received with gladness the stimulus of the mission of the friars to European Christianity. The colloquial speech and homespun wit of the Franciscans rescued the faith from an esoteric seclusion and communicated its joys and inspirations to the daily life of the multitude. In England they were more learned than the Dominicans, who hardly counted there, though they exercised a profound influence in continental Europe. Many schools and universities were then founded, in addition to those already existing, and a keen zest for the conquests of the mind was everywhere manifested. But the golden epoch passed into eclipse with dramatic suddenness; a strange apathy fell upon these short-lived energies; a fatal prosperity divorced the friars from their self-abnegation and from the plain folk, and diverted their zeal into material and selfish channels. It should be added, however, that during the Black Death in 1348,' they showed by their devoted service that an unparalleled calamity could recall them to the spiritual significance of their order. Nor were they responsible for the moral fatigue which was a universal distemper, paralyzing individual and collective efforts for betterment. Humanity in general was daunted by the melancholy retreat of courage and optimism, and refused any longer to follow the path over which shone "the high white star of truth." What had seemed to men the dawn of a new day proved to be a false light, as evanescent as the pale radiance which gleams across the northern skies.

In this gloomy environment of negation and disappointment, due to exhaustion rather than design, John Wycliffe appeared as one born out of due time. The exact place and date of the Reformer's birth are uncertain. The antiquary Leland states that he "drew his origin" from Wycliffe-onTees, a locality celebrated by Sir Walter Scott in "Rokeby," and in another passage he says, "John Wycliffe, Hereticus,

1 The year 1349 is usually given as the date of the Black Death, though it actually began in 1348.

was born at Ipreswel, a small village a good mile off from Richmont." Neither is there now, nor was there ever, a place of this name in the vicinity of Richmond. The mistake is due to a misprint in Hearne's printed copy of Leland's "Itinerary." Ipswell, the modern name for Ipreswel, is at least ten miles from Richmond, which even Leland could hardly call a good mile, and the reference shows that he is recording gossip. There can be little doubt that Wycliffe was born at Wycliffe-on-Tees, where the tomb of his father Roger, the lord of the manor, may still be seen. The year 1320 is the earliest that can be assigned for his birth,1 and he may have been born several years later. The differences need not detain the narrative: it is at least certain that he was a Yorkshireman, and possessed the independence and resolution native to that province. Little enough is known concerning the earlier stages of his career and some of its subsequent periods are equally vague. The last decade of his life is, however, an exception, for there his processes as a thinker and a theologian can be traced with much greater certainty than elsewhere, owing to the clearness and fullness of our knowledge of the closing phase. But centuries of neglect have obscured the external conditions of the man to whom Shirley refers as a "dim image which looks down like the portrait of the first of a long line of kings, without personality or expression." 2

It is perhaps useless to speculate upon the circumstances and influences which shaped his formative period, although they are not without considerable interest. He received the impressions of a static community, whose lonely existence was undisturbed by the echoes of the city's crowded ways. This seclusion had compensations: it afforded him opportunity for the cultivation of sterling worth, candor,

1 According to the genealogical tree in Whitaker's "Richmondshire," Roger Wycliffe and his wife Catherine were married in 1319. The eldest son would seem to have been William Wycliffe, who, however, was dead before 1362.

2 H. B. Workman: "The Dawn of the Reformation"; Vol. I, p. 107.

and integrity; virtues which, as a rule, are better inculcated in rustic retreats than in the centers of population. The yeomanry of the Yorkshire Ridings have retained under all changes certain refreshing qualities, a goodly heritage from their progenitors. Their provincial speech, energy, determination, prudence, courage, and hatred of any form of injustice stamp them as a peculiar people, whose temper has never been disposed to indulge the arrogance of caste. A better passport to their favor is that assertive individualism which, however distasteful to the assumptions of arbitrary rank, and even injurious in some directions, has hitherto been the sustaining source of democracy. In this respect Wycliffe was a true son of the North, blunt and incisive in address, with an unconscious equality of manner, and a passionate sympathy for the unfortunate and the poor which inspired his disconcerting fierceness of attack upon their oppressors. That such an advocate of the cause of the proletariat in religion and in politics should have emerged from the remotest dales of a shire, at that period rude and unvisited, is another of the many vouchers for the debt the race owes the wilderness and its children.

Living as he did in so retired a spot, Wycliffe's early instruction was probably received from the village priest, who usually dwelt with the manorial family and taught the rudiments of Latin, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, and geometry. The conjecture that he was educated at a monastery school cannot be substantiated, since these institutions no longer opened their doors to outsiders. Nor is there any evidence that he attended one of the schools maintained by collegiate churches, by chantry priests, and by the guilds of various towns.

Lechler surmises that he was fourteen or possibly sixteen years old when he entered Oxford. That some students were no older is evident from the comment of Richard Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh, who complained that many youths under fourteen years of age were already con

sidered members of the University. Lechler's reckoning is based upon 1320 as the year of Wycliffe's birth, but if this date is too early, the surmise is incorrect. It is highly probable that he was still in his nonage when he began the southward journey along the great Roman road which ran from the Cheviot Hills to London and passed near his father's house. He would not lack for company: students, like other wayfarers, banded together for mutual protection against lusty rogues and outlaws who infested the highways, and sometimes robbed them of their baggage and entrance fees even in sight of their destination. After ten days of more or less excitement and peril, the intrenched and walled fourteenth century town, with its encircling waters and massive Norman keep commanding the approaches which converged from the surrounding hills, would be in full view.

V

Oxford is situated in the middle reaches of the Thames valley, and shares that beautiful pastoral scenery for which the river is noted from Richmond to Sonning Bridge. The ruins of its ancient fortifications remain to show its former strategical importance, and its venerable appearance is enhanced by the gray fronts of halls and colleges along "the High" and other thoroughfares. But the thriving borough did not arise, as many have imagined, in response to the needs of the colleges; the place enjoyed five hundred years of municipal and commercial prominence before any student was seen in its streets. Equally erroneous are the popular beliefs regarding the beginnings of the University itself. That the great seat of learning had its inception in one of the schools established by Alfred the Great is only another of the many legends which historical research has compelled antiquaries to relinquish. Nor did the fame of churches and monasteries of Oxford have anything to do with the origin of those schools which were

afterwards merged into the University. It is far nearer the truth to say that Oxford's classical reputation was an outgrowth of its geographical location and civic strength. The earliest mention on which reliance can be placed refers to the nunnery founded by St. Frideswide during the turmoil of the eighth century, on or near the site of the present Cathedral. A brief entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 912 states that Edward the Elder, the successor of Alfred, "took possession of London and Oxenford and of all the lands which owed obedience thereto." The ravages of the Danish wars afterwards fell heavily upon the town, which was then a frontier fortress of the Mercian and West Saxon kingdoms, and involved it in burning and destruction. The citizens repaired the mischief wrought by fire and siege in 979, 1002, and 1010, and subsequently Oxford continued to be a theater of national gatherings.

1

The security of tenure which followed the Norman Conquest promoted the town's growth and trade, and transformed the architecture of its religious and public buildings. In 1074 the collegiate church of St. George arose within the recently constructed castle; the priory, afterwards called the Abbey of Austin Canons, was erected in the next century; the palace of Beaumont was built by Henry I in the fields to the north. The church of the monastery of St. Frideswide, which at the Reformation became the Cathedral of the new diocese, dates from the same period, and these indefatigable masons also renovated the existing parish churches. One of the wealthiest of English Jewries was planted in the center of the town: a settlement having its own religion, language, dress, laws, customs, and commerce, independent of local authorities and subject only to the Crown. There is no doubt that Oxford's general progress was promoted by the financial loans of wealthy Hebrews, and that indirectly its academic methods felt the influence of their rabbis, whose volumes aided the first researches of

1 James Parker: "The Early History of Oxford"; p. 116.