of Mayfield; and was it not the same John Wyclif of Mayfield whom his patron, Simon Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, made Warden of Canterbury Hall, by a deed dated from Mayfield on the 9th of December, 1365? Hall. Canterbury Hall had been founded at Oxford by Simon Islip for poor students of Canterbury, and at first the Headship and three of the eleven Fellowships had been The Warden assigned to monks of St. Frideswide's. But there of Canterbury was so much discord caused by this arrangement that Islip set aside the four monks and replaced them with four secular clergy, John Wyclif being made Warden in place of the restless monk, Dr. Woodhall. This arrangement was made at Mayfield, where the other John Wyclif was Islip's nominee as vicar, and was his neighbour and friend. The appointment was made with such a full recital of John Wyclif's good qualities as might be made by a friend who had long known and trusted him, and it described him not as Doctor or even Bachelor of Divinity, but as Master of Arts, at a time when the Reformer certainly was Bachelor of Divinity and very probably was Doctor. This appointment having been made in December, 1365, Islip died in the following April, 1366, and the succeeding Primate, Simon Langham, himself a monk of St. Peter's, Westminster, being appealed to from St. Frideswide's, declared, in March, 1367, that Dr. Woodhall and the three monks who had gone out with him should be replaced in their old positions in Canterbury Hall. Wyclif, still in possession, appealed then to the Pope, who referred the case to Adrian, Cardinal of St. Marcellus. The Cardinal confirmed Simon Langham's judgment, and the confirmation was ratified and published on the 15th of May, 1370. But the Pope's decision was not acted upon until a royal writ had been issued on the 8th of April, 1372. In the document stating his cause to the Papal Court, in 1368 or 1369, John Wyclif is described as Bachelor of Divinity, which the Vicar of Mayfield may have then become; but the Reformer had then been Doctor for probably four or five years-certainly for two years. Moreover, whilst these questions were in debate, and one John Wyclif was battling for his ground at Canterbury Hall, John Wyclif the Reformer was obtaining, on the 13th of April, 1368, leave of absence for two years from his rectory at Fillingham for the purpose of studying in Oxford. * It is also to be noted that Matthew Parker, Queen Elizabeth's first Archbishop of Canterbury, who had access to all the records and made excellent use of them, states in his "Antiquitates Britannica" that Archbishop Islip intended to give to his Hall the patronage of Mayfield. It had previously been said in Stephen Birchington's "Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury" that Islip intended to give to his Hall the patronage of Ivychurch. To this Matthew Parker, at the headquarters of information on such matters, supplied a correction that, if right, is alone sufficient to prove that Islip had made his friend the Vicar of Mayfield Warden of Canterbury Hall. It is yet to be added that John Wyclif the Reformer, who referred once, and only once, to the dispute touching Canterbury Hall, did so, not only without the slightest indication of a personal concern in it, but with an added comment that implies the absence of such personal conHe took it in the course of a theological treatise on the Church," as a familiar example," to illustrate a principle he was enforcing, and added, as his own opinion on the matter, "I believe that the said Simon erred in founding the said College, but not so much as the Anti-Simon who dissolved it." † cern. * Insistendo literarum studio in Universitate Oxoniensi. + Credo autem quod dictus Symon peccavit fundando dictum collegium, sed non tantum quantum Antisymon qui ipsum dissolverat.— Again, with the single exception of William Woodford -who, in the theological lectures on the Eucharist already referred to as given in 1381, before the feast of Corpus Christi, did speak of the Reformer as having been "expelled from the Hall of the Canterbury Monks,"-not one of Wyclif's numerous antagonists is ever found referring to the fact. Thomas Netter of Walden, who called William Woodford pater meus et magister devotus, never followed him in that suggestion; though the incident was one that would have fitted neatly into many forms of controversial attack. William Woodford is not known to have written anything before these lectures on the Eucharist, and as his last extant work was produced in 1433, that is to say fifty-two years later, he could not have been more than a boy when the dispute arose with which afterwards identity of name caused him to connect the John Wyclif whom he was opposing as a heretic. Woodford, doubtless, was soon told of his mistake, and the suggestion was never repeated by himself. or used, as far as we know, by any of the men whose pens were busy against Wyclif in the fourteenth century.* De Ecclesia. The whole passage is quoted by Shirley, "Fasc. Zizan." p. 526. * Dr. Lechler, to whose opinion the greatest deference is due, argues in support of the belief that Wyclif the Reformer was Fellow of Merton, and that it was he, not the Vicar of Mayfield, who was Warden of Canterbury Hall. But his reasonings do not meet the full strength of the case on the other side. He postpones, for example, the date of Wyclif's graduation as D. D., not by pointing out any fault in Dr. Shirley's reasoning upon the subject, which hangs on more than a single line of argument, but because the Warden of Canterbury Hall is described as B.D. in 1368 or 1369. But is not this begging the question? Of the Fellowship at Merton College Dr. Lechler's view is that the poverty of Balliol obliged its students, after graduation, to look elsewhere for maintenance; that Wyclif when he first went to Oxford entered to Balliol and remained there till he had passed to his M.A., then went to Merton for better subsistence, and returned after the revenues of Balliol had been improved in 1361. A Papal bull in that Having now, as far as might be, disentangled the record of John Wyclif Vicar of Mayfield from that of the John Wyclif who was Master of Balliol in 1361, we may let his namesake disappear out of the story, and begin the record of John Wyclif, the Reformer, with the first facts that we surely know about him. They are no more than these: that he was Master or Warden of Balliol in 1361; that he was in the same year presented to the rectory of Fillingham, in Lincolnshire; that in or not long after the year 1363not later than 1366-he became Doctor of Divinity; that in October, 1363, he was lodging at Oxford in Queen's College; and that in 1368 he obtained leave of absence for two years from his rectory at Fillingham for the purpose of study in Oxford. We may remember also that 1361 was the year of the great pestilence in England, which was one of the griefs of the time that caused William Langland to begin in 1362 the writing of his "Vision of Piers Plowman."* That poem was begun in fellowship of spirit with John Wyclif, of whom Langland then probably had never heard, but who also then was at the beginning of the main work of his life. year authorised the incorporation of the church at Abbotesley with the goodwill of Sir William Felton, formerly its patron, who wished thereby to secure to every scholar in Balliol suitable clothing and twelvepence a week, so that they all might remain quietly in Hall, whether or not they had become Masters or Doctors. This is a point well urged by Dr. Lechler, and not to be overlooked in speculating upon Wyclif's earlier life at Oxford. But the Fellow of Merton who is named in 1356 is most likely the Wyclif who became Vicar of Mayfield. * "E. W." iv., 286. CHAPTER III. WYCLIF THE REFORMER. An Oxford JOHN WYCLIF's work as a Reformer was the first of three great efforts for the better rooting of religion, which, in three several centuries, have graced the annals of the University of Oxford. No Oxford man has been in his own day more honoured for learning and piety than Dr. Wyclif. His high aims and his constant activity from year to year increased his influence. He became at last the trusted leader of many who themselves had power over many minds, and though freely opposed for each deviation from the beaten road — his lot who dares be singularly good he was a scholar of whom all Oxford was proud. The recognition of his learning and his worth by a great University, the ring of earnest masters, bachelors, and doctors that surrounded him and battled with him, proved to be Wyclif's safeguard at the last in times of danger. Wyclif's activity in affairs of the Church did not begin with hostility to the friars. He spoke of them with respect and goodwill in his writings until they became his antagonists, and they had no great quarrel with him before the year 1381. Urban V. succeeded Innocent VI. as Pope at Avignon on the 27th of October, 1362. He was a Frenchman born within the English pale, and for that reason all the more a Frenchman. He was a zealous supporter of the rights of his Church and a liberal friend to learning. He is said to have maintained at Urban V. and Edward III. |