Tracts and Treatises of John de Wycliffe

Concerning

The Life of Wycliffe

Facts and Observations

Concernixg

The Life of Wycliffe

The biographers of Wycliffe all mention the year 1324 as that of his birth." The place of his nativity still TieaB his name-^a village^a^bout six miles fromtlie towa-ef-RiGlimond in Yorksliire. The name' of Wycliffe, like that of William of Wykeham, is evidently a local one, being written John of Wycliffe; and in England there is no locahty bearing the name of Wychffe beside the place above mentioned. From the time of the Norman Conquest the parish of Wycliffe had been the residence of a family bearing that name, who were lords of the manor of WycHife, and patrons of its rectory. During the lifetime of our Reformer there were two rectorsof the parish who bore this name: Robert Wyclifi'e, presented to the living by Catherine, relict of Roger WycliflFe; and William Wycliffe, presented by John de Wycliffe. In 1606 the possessor of this ancient property lost his only son, and by the marriage of his daughter, his patrimony passed to a family of another name.*

Dr. Zouch, rector of Wycliffe in the last century, in the inscription attached to the portrait of Wycliffe, by Sir Antonio More, now an heirloom to the holders of that living, speaks of the

" Tanner, Bibliotheca Brit. 767. Lewis, chap. i. Baber ii.

* Life and Opinions of Wycliffe, i. 229 — 324. Appendix i.

b

Reformer without hesitancy — as " a native of this parish." Birkbeck, a ck^rgymau, who officiated in an adjoining parish during the reign of Charles I. speaks no less decidedlv on this point in a work intitled the " Protestant Evidence."" But our best authority is that of Leland, who wrote his " Collectanea" about a hundred and fifty years after the decease of Wycliffe, and mentioning the parish of Wycliffe, describes it as the place where " WycHffe the heretic was born."

It is true Leland himself has elsewhere given a somewhat difierent account. In his " Itinerary," he makes mention of Spresswell, " a poor village, a good mile from Richmond," as the place where the Reformer was born.*^ But no trace of such a name can be found anywhere in the neighbourhood of Richmond. Leland travelled for much of his information, but it is manifest, from his errors in respect to Richmondshire, that he could not have visited that county more than very partially. Indeed, an author who could describe the rise of the Tees as being in a meadow near Caldwell, at least fifty miles from its real source, must be supposed liable to…