13. Wiclif calls him Doctor meus Reverendus Mr. Willelmus Wodford in his work De Civili Dominio, iii. c. 18, Vienna MSS., 1340, fol. 141, col. 2. He says of him-" Arguit contra hoc compendiose et subtiliter more suo. Et revera obligacior et amplius huic doctori meo, quo in diversis gradibus et actibus scolasticis didici ex ejus exercitatione modesta multas mihi notabiles veritates."

14. Of this writing, which has never been printed-Septuaginta duo Quæstiones de Sacramento altaris-there is preserved a MS. in the Bodleian, No. 703. Harl. 31, fol. 31. Under Quæstio 50 the author speaks of the polemic of Wiclif against the monks in the following style :-"Et hæc contra religiosos insania generata est ex corruptione. Nam priusquam per religiosos possessionatos et prælatos expulsus fuerat de aula Monachorum Cantuariae, nihil contra possessionatos attemptavit quod esset alicujus ponderis. Et prius quam per religiosos Mendicantes reprobatus fuit publice de heresibus in sacramento altaris, nihil contra eos attemptavit, sed posterius multipliciter eos diffamavit; ita quod doctrinæ suae malae et infesta contra religiosos et possessionatos et Mendicantes generatæ fuerunt ex putrefactionibus et melancoliis."-Shirley, p. 517 f.

14. Shirley, as above.

15. Shirley was the first to call attention to this passage, and he has given it, though not at full length, in the "Note on the two John Wiclifs," at the end of the Fasciculi, p. 526. I had found the passage before I observed that he had already given an extract from it. But I found it necessary to reproduce the context with somewhat greater fulness. Vide Appendix III.

16. The words in familiariori exemplo cannot be understood in any other sense. The comparative here points back to the preceding positive, familiare inconveniens. Opponents had pointed to the endowments of the University and its colleges as matters nearly affecting Wiclif's interest, but Wiclif replies by pointing to something which touched his personal interest more nearly and more directly still; and it is this comparative familiariori exemplo—not Shirley's reading of the MS. familiari—which is of decisive importance for our inquiry.

17. Wiclif here no doubt alludes, in addition to the estate of Woodford, to the church of "Pageham" (Pagham in Sussex, on the coast of the Channel) which the archbishop had incorporated with the foundation of his hall, as appears from several documents which have come down to us. (Vide Lewis, pp. 285, 293. Shirley is right in referring the alleged sin of Archbishop Islip to this act of incorporation, whereas Dr. Vaughan, in an article in the British Quarterly Review, October 1858, erroneously refers Wiclif's censure to the circumstance that the Primate had, in the first instance, introduced into his foundation both monks and seculars.

18. Robert Lowth, Life of William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, 1758, pp. 93, 176 f.

19. The identity of our Wiclif with the warden of Canterbury Hall is indirectly confirmed by the circumstance that Benger, Middleworth, and Selby, who were members of the hall under John Wiclif, 1365-66, had previously been members of Merton College, like Wiclif himself, and were afterwards, with the exception of Benger, members of Queen's College, with which Wiclif also, as is

well known, stood in a certain connection. - Vide Buddensieg; Zeitschrift, &c., as above p. 336.

20. We learn that this was the representation of the case made in the complaint addressed by Wiclif's opponents to the Papal See, from the mandate of Urban V. of 11th May 1370, by which the process was decided.— Vide Lewis, p. 292 f, for the documents.

21. Aula (Cantuariensis) in qua certus erit numerus scholarium tam religiosorum quam secularium, etc.-No 1 in Lewis, p. 285; No. 8, p. 297, 301.

22. Præter licentiam nostram supradictam. supradicta.-Lewis, pp. 298, 299.

Contra formam licentia nostræ

23. De gratia nostra speciali, et pro ducentis marcis quas dicti prior et conventus nobis solverunt in hanaperio nostro, perdonavimus omnes transgressiones factas, etc. -Lewis, p. 229.

24. Quam (aulam) pro duodenario studentium numero duximus ordinandam.

25. Juxta formam et effectum ordinationis vestræ factae in hac parte.-Lewis, 287, No. 2.

26. Lewis, No. 4, p. 290.

27. The latter was maintained by Wiclif's opponents in their representation to the Curia; but that the matter was not placed beyond doubt is plain from the language of the deed, which intentionally left it indeterminate.

28. Falsa asserentes, dictum collegium per clericos seculares regi debere, dictum Johannem fore custodem collegii supradicti. Monachos de ipso collegio excluserunt.— Lewis, No. 7, p. 292.

29. Amotis omnino per prædictum archiepiscopum-Custode et cæteris Monachis scolaribus ab aula prædicta, idem archiepiscopus quendam scolarem (secularem ?) custodem dictæ Aulæ, ac caeteros omnes scolares in eadem seculares (so to be read instead of scolares) duntaxat constituerit, etc.-Lewis, No. 8, p. 298.

30. Lewis, No. 6, p. 292. An extract from a document of the archiepiscopal archives.

31. Decrevit et declaravit solos Monachos prædictæ ecclesiæ Cant. secularibus exclusis, debere in dicto collegio perpetuo remanere.-Lewis, No. 7, p. 295.

32. So Vaughan in his latest work on Wiclif, the Monograph, p. 138.

33. Lewis, in Appendix No. 11, p. 304.

34. Comp. Thurot De l'Organisation de l'Enseignment dans l'Université de Paris au moyen Age, p. 158.

35. Shirley, Fasciculi, &c., pp. 4, 14, 43, particularly pp. 73 ƒ and 88 f. Comp. Introduction, p. xvi.

36. Do. p. 453.

37. Do. p. 456.

38. Lewis, No. 30, p. 349.

39. Lewis, No. 3, p. 290. Personam tuam in artibus magistratam,—so it should be read with Anthony Wood, not magistratum, as Lewis has it.

ADDITIONAL NOTES TO CHAPTER III., BY THE TRANSLATOR.

NOTE I.-WICLIF'S CONNECTION WITH BALLIOL COLLEGE.

On looking recently into the Registrum Palatinum Dunelmense, issued in 1873, under the editorship of Sir Thomas Hardy, Deputy Keeper of the Public Records, my attention was attracted by a document (Vol. III., p. 381) entitled "Appropriation of the Church of Miklebenton to the Master and Scholars of Balliol Hall in Oxford, by Philip de Somerville, and Statutes for the Regulation of six new Fellows of the said Hall, A.D. 1340." The date being nearly coincident with that at which Wiclif must have begun his college career in Oxford, and his mastership of Balliol only twenty years later being a matter of indisputable record, it at once occurred to me that the document might possibly have some collateral bearing on the question of Wiclif s connection with Balliol at an earlier stage than his Mastership. Nor was I disappointed in this surmise. I found, on a careful perusal, that this deed of Sir Philip de Somerville supplied some links which had hitherto been missing from the reasonings of Wiclif's biographers on the interesting question of the place and the course of his earliest studies in the University.

There are two copies of this deed given in the Registrum, the one forming part of the Register itself, the other printed in the Appendix from the original preserved among the archives of Balliol College. The editor printed the latter "because in many instances it appears more correct than the transcript in the Register, and gives clauses which are there omitted. In some cases, however, the last-named MS. contains what are apparently better readings." The original deed is signed and sealed by the Bishop of Durham (Richard de Bury), at Aukland, 18th October 1340; by the Prior and Convent of Durham, 24th October 1340; by the Chancellor of the University of Oxford on the day after the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, 1340; and by the Master and scholars of Balliol on the same day.

On turning next to the Histories of the University and its colleges, by Anthony Wood, and his predecessor Brian Twyne, and to the work entitled "Ballio-Fergus," a Commentary upon the foundation, founders, and affairs of Balliol College, by Henry Savage, Master of Balliol, published in 1668, I found not only that Sir Philip de Somerville's Statutes had been in print for two centuries, but that a good many other facts in the annals of Balliol and the University were equally available as side lights for the elucidation of Wiclif's early University career; not indeed to the extent of determining anything connected with it with absolute certainty, for which we have not the attestation of express record, but to the effect of making it appear that there is a high degree of probability that instead of having ever been connected at any period of his University life, prior to his mastership of Balliol, either as a commoner with Queen's, or as a Postmaster or Fellow with Merton, he was all along a Balliol man, from his first coming up to Oxford in 1335 (taking Lechler's approximate date) to his election to the mastership of his college.

In bringing together the materials of our argument, we begin with the date of Wiclif's mastership, which has recently been ascertained to have been as early at

least as A.D. 1360. The year usually assigned hitherto was 1361, but Mr. Riley, in his recent "Report to the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts," 1874, states that Wiclif's name and style as "Master of the Hall called Le Baillo halle in Oxford" occurs in a Latin memorandum, existing among the College archives, having reference to a suit brought against the college in the matter of some house property belonging to it in the parish of St. Lawrence, Jewry, London, in the 34th year of the reign of King Edward the Third-i.e., A.D. 1360.

No man, however, could be elected Master of Balliol unless he was at the time one of the Fellows; for it was one of the fundamental statutes of the house that the Fellows should always choose the Principal or Master from their own number.

The statute stands thus in the original statutes of Devorguilla, A.D. 1282:"Volumus quoad scholares nostri ex semetipsis eligant unum principalem cui ceteri omnes humiliter obediant in his quae officium principalis contingunt, secundum statuta et consuetudines inter ipsos usitatas et approbatas.”

Nor was this fundamental statute afterwards changed by any of the additional or altered statutes which were successively introduced. The statutes of Sir Philip de Somerville, which were added in 1340 to those of Devorguilla, contained a provision" that nothing was to be done under the former contrary to the provisions of the latter." Though nothing therefore is said in these new statutes to the effect of restricting the choice of the Fellows in the election of the Master to their own number, the very reason of this omission was that this provision had been clearly laid down in the fundamental statutes. And it is a strong confirmation of the fact that the original principle of election was not departed from under Sir Philip's new statutes, that when the statutes were revised in 1364 by the Bishop of London, the provision for the election of Master remained still the saine- -"Qui de se ipsis habeant unum magistrum;" and again in 1433, when a further modification of the statutes was made by the authority of another Bishop of London-the same restrictive words were continued in force-" Qui de se ipsis habeant unum magistrum.”

Wiclif, then, was unquestionably a Fellow of Balliol before he was elected Master, and if a Fellow or Postinaster of Merton of the same name had not appeared upon the records of that college in the year 1356, who has for centuries been identified with the master of Balliol, the inference from the fact of his having held a Balliol Fellowship, would have been natural and easy, that he had all along from the first been a member of that House, up to the date of his election to the Mastership. But in view of that Merton record, such an inference is attended with great difficulty, to surmount which we must either adopt the opinion of the late Professor Shirley, that John Wiclif of Balliol was a different man from John Wiclif of Merton; or if we still hold them to be the same, we must conclude that as Wiclif the Reformer was a Fellow of both houses, he must either have surrendered his Fellowship of Balliol to go to Merton, or have been elected for the first time a Fellow of Balliol when he ceased, some time before his election to the Mastership of the latter, to be a Fellow or Postmaster of Merton.

To enable us to choose between these alternatives of two different Wiclifs and one only, there are several important facts available, touching the relations of these two colleges to one another, and touching the financial conditions of Balliol College in particular, which, so far as we know, have never yet been brought into

view in connection with the question of Wiclif's relation to either or both of these ancient seats of learning.

If it be supposed that Wiclif could pass easily during the first twenty years of his university life in Oxford, from Balliol to Merton, and from Merton to Balliol, or could be in official connection with both at the same time, no supposition could be more contrary to all probability, in view of the actual and well-ascertained relations of these two colleges at that very time. These two houses were the headquarters of the two great antagonistic factions of the University during the fourteenth century. Both the chief historians of Oxford, Brian Twyne and Anthony Wood, give us ample and graphic information of these rival parties of the Boreales and the Australes-the north countrymen and the south countrymen of the University; and if Merton stands out prominently in their accounts as the centre and head of the faction of the south, it is not difficult to discover that Balliol was the chief focus of the faction of the north.

To what a pitch of violence the contests of these factions had reached in 1334— the year preceding that on which Wiclif is conjectured by Professor Lechler to have come up to Oxford, will appear from the following passage of Wood's History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford, vol. i., p. 425.

"This year several students of the University, as well as masters, bachelors and scholars, did, under colour of some discord among them, and upon some pretences sought after, depart hence to Stamford in Lincolnshire, and there began or rather renewed or continued an academy in the months (it should seem) of May, June, and July. Camden and Mr. Twyne say that that university, or rather school of Stamford, began from a discord that happened between the northern and southern clerks of Oxford, the first of which having the worst, retired to the said place and began there to profess letters; yet when this controversy began they tell us not. That such controversies between the northern and southern men have often happened, is evidently apparent from what is before delivered; and that also they were now on foot, I doubt it not, forasmuch as the members of Merton College refused, at this time and before, to elect northern scholars into their society, because they and the University should be at peace; as from several complaints of the church of Durham against the Mertonians, is apparent."

The sources which Wood here refers to are Registrum diversarum Epistolarum de officio Canc. Monachorum Eccl. Dunelmensis, fol. 18 et 48. "Et in quodam parvo Registro in Cesta Economiea in Scacc. Coll. Mert., p. 19." I had hoped to find these ancient epistles among the extant archives of Merton College, but a recent visit to the strong vaulted chamber in which these are deposited, with all the hearty aid of the college bursar, Mr. Edwardes, failed to bring the documents to light. Nor do they appear to have met the practised eye of Mr. Riley, when he drew up his recent report upon the Merton papers.

This secession from the University continued till 1336-when the opposition schools at Stamford were forcibly suppressed by the authority of the King, and the secessionists were under the necessity of returning, no doubt with the worst grace, to Oxford. Who can doubt that the passionate grudges engendered by such a high quarrel, must have continued to embitter the life of the University for many years to come, and that the north countrymen in particular must long have cherished resentful memories of a struggle which had been marked on their side by