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unto the year 1495, which ben 138 year." In the Cottonian library is a manuscript of the latter part of this history, which ends in 1326, and is continued by some unknown hand, to the 15th of king Richard II. or 1392.

We owe considerable obligations to Trevisa, in his being one of the first to give a literary currency to his native language. He was not merely the translator of the Polychronicon, but of the Old and New Testament, and at the instance of the same munificent patron, Lord Berkely; though it does not appear that any copy of this translation now remains. It is mentioned by Caxton, in the preface to his edition of the English Polychronicon. He was moreover the translator of several other works; as Bartholomew Hautville, de Proprietatibus Rerum, lib. 19, printed by Wynkin de Worde, 1494, folio: and Vegetius de Arte Militari. See also more of his translations in MSS. Harl 1900.

WICLIFFE.

JOHN WICLIFFE, the memorable English Reformer, was born in the parish of Wicliffe, near Richmond, in Yorkshire. He was educated at Oxford, where he obtained distinguished academical honours, having been elevated successively to the Mastership of Baliol College, to the Wardenship of Canterbury Hall, and to the Professorship of Divinity in that University. This last promotion he obtained in 1372.

In his professorial capacity, he found his province invaded, and the privileges of the University violated, by the pretensions of the Mendicants; and at first only gratified his just resentment by throwing out some censures upon the several orders of friars; in which, however, he could not forbear touching upon the usurpations of the pope, their great patron and abettor. For this he was deprived of the wardenship of his college by the archbishop of Canterbury, who substituted a monk in his place; upon which he appealed to the pope, who, by way of rebuke for the freedom with

which he had treated the monastic orders, confirmed the archiepiscopal sentence. Wicliffe, now more exasperated than ever, gave full scope to his indignation, and attacked without distinction, both in his sermons and other pieces, not only the whole body of the monks, but the encroachments and tyranny of the church of Rome, with other ecclesiastical corruptions.

In the year 1365, we find the name of Wicliffe first mentioned in the annals of our country. It was on occasion of the demand of pope Urban V. for the payment of the arrears of the tribute of one thousand marks per annum, imposed upon the country by king John; and the payment of which had been neglected since the year 1333. Wicliffe seized this opportunity to write against the papal demand, in opposition to an English monk, who had published in its defence. This recommended him to the particular notice of the king, Edward III. who conferred upon him several benefices, and employed him in various embassies. He was one of the commissioners in the ecclesiastical congress at Bruges, in the year 1374, which was appointed to settle the long-disputed question of the papal provisions and reservations. Here, from his intercourse

with the envoys of Gregory XI. he gained new light as to the policy and maxims of the church of Rome; and on his return the year following, he began to expose the whole system of the Romish hierarchy; openly declaring that the pope was Anti-Christ and that Man of Sin of whom St Paul and St. John prophesied; and proceeded to combat the various superstitious doctrines of the papal church. For this strenuous opposition to the pope, he was cited, in 1377, before the upper house of convocation, to answer to a charge of heresy; though he was protected from catholic fury by the generous interference of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, who had before procured for him the living of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire. As this prince, however, had patronised Wicliffe from political motives, he subsequently withdrew his patronage on finding that the reformer contended against errors and usurpations purely religious.

Wicliffe laboured zealously and incessantly to disseminate his doctrines, and his success was wonderful. It is affirmed by the monkish historian Knighton, his cotemporary and inveterate enemy, that more than one half of the people of England became his followers. And such was the persecuting enmity which ac

tuated the catholics at this almost miraculous effect of his preaching, that in 1382, through the instrumentality of Courtney, archbishop of Canterbury, letters patent were obtained from the king, addressed to the university of Oxford, requiring them within seven days from the receipt of this order, to banish him and his adherents from the university, and to suppress all books and writings which favoured the new heresy. He survived his expulsion only two years, when he died at his living at Lutterworth, by a stroke of the palsy, in the year 1984.

His inveterate enemies, the catholic clergy, betrayed an indecent joy at his death, and the council of Constance, thirty years after, decreed that his bones should be taken up and thrown on a dunghill-an act of impotent malice, which was not executed till 1428, on oceasion of a bull for that purpose from pope Martin V.

The writings of Wicliffe, which are chiefly in MS. were very voluminous. After his death they were condemned by various councils, and burnt wherever they could be found. It is said by Joh. Coccles, (Hist. Hussit.) that Subynco Lepus, archbishop of Prague, in Bohemia, where his doctrines made great progress, pub

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