richmondshire country in his mind. Without building anything upon the name of Spreswell and it is as easy to conclude that the local tradition refers to Thorpeswell as that Leland's original was the otherwise undistinguished village of ​Hipswell—there is evidence as to a group of houses close to the manor house where the Wycliffes lived, and nearer to it than the village of Wycliffe was. Nothing is more likely than that there should have been a little thorp and a chapel near the gates of the manor house other than the village and the church of Wycliffe. We know, in fact, that there was a Thorp as early as the thirteenth century which formed part of the Wycliffe estate; and if there was no chapel at that early date one would almost certainly have been built in the sixteenth century. The family remained staunchly Romanist to the last, and intermarried with Rokebys, Coniers, Constables, and Tunstalls, though on the ground of their religion they could no longer present to the living of Wycliffe. A private chapel of some kind would be a necessity for them as soon as the Reformation had made headway, and this may well have been the chapel in which Penitent Johnson was married towards the close of the seventeenth century.
It is but a melancholy picture which is presented to us of these Richmondshire Wycliffes, poor in purse, proscribed in religion, proud of heart, gradually fading away amongst the more substantial Northern Catholics, sternly repudiating the one strong member of their race who ranks with the great Worthies of England, and owing much of their later misfortune to the obstinacy with which they cherished the discarded faith. The last of the Wycliffes was a poor gardener, who dined every Sunday at Thorpe Hall, as the guest of Sir Marmaduke Tunstall, on the strength of his reputed descent,
​It would be impossible to speak with confidence as to the origin of this family of Wycliffes. There is nothing to show whether they were Norman or English. The local surname would be natural enough in either case, and it is no more difficult to conceive a man of English origin bearing a Norman patronymic than it is to think of Anglo-Normans in the eighth or tenth generation who had lost their Norman characteristics and their Norman speech.
Wycliffe means "the water cliff." It is not the same name as that derived from "the white cliff," although the latter name also came to be written Wycliffe. The point is significant. There is a white cliff near Hipswell, and a hamlet called Whitcliff, which has been suggested as the place from which the Reformer took his name. But it is worthy of note that although we find more than twenty variations in the spelling of this name, it was never (so far as I am aware) spelt with a t, though John Wycliffe of Mayfield is occasionally called Whitcliffe.
As for the baptismal name of John, it was already more employed than any other; it was even in higher favour in the fourteenth century than it is in the nineteenth. If we can point to only two French kings and one English king of that name, there had been twenty-two Pope Johns when Wyclif was born. There is scarcely a list of proper names in the century wherein the Johns do not show a remarkable ​predominance. In Courtenay's Synod of 1382, for instance, seventy-three theologians and lawyers took part, and twenty-six of them were named John. Again, out of the twelve doctors assembled at Oxford by William Berton, who agreed in his condemnation of Wyclif's opinions in 1381, no fewer than nine were Johns. One of the writers of the Chronicon Angliæ, probably himself a John, referring in a certain passage to Wyclif, says quaintly: "This fellow was called John but he did not deserve to be. For he had cast away the grace which God gave him, turning from the truth which is in God, and giving himself up to fables."
If we are tempted to look with some doubt on the Hipswell conjecture, and to nurse the idea that John Wyclif was born in the home of the Wycliffes, we shall gain additional support for the general belief of the past five centuries that the father of the English Reformation was a scion of one of the most devout Catholic families of the North, the head of which was lord of the manor of Wycliffe-on-Tees. Let us see what contemporary records have to tell us about the Plantagenet Wycliffes.
The genealogy preserved by the Wycliffe family, which will be found recorded in Whitaker's Richmondshire, includes three generations admitted to be insufficiently proved. They are given in the ​following—form except that the dotted line is here introduced by way of conjecture:
| | | Robert de Wycliff, Lord of Wycliffe, &c. 6 Edward I., by Kirkby's Inquest, 1287 [1278], held 12 car[ucates] of land, &c., in Wycliffe, Thorp, and Girlington; married ?—? | Robert de Wycliff, Lord of Wycliffe, &c. 6 Edward I., by Kirkby's Inquest, 1287 [1278], held 12 car[ucates] of land, &c., in Wycliffe, Thorp, and Girlington; married ?—? |
| Roger Wycliffe, Lord of Wycliffe, &c., 1319; buried at Wycliffe. | Roger Wycliffe, Lord of Wycliffe, &c., 1319; buried at Wycliffe. | Catherine, his wife, buried at Wycliffe. | Catherine, his wife, buried at Wycliffe. |
| John Wyclif ["Haereticus."] | John Wyclif ["Haereticus."] | William Wycliffe of Wycliffe, esquire (married). | William Wycliffe of Wycliffe, esquire (married). |
Now if the date 1319 above given is that of the marriage of Roger, which is probable (since Catherine Wycliffe was still living in 1369), it is a noteworthy coincidence that the year 1320 has generally been accepted, on independent grounds, as the approximate date of John Wyclifs birth. But there is more substantial evidence than this for the belief that Roger and Catherine Wycliffe were the actual father and mother of the future divinity lecturer at Oxford. Another link in the chain is supplied by a close catalogue of rectors of Wycliffe, quoted in Torre's Archdeaconry of Richmond, from which the following entries are taken:
| Date. | Rectors. | Patrons. |
| 2 Aug. 1362 | Dns Robert de Wycliffe, CI. | Kath. relicta Rogi. Wicliffe |
| 7 Aug. 1363 | Dns William de Wycliffe | John de Wycliffe |
| 7 Oct. 1369 | Dns Henr. Hugate, Cap. | iidem. |
The significance of the "iidem" will be at once apparent. In 1362 Roger Wycliffe was dead, and the vacancy in the family living was supplied by his widow Catherine, who nominated Robert Wycliffe. ​It need not be concluded from the genealogy already quoted that Roger Wycliffe had no brother, and only one son. The later Wycliffes had numerous families, and that was probably enough the case with Robert and Roger. At any rate, there was a Robert de Wycliffe, clerk, ready to take the living in 1362; and when he died, a year later, William de Wycliffe of Balliol College was appointed by John de Wycliffe to succeed him. Who was this John de Wycliffe? Observe that Dame Catherine had nominated in 1362, possibly after consulting John; that John nominated in 1363, possibly consulting Dame Catherine; and that in 1369 there was admittedly a consultation between Catherine and John, resulting in their joint nomination of Henry Hugate. Who could this John de Wycliffe be except the eldest son of Roger and Catherine, legally the lord of the manor, but leaving some of (perhaps nearly all) the duties and privileges of the lordship to his mother? The varying exercise of this patronage, as shown in the close catalogue, would be adequately explained on the supposition that John de Wycliffe was the eldest son of Roger, himself lord of the manor, an absentee from his small estate, living on his earned income as a secular priest and an Oxford lecturer, and leaving the management of the Wycliffe property to his widowed mother. In brief, the circumstances would be well explained by assuming that John Wyclif, the Reformer, was the son and heir of Roger Wycliffe.
WYCLIFFE, NEAR ROKEBY. SKETCH FROM THE PAINTING BY J. M. W. TURNER.
​conviction must be the result of a series of inferences, for it is idle to expect absolute proof after the lapse of five centuries. It will be said that the fact of a John Wycliffe acting in 1363 and 1369 as patron of the living, whilst it proves that there was a lord of the manor bearing that name in the years just mentioned, does not prove that he was John "the Heretic." True; but let us not miss the significance of the fact that no John Wycliffe at all is shown in the genealogy, as preserved in the family records. The close catalogue, which would not be in the keeping of the Wycliffes, retains the name of John as patron of the living of Wycliffe, with the strong presumption that he was lord of the manor during the widowhood of Dame Catherine. The genealogy, which is full and uninterrupted from the middle of the fifteenth century, makes not the slightest reference to him. What is the reasonable, not to say the necessary, inference? Clearly that this John Wycliffe had been deliberately erased from the record, for some reason which commended itself to this exceptionally devout and consistent family of Romanists.
According to the genealogy, it should have been William Wycliffe who appointed his namesake of Balliol after the death of his father. If he was alive in 1363, John must surely have been his elder brother. If he was dead, John may have been his next brother, or conceivably his uncle; for it is possible (though clearly improbable) that 13 19 is the date of Roger's birth. As a matter of fact, John "Haereticus" refers in one of his Determinations to a brother "olim mortuum" In any case John Wycliffe was an ​important member of the family, and he ought to be shown on the family tree. Why is he not?
To such as feel a special interest in the personality of John Wyclif the Reformer it will be a matter of secondary concern whether he was or was not the son and heir of Roger, lord of Wycliffe, and of Catherine his wife. But his identification with the patron of Wycliffe rectory in 1363 and 1369 would tend to confirm our belief in his absolutely disinterested character, and in the sincerity of his profession of ecclesiastical poverty. The identification is manifestly assisted by the circumstances connected with the two nominations in question. John Wyclif was Master of Balliol up to 1361, when he took the college living of Fillingham. The rectors appointed to Wycliffe in 1363 and 1369 were both of them Balliol men.
If Wyclif was legally lord of the manor, then we possess, to begin with, a remarkable testimony to the nobility and thoroughness of his personal character; and the whole tenor of his after life is such as to strengthen and deepen this first impression. The manor of Wycliffe was 720 acres—equivalent to a knight's fee; and the rectory was worth £14 12s 1d. As living was interpreted in those days, there was a competence both for the esquire and for the rector. During the reign of Edward III. money was found, from one source or another, to restore the fabric of the church.
​At some date which cannot be determined, John Wyclif came up to Oxford; and here he prepared himself for the secular priesthood, probably as a scholar of Balliol College, which had recently been founded by John Balliol of Barnard Castle. This Barnard Castle, about ten miles from Richmond, stands on the northern side of the Durham border, and looks up the splendid vista of Teesdale. It was the same Barnard Castle at which, on the morrow of the fight of Marston Moor, a degenerate Wycliffe paid the penalty of his treachery, and furnished a theme for the author of Rokeby.
The foundation and enlargement of the earlier colleges at Oxford were stimulated at times by other reasons than the desire of benevolent persons to establish homes for poor students at what was now recognised as the "second school of the Church." There were already scores of halls at Oxford, as well as the houses of the various Orders; and it was not even necessary that the boys and young men who attended the lectures of the professors should reside in dwellings licensed for their reception, though doubtless many of them did so. Poverty was no bar in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries against an education at Oxford. Many a penniless lad begged his way to the famous home of learning, and, once there, begged his sustenance from day to day, content if he could keep body and soul together—which, it may be feared, was by no means always possible. For the vast majority of Oxford students, life was hard and precarious at the best, and surrounded by conditions of violence which often flared ​up into bloodthirsty riots. The grammar schools and licensed halls were a partial protection against the townspeople, but scarcely any against the faction-fights within the University itself.
In view of these and other dangers—amongst which the proselytism of the monks and friars must have seemed to many parents the most formidable of all—the colleges of Merton, Balliol, and University, followed in the fourteenth century by Queen's, Oriel, and Exeter, were founded not so much to bring education at Oxford within the reach of the poor as to make the conditions of university life more safe, more tolerable, and more refined. It is not without significance, if we bear in mind the constant rivalry of the Northern and Southern "nations" amongst the students, and the superior number and strength of the latter, that two out of the first three colleges, Balliol and University, were founded for students from the North of England. Merton had led the way by accepting none but Southerners; and these sharp distinctions would naturally have the effect of intensifying the rivalry of the two nations.
Now for such comforts and immunity as these endowed and comparatively well-disciplined colleges afforded, it 'would be necessary in one form or another to pay. To live at one of them would be more expensive than to put up with the rough lodging and fare of a "chamber dekyn," or to enter at the average hall; and it is reasonable to suppose that a student at Balliol or Merton, unless he came to Oxford at the charges of a wealthy patron, must have belonged to a fairly prosperous family. ​according to an undisturbed tradition, John Wyclif was a scholar at Balliol, either as soon as he came up or after preliminary training at a grammar school. He afterwards became fellow and master of the college. Under the Balliol statutes no one could be made master who was not already a fellow; and, though the condition might be literally fulfilled by electing an outsider successively fellow and master, this supposition seems to be more hazardous than to accept the statement that Balliol was originally Wyclif's college. But there is no record, so far as is known, of the date when he came into residence, either at Oxford or at Balliol.
As Wyclif was a fellow, and as he would doubtless specialise in theology as early as possible, it may be supposed that the fellowship which he accepted was a clerical one. Now it is on record that, up to the year 1340, no fellow of Balliol was allowed to proceed to a degree in theology, whereas in that year six fellowships were founded on the express condition that their holders should incept in divinity within thirteen years. Wyclif was a Bachelor of Divinity in 1366, but there is nothing to show that he had not taken that degree several years earlier. If he was bent on remaining at Oxford, and remaining as a secular clergyman devoted to the study of theology, it seems likely that he would have sought to gain a footing in some other college after incepting as a Master of Arts, unless the theological fellowships had been endowed at the time when he took that degree. The approximate age at which the M.A. degree was taken in those days may be put at ​twenty. So far, then, as there is any force in these considerations, it may be inferred that Wyclif was not more than twenty years old in 1340; and this would point to 1320 as the earliest probable date of his birth. Since he died a fairly old and broken man in 1384, it does not appear to be safe to assign a later date.
During the third and fourth decades of his life, Wyclif must have been accumulating the stores of learning on which his academic repute was primarily founded. Above all he would be deeply immersed in the study of the Schoolmen, with whose writings he afterward showed a familiar acquaintance. It has been said that he probably had the opportunity of listening to Bradwardine and Ockham. Marsiglio's Defensor Pacis would be easily within his reach. The famous Bishop Grosteste, whom the Schoolmen called Lincolniensis, was still a name to charm with in Oxford. The Franciscan Bacon thought him pre-eminent in the sciences, and even John Tyssyngton—a doughty opponent of Wyclif—declared that he paled the modern doctors as the sun paled the moon. Matthew of Paris wrote of him that" he was a manifest confuter of the pope and the king, the blamer of prelates, the corrector of monks, the director of priests, the instructor of clerks, the support of scholars, a preacher to the people, the persecutor of the incontinent, the sedulous student of all scripture, the hammer and the despiser of the Romans. At the table of bodily refreshment he was hospitable, eloquent, courteous, pleasant, and affable." Strike out the single word "king," and this character would ​apply with remarkable precision to Wyclif himself, who took Grosteste as a model for imitation.
There was another man who undoubtedly had a strong and a personal influence on the character of Wyclif, one of the latest and broadest of the Schoolmen, Archbishop Fitzralph of Armagh, who was much at Oxford up to the year 1547. During the last ten years of his life (1350-60), Fitzralph threw himself into the controversy on evangelical poverty, carried to Avignon the grievances of the secular clergy against the mendicant friars, and wrote (amongst other works) a book on The Poverty of Our Saviour—in which, however, he dwelt but lightly on the contrast between the life of Christ and that of his latter-day disciples, which had been so deeply resented from the Italian Fraticelli. Some of the latter had contended that Jesus himself begged for his living, which the Irish prelate strongly denied, and which Wyclif even denounced as blasphemous. Fitzralph was on excellent terms with Popes Clement and Innocent; but the friars had made their position too strong to be seriously affected, even by the great "Armachanus," or by the "Doctor Evangelicus" (as Wyclif came to be called), who took up the case against them from the relaxing fingers of his friend and counsellor.
It was in the very year of Fitzralph's death that we find Wyclif, now about forty years old, engaged at Oxford in the earliest stage of an acute struggle between the authorities and the friars,which endured for something like six years. The friars wanted to have the privilege of proceeding to the degree of Doctor in ​Divinity without previously qualifying as "regents in arts," but their claims were firmly resisted by the authorities and the seculars. Wyclif would be associated in this controversy with John Thoresby, afterwards Archbishop of York, with his life-long friend Nicholas Hereford, with Uhtred Bolton, Walter Bryt, Philip Norris, and others.
WYCLIFFE CHURCH. PARTLY CONTEMPORANEOUS WITH WYCLIFF(?)
​Wykclyffe, Richard de Assewelle, John Bridde, and Hugh de Feltone."
It is particularly unfortunate that so much obscurity rests upon the details of Wyclifs career at Oxford, since, as Mr. Brodrick observes in his short history of the University, "the biography of this remarkable man, if authentic materials for it existed, would cover almost the whole academic history of Oxford during the latter part of the fourteenth century." There is an entry of one John Wyclif in the books of Merton College as a fellow in 1356; but it is highly improbable that this was our Wyclif. There is apparently nothing authentic to support the identification, and the presumption in favour of concluding that the Reformer was a fellow of Balliol in the year just named is decidedly strong. So far as precise records go, all that we can say is that he was Master of that college in April and in July, 1361. He may have held the office for one or more years, since there is no record of a predecessor after William of Kingston, who followed Robert of Derby, Master at the end of 1356. As no precise dates seemed to have been preserved between the two just mentioned, but only the facts that Robert of Derby was Master in 1356 and that Wyclif succeeded William of Kingston, it is just conceivable that Wyclif may have been Master for as long a time as four years. At any rate he accepted, in 1361, the college living of Fillingham, in the archdeaconry of Stow, in the diocese of Lincoln, being instituted as rector on the 16th of May.
​The next established incidents in his career bring us face to face with certain facts already referred to, which possess considerable importance from several points of view. Not long after he had become Rector of Fillingham, in the course of the year 1363, John de Wycliffe presented William de Wycliffe, a clerical fellow of Balliol, to the rectory of Wycliffe-on-Tees. And on the next voidance of that living, in the year 1369, John de Wycliffe is again recorded as having presented a Balliol man, in the person of Henry Hugate probably a relative of the John Hugate who succeeded Wyclif as Master of the college.
It is a coincidence that he came up to Oxford from Fillingham on each of the two occasions when Wycliffe-on-Tees fell vacant in 1363, when he took rooms at Queen's College, and again in 1368, when his bishop gave him a prolonged leave of absence, in order that he might "devote himself to the study of letters at Oxford." He may or may not have heard in 1368 that the family living was about to be vacated. In any case he would be in Oxford, and in close association with his old friends and "commensales" at Balliol, when the presentation again fell into his hands, and he offered it to Hugate.
It was just at this latter date that Wyclif exchanged his rectory of Fillingham for that of Ludgarshall, or Lutgurshall, in the archdeaconry of Buckingham. If there was any question of private arrangement in all this, and if his presentation of Hugate to Wycliffe-on-Tees facilitated his transference to Ludgarshall, the fact would be entirely and conspicuously to Wyclif's credit, since Ludgarshall was a poorer ​living than Fillingham, and to move from one to the other involved a loss of income.
Why, it may be asked, should Wyclif, who had elected and prepared himself for the life of a secular clergyman, twice decline to undertake the charge of a parish so near to his own birthplace, if it was not actually his birthplace, and which must have been in some respects attractive to him? A simple answer suggests itself. Wyclif was by this time, if not a Southerner in sympathies, at least bound up with the life and interests of Oxford, and bent on pursuing his ambitions by cultivating his friends in the political world. To go to Wycliffe-on-Tees as its rector, to devote his life and his means to rebuilding and decorating the old church, and to spend his days with the rough and not very intellectual men of the Yorkshire borders, must have appeared to him in the light of a banishment, not to say a deliberate desertion of the path of duty which had opened up to him elsewhere. He wanted to live in the South, within easy reach of Oxford and London; and so bent was he on being close to his work that, as he had preferred a Lincolnshire living to a residence in one of the most beautiful of north-country dales, he subsequently removed to a poorer parish because it lay between his beloved university and the capital. There was another reason why he would not be keen to present himself to Wycliffe-on-Tees. The thing would smack to his sensitive mind of an abuse which he particularly hated, and against which he had already publicly declared. Appropriation to individuals of the trust-funds of the Church, in any ​shape or form, was in Wyclif's eyes abominable; and, however the presentation to this living had come into the hands of his family, he could not regard it in any other light than as a sacred responsibility, which would in no wise be discharged by nominating himself. In the English tract, Of the Last Age of the Church—though no stress is here laid for the purpose of argument on the authorship or date of this tract—we come upon this fine passage: "Both vengeance of sword and mischiefs unknown before, by which men in these days have had to be punished, were bound to happen for sin of priests. Men shall fall on them and cast them out of their fat benefices, and they shall say, 'One came into his benefice by his kindred, another by covenant made before; one for service and another for money came into God's church.' Then shall every such priest cry, 'Alas, alas! that no good spirit dwelled in me at my coming into God's church.'"
Now if it were accepted as a reasonable supposition that Wyclif was from 1363 the legal head of his family, and patron of the living of Wycliffe-on-Tees, there would be no further need to press the point that he was a man of gentle breeding and (at least potentially) of some private means. That he had character, tact, and the power of impressing and influencing his fellow-men, is proved by his high standing at Oxford, his popularity as a lecturer, and his selection to be master of a college. It is true that there were amongst his contemporaries "divinely gifted men" of humble origin, who broke their birth's invidious bar and rose to the highest ​positions in Church and State. But to enjoy the friendship of John of Gaunt, and the favour of the King and the Princess of Wales, to be nominated as king's chaplain and royal commissioner, to be called on by Parliament to plead the cause of the nation against the Pope, to keep men at work for years on the translation of the Bible, and to send out a band of missionaries with some equipment, however poor—this argues that Wyclif had money at his command, and that he was a man of affairs and a man of address.
ORIGINAL SEAL OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, 1282.
* ↑ The earlier portion of this chapter is identical in substance with two communications made by the author to the Athenæum of March 12 and 26, 1892.
* ↑ Wycliffe, Wycliff, Wyclif, Wyclyffe, Wyclef, Wyccliff, Wycclyff, Wycklef, Wyclyve, Wyckliff, Wykliffe, Wykliff, Wykclyff, Wykclyffe, Wyklive, Wicliffe, Wicliff, Wiclif, Wicleff, Wiclef, Wicclyff, Wickcliffe, Wicklef, Wigclif.
* ↑ Before a historical student could use a document of this kind with any degree of confidence, he would need to know the pedigree of the pedigree. Nothing more is claimed for the genealogy here quoted than that it preserves the traditions of the Wycliffe family at a comparatively late date, and that its accuracy in a number of particulars is supported by independent historical evidence.
* ↑ Duodecim carucatæ faciunt unum fœdum Militis.—Fleta,ii. 72. iv,