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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2016
The present-day hamlet of Wycliffe stands on a small spit of level ground on the south bank of the river Tees, some seven miles east of Barnard Castle, at a point where the north bank rises in a high cliff; the churchyard stretches almost to the river bank. The claim that John Wyclif takes his name from the village cannot, unless further documentation is discovered, be finally proved; but it seems a reasonable one. Robert Wyclif, a clerk in the diocese of York, acted on behalf of John in 1371 in regard to tithes from an alien priory granted to the latter by the king, and again in 1376 to pay part of the annates claimed by the papal collector Arnald Gamier for the prebend of Caistor, a prebend from which Wyclif was displaced by the appointment of the papal provisor Philip Thornbury.
1 See PRO E159/147 and for the second Lunt, W. E. and Graves, E. B., Accounts rendered by Papal Collectors in England, 1317-1378 = Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, 70, (Philadelphia, 1968), p. 504.Google Scholar
2 For Robert see Workman, H. B., John Wyclif, 2 vols (Oxford, 1926), 1, pp. 45–8Google Scholar; the will is partly printed in Raine, J., ed., Wills and Inventories…of the Northern Counties, 1, SS, 2 (1835), pp. 66–8Google Scholar, and partly in Baker, L., ed., Testamenta Eboracensia, i, SS, 4 (1836), pp. 403–5.Google Scholar
3 See Emden, Oxford, 3, p. 2106; York Reg. Thoresby, 11, fol. 291v.
4 York Reg. Zouche, 10A, fols 50v-51r:, 52r, 53r, one was ordained as acolyte on 18 Dec. 1350 (ibid., fol. 49v).
5 Swanson, R. N., ‘Titles to orders in Medieval English episcopal registers’, in Mayr-Harting, H. and Moore, R. I., eds, Studies in Medieval History presented to R. H. C. Davis (London, 1985), pp. 233–45 at p. 242Google Scholar; compare Moran, J. A. Hoeppner, ‘Clerical recruitment in the Diocese of York, 1340-1530: data and commentary’, JEH, 34 (1983), pp. 19–54 at pp. 30–1.Google Scholar
6 Merton Record 3690, and 4.16, p. 12; Balliol Archives E.1.38b; for Balliol’s early northern associations see Catto, J., ‘The first century of Balliol men, 1260-1360’ in Prest, J., ed., Balliol Studies (London, 1982), pp. 3–16Google Scholar, and Jones, J., Balliol College: a History, 1263-1939 (Oxford, 1988), pp. 1–20.Google Scholar
7 Lincoln Reg. Gynewell 9, fol. 172r.
8 Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Petitions to the Pope, A.D.1342-1419, ed. W. H. Bliss (London, 1896), 1, pp. 390, 392.
9 See Dobson, R. B., Durham Priory: 1400-1450 (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 343–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and more briefly idem, ‘The Black Monks of Durham and Canterbury Colleges: comparisons and contrasts’, in H. Wansbrough and A. Marett-Crosby, eds, Benedictines in Oxford (London, 1997), pp. 61-78; for the library see Coates, A. E., ‘The Library of Durham College, Oxford’, Library History, 8, no. 5 (1990), pp. 125–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 For the survival of Wyclif’s texts see Thomson, W. R., The Latin Writings of John Wyclyf (Toronto, 1983)Google Scholar, though some corrections and additions are needed; medieval ownership of some English copies can be traced in Ker, N. R., ed., Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: a List of Surviving Books, 2nd edn (London, 1964)Google Scholar, and Watson, A. G., ed., Supplement (London, 1987).Google Scholar
11 Thomson, Latin Writings, no. 39 lists the other copies; only that in MS Bodley 703, where it appears alongside anti-Wyclif texts by William Woodford, is dated to 10 May 1381, and it is from there that the dating in Fasciculi Zizaniorum (ed. W. W. Shirley, RS, [1858], pp. 115-32, at p. 115 n. 1) is taken. The shorter version of the Confessio consists of statements found in exactly the same form in Wyclif’s De apostasia, ed. M. H. Dziewicki, WS (1889); whether the shorter text should be regarded as extracts from the longer, or as an earlier statement subsequently incorporated in it, is not clear. The longer version, which survives only in Hussite copies, was printed by Stein, I. H., ‘An unpublished fragment of Wyclif’s Confessio’ , Speculum, 8 (1933), pp. 503–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 See the list of contents in James, M. R., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Jesus College Cambridge (London, 1895), pp. 93–4Google Scholar; the list, including this item, is partly repeated in the margins of fol. 2r in another medieval hand. There are two scribes, the Wyclif text being in that which also wrote fols 2r-9v and 140r-151r.
13 Catalogi veteres librorum ecclesiae cath. Dunelm., ed. J. Raine, SS (1838), p. 72, ‘intelligitur’ - this is now fol. 3 of MS Jesus College 59.
14 See James, M. R., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Lambeth Palace (Cambridge, 1932), 1, 37–9Google Scholar; the sermons were edited by Loserth, J., Iohannis Wyclif Sermones, 4, WS (1890), pp. 197–492.Google Scholar
15 For the first text see Stegmüller, F., Repertorium biblicum medii aevi, 2 (Madrid, 1950), no. 1168Google Scholar; the second is listed without mention of this manuscript by Schneyer, J. B., Repertorium der Lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters, 3 (Münster, 1971), pp. 238–46Google Scholar; Cistrensis is Ranulph Higden, and the text is mentioned by Taylor, J., The ‘Universal Chronicle’ of Ranulf Higden (Oxford, 1966), p. 184Google Scholar; for Bromyard’s work see Boyle, L. E., ‘The date of the Summa praedicantium of John Bromyard’, Speculum, 48 (1973), pp. 533–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Pastoral Care, Clerical Education and Canon Law, 1200-1400 (London, 1981).
16 See Loserth, Sermones, p. 397/3, ‘et adulter lex’.
17 Even if the order of the indexes may indicate the original ordering of the texts (a hypothesis that the present binding and lack of many catchwords and signatures makes impossible to verify or disprove), the medieval list of contents indicates that the present order was early established. The entries from Bromyard, fols 250ra-251vb, are in the same hand as the Cistrensis text, but end eleven lines before the bottom of fol. 251vb - the incompleteness again may suggest that Cistrensis originally stood after the Wyclif sermons.
18 Ker, Medieval Libraries, p. 73. Alan Piper identifies the hand of the pressmark with that of DrSwalwell, Thomas: ‘Dr Thomas Swalwell, Monk of Durham, Archivist and Bibliophile (d.1539)’, in Carley, J. P. and Tite, C. G. C., eds, Books and Collectors 1200-1700: Essays presented to Andrew Watson (London, 1997), pp. 71–100Google Scholar, at p. 81, and attributes additional information in the list of contents here and in MS Jesus College Cambridge 59 to him (p. 92 n. 61).
19 Neither is named, but the identification seems probable. In the decoration at the foot of fol. 1r is a blank shield.
20 Thomson, Latin Writings, nos 28-30, lists this incompletely. I owe many of the details that follow about this manuscript to the great generosity of Dr Alan Piper and Dr Ian Doyle of Durham. On fols 11r-13r appear copies of some of the material connected with Pope Gregory XI’s condemnation of Wyclif in 1377.
21 It is difficult to identify this snippet since about half of each line is now lost; the final word ‘prescitorum’ makes it tempting to look in Wyclif, but I have so far not succeeded in finding it.
22 The whole work was edited by R. L. Poole and J. Loserth, 4 vols, WS (1885-1904); the chapters are iv.512/21-562/7 and 603/9-647/31.
23 See Thomson, Latin Writings, no. 51; the text was printed by J. Loserth and F. D. Matthew at the end of their edition of the De mandatis, WS (1922), pp. 527-33, apparently without recalling that the same material had been included in De civili dominio, iv. Of the three manuscripts Prague UK V. E.17 is the longest, whilst Prague MK A.71/1 (not A.70, as in Thomson) ends p. 532/8, and Prague MK C.38 ends p. 531/4. In the Bohemian catalogue, R. Buddensieg, John Wiclif’s Polemical Works, WS (1883), i.lxiv, lxxi and lxxviii, the explicit given is that of the longest form.
24 See in manuscript order, Thomson, Latin Writings, nos 431, 412, 423, 383, 403, 413, 32 ch. 7, 415, 408, 47, 405 and 30 ch. 27. The manuscript’s content was first properly identified by Stein, I. H., ‘The Wyclif manuscript in Florence’, Speculum, 5 (1930). pp. 95–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
25 I have discussed these references, and their implications, in my paper ‘Cross referencing in Wyclif’s Latin Works’, SCH.S, 11 (forthcoming).
26 In ch. 24 the references are found at iv.526/14, 531/22, 532/27, 534/22, 538/28; in the later section references still available and present are those at iv.603/9, 610/38, 612/2, 630/24, 635/9 (where Durham has ch. 13 not 23 as the printed text), 639/13, 645/1, 645/9.
27 For Rypon see Emden, Oxford, 3, p. 1618; for the gift W. Pantin in H. E. Salter, W. A. Pantin, and H. G. Richardson, eds, Formularies which bear on the History of Oxford c.1204-1420, OHS, ns 4 (1942), pp. 243 and n. 77, 245. The direct information concerning books at Durham College is not revealing: beyond this three lists survive, one of 1315 (too early for Wyclif), the second of c. 1400, and the third of 1409 list books sent to Oxford and, unsurprisingly, do not contain works by him: see Blakiston, H. E. D., ‘Some Durham College Rolls’, Collectanea, 3, OHS, 32 (1896), pp. 1–76, at pp. 35–41.Google Scholar
28 See Thomson, Latin Writings, nos 7-19, 26-37; Pantin suggested the first of these as the more probable.
29 Ibid., nos 1-3; all three books were of early date though the third part was at least partly revised late in Wyclif’s career - reflected in the eucharistie material which led to the censure of some items from this work, under the title De arte sophistica, in 1411: see Wilkins, D., Concilia magnae Britanniae et Hibemiae, 4 vols (London, 1737), 3, p. 346.Google Scholar
30 For instance, BL MS Harley 4894, fols 32V, 40r, 77v; the sermons were quoted extensively by Owst, G. R., Preaching in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1926)Google Scholar and Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1966).
31 See Wilkins, Concilia, 3, pp. 229-30.
32 Loci e libro veritatum, ed. J. E. Thorold Rogers (Oxford, 1881), pp. 116, 157, 164-5; see Emden, Oxford, 1, pp. 319-20.
33 Ker, N. R. and Piper, A. J., eds, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries iv Paisley-York (Oxford, 1992), pp. 706–9Google Scholar, item 14, and Emden, Oxford, 1, p. 642. I am much indebted to Alan Piper for drawing this to my attention. That this collection is unlikely to be the one Gascoigne saw appears from the divergence between its other contents and those mentioned by Gascoigne (see n. 32). The Constance condemnation is in Mansi, J. D., Sacrorum Conciliorum Nove et Amplissima Collectio, 27 (Venice, 1784), cols 632–4.Google Scholar
34 See Piper, ‘Dr Thomas Swalwell’, pp. 97-8, n. 131.
35 For these four see Salter, Pantin, and Richardson, Formularies, pp. 231-3, and introductory note by Pantin, pp. 222-3.
36 The letters appear in sequence in Durham Cathedral MS C.iv.25, fol. 39r, letters A-D.
37 See ibid., fol. 88r; Pantin appears to have overlooked this index.
38 Pantin, W. A., ‘A Benedictine opponent of John Wyclif’, EHR, 43 (1928), pp. 73–7Google Scholar; this letter is in the same manuscript fols 59v-60r, letter E, and the index (fol. 84V, again missed by Pantin) specifies the subject as ‘J. de Wiclyff’.
39 Alan Piper has corrected Emden’s dates: the death is recorded in the year May 1420- May 1421 (Dean and Chapter Library Durham, Bursar’s Accounts 1420-1).
40 See Walsingham, , Chronicon Anglie, ed. Thompson, E. M., RS (1874), pp. 180–1, 174–5Google Scholar. Historia Anglicana, ed. H. T. Riley, 2 vols, RS (1863-4), I, pp. 352-3, 346-7.
41 Fasciculi Zizaniorum, p. 271; for the text see Thomson, Latin Writings, no. 398.
42 Brief biographies of Uthred are to be found in Emden, Oxford, I, pp. 212-13, Pantin, W. A., ‘Two treatises of Uthred of Boldon on the monastic life’, in Hunt, R. W., Pantin, W. A., and Southern, R. W., eds, Studia in Medieval History presented to F. M. Powicke (Oxford, 1948), pp. 363–85Google Scholar; Knowles, M. D., ‘The Censured Opinions of Uthred of Boldon’, PBA, 37 (1951), pp. 305–42Google Scholar; J. I. Catto in J. I. Catto and T.A.R. Evans, eds, The History of the University of Oxford ii Late Medieval Oxford (Oxford, 1992), pp. 184-6; D. H. Farmer, ‘New Light on Uthred of Boldon’, in Wansbrough and Marett-Crosby, eds, Benedictines in Oxford; a full modern biography is much needed.
43 For Wyclif’s text see Opera minora, ed. J. Loserth, WS (1913), pp. 405-14; for Uthred’s responses see the manuscript details given in Pantin, Two treatises’, pp. 364-5, and the edition of two of the relevant texts (for which see below) by C. H. Thompson, ‘Uthred of Boldon: a study in fourteenth century political theory’ (Manchester PhD. thesis, 1936) to which the following comments are much indebted.
44 BN, MS lat.3184, fols 46v-48r; for the other texts see Thomson, Latin Writings, nos. 402, 382-3, 400; the unprinted Paris catalogue suggests that an inscription dated 1396 on fol. 125V in Breton may indicate its origin; it subsequently belonged to Laurence Burelli, doctor of Paris (see fol. iv) who died in 1504.
45 See above, n. 23.
46 Opera minora, p. 405/9-20. Thompson, ‘Uthred of Boldon’, 1, p. 55, n. 1, notes that Wyclif p. 406/1-3 (recte p. 405/9-12) is closely similar to Uthred’s fol. 25, ‘pro quilibet hominis progressu versus suum terminum naturalem, sive in via innocencie sive lapsus excellencius, semper fuisset et foret sacerdocium quam hominis dominium proeodem.’
47 The position is little different now from that described by Pantin in 1948: Pantin, Two treatises’, printed extracts from two texts, noted the edition of two more relevant here in Thompson’s thesis ‘Uthred of Boldon’, and observed the inadequacy of the edition of the only lengthy text printed, that of Contra querelas fratrum, by Marcett, M. E., Uthred de Boldon, Friar William Jordan and ‘Piers Plowman’ (New York, 1938), pp. 25–37.Google Scholar
48 Durham Cathedral Library, MS A. IV.33, respectively fols 1r-23r, 24r-64v, 69r-99v, 99v-110r, the last two (not the last three, pace Pantin, Two treatises’, p. 364, n. 6) were edited by Thompson, ‘Uthred of Boldon’, vol. 2.
49 Ibid., fol. 46v: ‘restat ut semper et pro semper temporis regale officium fuerit, sit et erit sacerdocio subalternum et ipsum sacerdocium… regali officio dignius sit in gradu’, and fol. 54r, ‘videtur quod hec violencia gladialis spoliandi, cruciandi etc. non ad sacerdocium se extendat sicut ad populum laicalem’, quoted Thompson, ‘Uthred of Boldon’, 1, p. 60, n. 1 and p. 64 n. 1; see also 1, p. 28 where he suggests that Wyclif might have been answering another lost tract on the issue of disendowment, but this seems to me, whilst possible, not a necessary deduction.
50 See Opera minora, pp. 406/1, 13, 407/19, 409/13, 411/15, 412/29.
51 Pantin, Two treatises’, p. 363, Emden Oxford, 1, p. 212.
52 Thompson, ‘Uthred of Boldon’, 1, pp. 10-16, 31-5. He argues (p. 31) that the interchange between Uthred and Wyclif arose from the question of papal tribute that was discussed by Parliament in 1366; but on neither side does this seem to me to be the main concern - and reticence would certainly have not stopped Wyclif from trenchant comments on that topic. For other objections to such an early date, see Loserth, J., ‘Die ältesten Streitschriften Wiclifs’, Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Phil.-Hist Klasse 160.2 (Vienna, 1908), pp. 9–11, 25–6.Google Scholar
53 Thompson, ‘Uthred of Boldon’, 1, p. 90 quotes the passage from the Durham MS A.IV.33, fol. 49v ‘fuit in ecclesia Iesu Christi monstrum christianis omnibus dolorosum, scilicet duo capita reputata, cum tamen solus Christus caput sit super omnem ecclesiam que corpus ipsius est’, but does not mention the implication for date.
54 For the sequence see Aston, M., ‘‘Caim’s Castles”: Poverty, Politics, and Disendowment’, in Dobson, R. B., ed., The Church, Politics and Patronage in the Fifteenth Century (Gloucester, 1984), pp. 45–81, at p. 51Google Scholar; for the second Catto, J. I., ‘An alleged Great Council of 1374’, EHR, 82 (1967), pp. 764–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Uthred’s two surviving antifraternal tracts see Pantin, Two treatises’, p. 364; Pantin dates them to c. 1366-8; a recent review of Uthred’s position is Dipple, G. L., ‘Uthred and the friars: Apostolic Poverty and clerical dominion between FitzRalph and Wyclif’, Traditio, 49 (1994), pp. 235–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
55 See Pantin, W. A., ‘The Defensorium of Adam Easton’, EHR, 51 (1936), pp. 675–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Thomson, Latin Writings, nos 28-30 and references given there; Catto, History of the University, pp. 202-4. See, now, for conformation of this suggestion, and for the care with which Easton had read and excerpted Wyclif’s work, Harvey, M., ‘Adam Easton and the condemnation of John Wyclif, 1377’, EHR, 113 (1998), pp. 321–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
56 Our knowledge of this book depends on two witnesses: Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 1341, and BN MS lat. 15869, a Paris student’s somewhat abbreviated copy, made soon after 1381; these two agree in all matters relevant to the present issue.
57 See Opera minora, pp. 405/8, 22, 410/34, 414/35 as observed by Loserth and mentioned by Thomson, Latin Writings, p. 230; Catto, History of the University, p. 203 suggests that Uthred may have been the first to raise the issues of endowment and papal taxation in the schools, though he does not set a firm date for this.
58 See Pantin, ‘Two treatises’, pp. 363-4, with reference to Eulogium historiarum, 3, ed. F. S. Haydon, RS (1863), p. 337; also Catto, ‘An alleged Great Council’.
59 Durham Account Rolls, 3, ed. J. T. Fowler, SS, 103 (1901), p. 591.
60 Thomson, Latin Writings, p. 231; the text against Binham is Opera minora, pp. 415-30.
61 Opera minora, p. 409/23.
62 Ibid., p. 414/36.
63 De civili dominio, ii.1/9.
64 For instance, book iii, chs 18-19 are an answer to William Woodford, O.F.M.’s Determinatio de civili dominio, itself an answer to Wyclif’s first book of the same title.
65 See De civili dominio, ii.5/19 ‘coram tam sciolo et venerabili auditorio in ecclesia beate virginis Oxonie’ (with which compare Opera minora, p. 405/6); the discussion extends through the first four chapters.
66 Mallard, W., ‘Dating the Sermones Quadraginta of John Wyclif’, Medievalia et Humanistica, 17 (1966), pp. 86–105Google Scholar, and Hudson, A., ‘Aspects of the “Publication” of Wyclif’s Latin Sermons’, in Minnis, A. J., ed., Late-Medieval Religious Texts and their Transmission: Essays in Honour of A. I. Doyle (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 121–9.Google Scholar
67 See Snape, M. G., ‘Some evidence of Lollard activity in the diocese of Durham in the early fifteenth century’, Archaeologia Aeliana ser. 4, 39 (1961), pp. 355–61.Google Scholar
68 The letter survives only in one Bohemian manuscript, now Prague University Library, III. G.11, fols 89v-99v, where it has no heading, but is entered in the medieval list of contents on the front medieval flyleaf. It was printed by Matthew, F. D., ‘The trial of Richard Wyche’, EHR, 5 (1890), pp. 530–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
69 Emden, Oxford, 3, pp. 1587-8; see Matthew, “Richard Wyche’, p. 539.
70 Matthew, ‘Richard Wyche’, p. 536.