635 



WYKEHAM, WILLIAM DE. 



WYKEHAM, WILLIAM DE. 



650 



letters were obtained from the king by which Wycliffe was debarred 

 from teaching any longer in the university. 



Wycliffe is supposed to have spent the remainder of his life in his 

 parish of Lutterwortb, where however his pen was more active than 

 eve r. His version of the Scriptures, the work which did perhaps more 

 than anything else to undermine the influence of the Church of Rome 

 in this country was probably, in part at least, published before this 

 time. But the literary performances which he is commonly supposed 

 to have produced after this date make an amount of composition which 

 is entirely incredible in the circumstances. It is related that some 

 time after he was driven from the university he was summoned to 

 Rome to answer the charge of heresy by Pope Urban VI. : this appears 

 to rest on nothing more than a letter of Wycliffe's, without date, 

 addressed to his holiness, published by Lewis from a manuscript in 

 the Bodleian, in which he says, " If I might travel in my own person, 

 I would, with God's will, go to the pope. But Christ has needed me 

 to the contrary, and taught me more obeish to God than to man." It is 

 supposed that he had had an attack of paralysis before this time. He 

 recovered partially, but found it necessary to hire another priest, John 

 Purneye, to assist him in his parish duties, and also to act as his 

 amanuensis. At last, while he was in his church hearing mass on 

 Holy Innocents' day, the 29th of December 1384, just as the host was 

 about to be elevated, he was thrown down by another violent fit of 

 palsy, and he never spoke more, but died on, the last day of the year. 

 Forty years afterwards his doctrine was condemned by the Council of 

 Constance, which also directed that his body should be exhumed and 

 burnt. This was done, and the ashes were cast into the Swift, the 

 little stream which flows along the foot of the hill on which the town 

 of Lutterworth is built. 



As for the particular opinions which Wycliffe held, it is not easy 

 to say what they really were on various points, for two reasons : first, 

 they were probably different at different times of his life ; secondly, 

 we are by no means certain whether many of the writings attributed 

 to him are really his. But generally his views appear to have re- 

 sembled those of Calvin more nearly than those of any other great 

 leader of the Reformation of the 16th century. To some of the more 

 peculiar doctrines of the Roman church he seems to have adhered to 

 the end of his life : it may be doubted, for instance, if he disapproved 

 of either pilgrimages or the worship of images; purgatory he evi- 

 dently believed in to the last; and, what is not very easily reconciled 

 with his repeated denunciations of the papal power as Antichrist, he 

 addresses Pope Urban in the letter mentioned above as the greatest of 

 Christ's vicars upon earth, and in another of his treatises, supposed to 

 have been written shortly before, that entitled ' On the truth of Scrip- 

 ture,' he describes it as being nothing less than paganism, for a man to 

 refuse obedience to the apostolic see. In his doctrinal theology he 

 was a strong predestinarian and necessitarian. On the subject of 

 church government he was an independent and voluntary of the most 

 extreme description; opposed to episcopacy, opposed to establish- 

 ments, opposed to endowments, holding that the clergy should be 

 supported only by alms, and that every man should be as far as 

 possible a church to himself. On the subject of his writings the 

 reader should see what is said by Dr. Vaughan in his ' Life of 

 Wyclifie,' by Dr. Todd in the preface to 'The Last Age of the Church,' 

 and also in the preface to his edition of 'An Apology for Lollard 

 Doctrines, attributed to WiclifFe,' printed from a manuscript in the 

 library of Trinity College, Dublin, for the Camden Society, 4to, 

 London, 1842. Most of Wycliffe's writings, or supposed writings, still 

 remain in manuscript. Of his translation of the Scriptures, the New 

 Testament was printed first, by his biographer, the Rev. John Lewis, 

 minister of Margate, in folio, in 1731 ; again in 4to, in 1810, under the 

 care of the Rev. Henry Hervey Baber, of the British Museum ; and, 

 for the third time, in Bagster's ' English Hexapla,' 4to, London, 1841. 

 ' The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments with the 

 Apocryphal Books, in the earliest English versions made from the 

 Latin Vulgate, by John Wycliffe and his followers/ was published by 

 the University of Oxford in 1850 in 4 vols. 4 to, under the editorship 

 of the Rev. Josiah Forshall and Sir Frederick Madden, and contains 

 the 'elder and later versions,' with the various readings, a very 

 valuable introduction, and an excellent glossary. 



(There is an account of Wycliffe in Fox's ' Martyrs,' which is worth 

 little or nothing. There are also long articles about him in the first 

 edition of the 'Biographia Britannica,' 1766, vol. vi., part 2, pp. 4257- 

 4266; in ' British Biography,' 12 vols. 8vo, 1773, vol i., pp. 11-52; and 

 in Chalmers's ' Dictionary,' 1817, vol. xxxii., pp. 27-38. The separate 

 Lives, by the Rev. John Lewis (first published in 1719; for the last 

 time, at the Clarendon Press, in 1820), by Dr. Robert Vaughan (1828, 

 and edition, 1831, and in a revised form, 1853), and by the Rev. Webb 

 Le Bas, 1832, have been mentioned above.) 



WYKEHAM, WILLIAM, or WILLIAM DE or OF, was born at 

 Wykeham or Wickham in Hampshire, in the year 1324, and, as his 

 biographer Bishop Lowth has shown, some time between the 7th of 

 July and the 27th of September. There is reason to believe that he 

 did not take his name from his native village, the same name being 

 borne by several of his relations living in his own day, who do not 

 appear to have been born there. All that is certainly known about 

 his father and mother is that their Christian names were John and 

 Sibyl : if his father bore the name of Wykeham, he appears to have 



also passed by that of Long or Longe, and to have had an elder 

 brother who was called Henry Aas. His parents are said to have been 

 both, although poor, of creditable descent, as well as of reputable 

 character. 



He was put to school at Winchester, not by his father, who had 

 not the means, but by some wealthy patron, who is traditionally said 

 to have been Nicholas Uvedale, lord of the manor of Wykeham and 

 governor of Winchester Castle. The tradition further asserts that, 

 after leaving school, he became secretary to Uvedale ; and that he was 

 secretary to the constable of Winchester Castle is stated in a written 

 account compiled in his own time. Afterwards he is said to have been 

 recommended by Uvedale to Edyngton, bishop of Winchester, and 

 then by those two friends to have been made known to King 

 Edward III. There seems to be no reason for supposing that he ever 

 studied at Oxford, as has been affirmed by some of the later writers 

 of his life. It is evident indeed that he had not had a university 

 education, and that he never pretended to any skill in the favourite 

 scholastic learning of his age. His strength lay in his natural genius, 

 in his knowledge of mankind and talent for business ; and probably 

 the only art and science he had much cultivated was architecture. 



He is said in an ancient contemporary account to have been brought 

 to court when he was no more than three or four and twenty, which 

 would be about the year 1348 ; but the earliest office which there is 

 the evidence of records, for his having held is that of clerk of all the 

 king's works in his manors of Henle and Yethampsted, his patent for 

 which is dated the 10th of May 1356. On the 30th of October in the 

 same year he was made surveyor of the king's works at the castle and 

 in the park of Windsor. It is affirmed by a contemporary writer to 

 have been at his instigation that King Edward pulled down and 

 rebuilt great part of Windsor Castle. Wykeham had the sole superin- 

 tendence of the work. Qneenborough Castle, in the Isle of Sheppy, 

 was also built under his direction. 



The king now began to reward him bountifully. He had probably 

 taken deacon's orders at an early age ; Lowth finds him designated 

 'clericus,' or clerk, in 1352. It was not however till the 5th of 

 December 1361 that he was admitted to the order of acolyte : he was 

 ordained sub-deacon on the 12th of March 1362, and priest on the 

 12th of June following. Meanwhile his first ecclesiastical preferment, 

 the rectory of Pulham in Norfolk, had been conferred upon him by 

 the king's presentation on the 30th of November 1357. On the 1st of 

 March 1359 he was presented by the king to the prebend of Flixton, 

 in the church of Lichfield. On the 16th of April following he had a 

 grant of 200Z. a year from the crown, over and above all his former 

 appointments, till he should get quiet possession of the church of 

 Pulham, his induction into which living had been opposed by the 

 court of Rome. On the 10th of July in the same year he was 

 appointed chief warden and surveyor of the king's castles of Windsor, 

 Leeds, Dover, and Hadlam, and of the manors of Old and New Wind- 

 sor, Wichemer, and sundry other castles and manors, with the parks 

 belonging to them. On the 5th of May 1360 he received the king's 

 grant of the deanery of the royal free chapel or collegiate church of 

 St. Martin-le-Grand, London. In October 1360 he attended upon the 

 king at Calais, probably in quality of public notary, when the treaty 

 of Bretigny was solemnly confirmed by the oaths of Edward and King 

 John of France. Numerous additional preferments in the church, for 

 which we must refer the reader to the elaborate detail given by Lowth, 

 were heaped upon him in the course of the next three years. By June 

 1363 moreover he had been appointed to the office of warden and 

 justiciary of the king's forests on this side Trent. On the 14th of 

 March 1364 he had by royal grant an assignment of twenty shillings 

 a day out of the exchequer. On the llth of May 1364, he was made 

 keeper of the privy seal, and soon after he is styled secretary to the 

 king, or what we should now call principal secretary of state. In May 

 1365 he was commissioned by the king, with the chancellor, the 

 treasurer, and the Earl of Arundel, to treat of the ransom of the 

 King of Scotland (David II., taken at the battle of Neville's Cross in 

 1346), and the prolonging of the truce with the Scots; and not long 

 after this he is designated, in a paper printed in the ' Feeders,' chief 

 of the privy council and governor of the great council, which phrases 

 however Lowth supposes do not express titles of office, but only the 

 great influence and authority which he had in those assemblies. 

 " There are several other preferments, both ecclesiastical and civil," 

 adds Lowth, " which he is said to have held ; but I do not mention 

 them because the authorities produced for them are such as I cannot 

 entirely depend upon. And, as to his ecclesiastical benefices already 

 mentioned, the practice of exchanging them was then so common 

 that 'tis hard to determine precisely which of them he held altogether 

 at any one time." There is extant however an account given in by 

 himself on occasion of the bull of Pope Urban V. against pluralities, 

 of the entire number and value of his church benefices, as the matter 

 stood in the year 1366 ; and from this statement, in which Wykeham 

 calls himself " Sir William of Wykeham, clerk, archdeacon of Lincoln, 

 and secretary of our lord the illustrious king of England, and keeper 

 of his privy seal," it appears that the total produce of those which he 

 had held when the account was demanded was 873Z. 6s. 8d., and of 

 those of which he remained in possession when it was given in, 842/. 



All these inferior dignities however it is to be presumed that he 

 resigned when, upon the death of William de Edyngdon, on the 8th 





