HAMILTON SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION 85 



knew them well, called "Bible-men" — that is, they taught 

 that every humble-minded Christian man or woman is able, 

 without " fail or default," to find out the true sense of 

 scripture, Wycliffe died at Lutterworth on the last day of 

 December, 1384. 



As Charles the Fifth, after the battle of Muhlberg, pen- 

 sively stood at Luther's grave, and one of his staff asked if 

 the grave should be rifled, the emperor curtly answered : "I 

 war with the living, not with the dead." But the corpse of 

 the great "Bibleman" did not escape the barbarous usage of 

 that age, for forty-four years after its burial, Richard Flem- 

 ing, bishop of Lincoln, who had himself been once condemned 

 for Wycliffe tendencies, armed with authority of the Council 

 of Constance, had the body of John Wycliffe dug up and burnt 

 and its ashes flung into the river Swift. And then, as 

 Wordsworth tells, that ancient voice which streams can hear 

 thus spake : 



"As thou these ashes, little brook, wilt bear 



Into the Avon, Avon to the tide 



Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas, 



Into main ocean they, this deed accurst 



An emblem yields to friends and enemies. 



How the bold teacher's doctrine, sanctified 



By truth, shall spread throughout the world dispersed." 



Wycliffe' s translations are virtually the last of the 

 written Bibles. One other is said to have been made by John 

 de Trevisa, chaplain and vicar of Berkeley, in Gloucester- 

 shire, who was contemporary with Wycliffe. He was a 

 voluminous writer, and was translator of the Polychronicon, 

 written in Latin by Ralph Higden, a Benedictine monk of the 

 abbey of St. Werburgh, Chester, at the close of the thirteenth 

 century, a work that in England for two centuries or more 

 was the standard history of the world. Caxton, having "a 

 little embellished," as he said, Trevisa's version of this old 

 chronicle, printed it, and in his preface said that Trevisa had 

 also translated the Bible into English. The translators of the 

 King James' version, in their preface, also make direct ref- 



