being limited to the studies usually included in arts, and their eager desire to read in the higher faculties," may be taken to indicate, in these young men, a more than ordinary amount of intellectual life and ardour. The archives of Balliol contain a brief Latin record of the conclusion arrived at by the four referees to whose decision the question was submitted, and a full transcript of this record is given in the recent report of Mr. Riley on the Balliol Papers to the Royal Commission on Historical MSS. This interesting document will be found below in the Additional Notes to Chap. II., note 5. The other fact in the career of Archbishop Fitzralph remaining to be mentioned is that he, as well as Bradwardine, was for some time private chaplain to the famous Richard de Bury, bishop of Durham, who was consecrated 19th December 1333, and died 14th April 1345. This bishop was the greatest book-lover and collector of his time, and wrote a work on his favourite subject, entitled "Philobiblos." His library was one of the choicest in England; and passed, after his death, to Durham College, in Oxford. His name comes into connection with some matters of Balliol College during his episcopate, as will appear in the sequel, these matters having an interesting bearing upon the early academic life of Wiclif. (Vide Additional Note to Cap. III.) His high appreciation of two such men as Fitzralph and Bradwardine may perhaps be taken as an indication of his own spirit and bearing on the great Church-questions of the time. For the fact of their connection with him as his chaplains, see Introduction to Registrum Palatinum Dunelmense, edited by Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy, Deputy Keeper of the Public Records.

(2.) "THE VISION OF PIERS PLOWMAN."

Professor Lechler's numerous quotations from Langland's Poem, only a few of which we have thought it necessary to reproduce for English readers, are all taken from the text of the two editions brought out by Thomas Wright in 1842 and 1856. But it may be useful to mention here, for the benefit of English readers who would like to look farther into this really great moral and religious allegory of the age of Wiclif, that in 1867, 1869, and 1873, three editions of the poem, representing the three distinct forms which its text assumed successively under the author's own hand, were brought out by Rev. W. W. Skeat, in connection with the early English Text Society. This work of Mr. Skeat is characterised by Professor Henry Morley, in his "Library of English Literature," as singularly thorough. He publishes, with a special introduction, each of its three forms separately, as obtained from a collation of MSS., with various readings and references to the MSS. containing each form. A fourth section is assigned to the General Introduction, Notes, and Index. Besides this work on the whole Poem, Mr. Skeat has contributed to the Clarendon Press Series the first seven Passus of "The Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman, by William Langland, according to the version revised and enlarged by the author about A.D. 1377, with Introduction, Netes, and Glossary," as an aid to the right study of early English in colleges and schools, and also as a guide to the reading of the whole Poem by those to whom its English, without such help, would be obscure." Mr. Skeat's thorough study of the Poem from all points of view makes him our chief authority in any question concerning it.

Professor Morley himself has given a long and lucid analysis of the whole Poem, extending to twenty-five pages double-columned in the second department of his

"Library of English Literature" (Cassell's), devoted to the literature of religion; and his high appreciation, both of the Poem and the Poet, may be gathered from the closing paragraph of his extremely painstaking account :-" So ends the vision, with no victory attained, a world at war, and a renewed cry for the grace of God; a new yearning to find Christ, and bring with Him the day when wrongs and hatred are no more. The fourteenth century yielded no more fervent expression of the purest Christian labour to bring man to God. Langland lays fast hold of all the words of Christ, and reads them into a Divine law of love and duty. The ideal of a Christian life shines through his poem, while it paints with homely force the evils against which it is directed. On points of theology he never disputes, but an ill life for him is an ill life, whether in Pope or peasant. He is a Church Reformer in the truest sense, seeking to strengthen the hands of the clergy by amendment of the lives and characters of those who are untrue to their holy calling."

It is gratifying to meet with so hearty a sympathy with aims so evangelical and holy as those of "Piers Ploughman," in a literary critic of our time of such mark as Professor Morley. Nor can we deny ourselves and our readers the pleasure of bringing up again into view, side-by-side with the appreciations of a German scholar and divine who has so much sympathy with Wiclif and all his English precursors as our learned author, the noble words in which the illustrious historian of Latin Christianity has put on record his estimate of the author of Piers Plowman's vision:-"The extraordinary manifestation of the religion, of the language, of the social and political notions, of the English character, of the condition of the passions and feelings of moral and provincial England, commences, and with Chaucer and Wiclif completes the revelation of this transition period, the reign of Edward III. Throughout its institutions, language, religious sentiment, Teutonism is now holding its first initiating struggle with Latin Christianity. In Chaucer is heard a voice from the court, from the castle, from the city, from universal England. In Wiclif is heard a voice from the University, from the seat of theology and scholastic philosophy, from the centre and stronghold of the hierarchy—a voice of revolt and defiance, taken up and echoed in the pulpit throughout the land against the sacerdotal domination. In the Vision of Piers Plowman is heard a voice from the wild Malvern hills, the voice, it should seem, of an humble parson, a secular priest. He has passed some years in London, but his home, his heart, is among the poor rural population of central mercantile England. The visionary is no disciple, no precursor of Wiclif in his broader religious views. The Loller of Piers Plowman is no Lollard-he applies the name as a term of reproach for a lazy, indolent vagrant. The poet is no dreamy speculative theologian-he acquiesces, seemingly with unquestioning faith, in the Creed and in the usages of the Church. It is in his intense, absorbing, moral feeling that he is beyond his age. With him outward observances are but hollow shows, mockeries, hypocrisies, without the inward power of religion. It is not so much in his keen, cutting satire on all matters of the Church, as his solemn installation of Reason and Conscience as the guides of the self-directed soul, that he is breaking the yoke of sacerdotal domination. In his constant appeal to the plainest, simplest, scriptural truths, as in themselves the whole of religion, he is a stern Reformer. The sad, serious satirist, in his contemplation of the world around him, the wealth of the world and the woe, sees no hope but in a new order of things, in which, if the hierarchy shall

subsist, it shall subsist in a form, with power, in a spirit totally opposite to that which now rules mankind. The poet who could address such opinions, though wrapt up in prudent allegory, to the popular ear, to the ear of the peasantry of England; the people who could listen with delight to such strains, were far advanced towards a revolt from Latin Christianity. Truth, true religion was not to be found with, it was not known by Pope, Cardinals, Bishops, Clergy, Monks, Friars. It was to be sought by man himself, by the individual man, by the poorest man, under the sole guidance of Reason, Conscience, and the Grace of God vouchsafed directly, not through any intermediate human being or even sacrament, to the self-directing soul. If it yet respected all existing doctrines, it respected them not as resting on traditional or sacerdotal authority. There is a manifest appeal throughout, an unconscious installation of Scripture alone, as the ultimate judge. The test of everything is a moral and purely religious one-its agreement with holiness and charity."-(Dean Milman's History of Latin Christianity, xvi., p. 536. Ed. 1855.)

WE

CHAPTER II.

WICLIF'S YOUTH AND STUDENT LIFE.

SECTION I.-Birth-place and Family.

E are always more accurately informed of Wiclif's birth-place than of the date of his birth, and we owe this information to a learned man of the sixteenth century, John Leland, who has been called the father of English antiquarians.1

In his Itinerary he has inserted a notice of Wiclif's birth-place, which, though only obtained from hearsay, yet as the earliest, and recorded only about 150 years after the great man's death, must always be regarded as of high authority. Leland's remark runs as follows:-" It is reported that John Wiclif, the heretic, was born at Spresswell, a small village a good mile off from Richmond." 2

This notice, it is true, has its difficulties. The first is, that Leland himself appears to contradict his present statement in another of his works, for he says in his Collections in mentioning "Wiyclif" in the county of York, that " Wiyclif” the heretic sprang from that place. These two statements appear, at first sight, to contradict each other, and yet, when looked at more narrowly, they are easily reconciled; for in the first-named work Leland is speaking of Wiclif's birth-place proper; while, in the other, he is rather making mention of the seat of his family. But there is a more considerable difficulty in the circumstance, that in the neighbourhood of the town of Richmond, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, no village of the name of Spresswell has ever, by the most

reliable accounts, been known to exist. This fact has given rise to various conjectures, e.g., that Leland, in the course of his inquiries, had heard of a place called Hipswell or Ipswell, and had mistaken its name for Spresswell, or that Spresswell may have been the name of some manor-house or estate of the Wiclifs. It was also thought by some that Leland could not have personally travelled through that district of the county; for, in giving its topography, he has fallen into many mistakes.4

But very recently Leland's credit for accuracy on this point has been redeemed, and his account has received a confirmation which sets the subject itself in the clearest light. The same scholar, Dr. Robert Vaughan, who, since 1828, has rendered important services to the history of Wiclif, has, by means of correspondence with other scholars in the north of England, established the following facts:

Not far from the River Tees, which forms the boundary between the North Riding of Yorkshire and the county of Durham, there was formerly a town of the name of Richmond, of higher antiquity than the existing Richmond, and which is to be found in old topographical maps under the name of Old Richmond.

About an English mile off from Old Richmond, there was still in existence in the eighteenth century, close to the Tees, a small village or hamlet called Spresswell or Spesswell. An old chapel also stood there, in which were married the grandparents of an individual living in that neighbourhood, who vouched for the truth of this information. These were, however, the last pair married in the chapel, for it fell down soon after, and now the plough passes over the spot where it stood."

Only half a mile from Spresswell lies the small parish