Ps 1351 Confitemini Domino quoniam bonus : quoniam in eternum misericordia eius. € Shrifis til lorde for he is gode: for withouten end the mercy of him. @ Grete louyng of this psalme is shewyd in paralypomenon,|| where it is red. that when the sunnys of israel began to loue god and sey conjitemini
i the ioy of god fulfilde goddis hous. also nere is the presens of goddis grace, if hit be purly seyd. loue we god here that we may loue him with aungels : hig louying is our fode. for no delite is like it.
_ * No. 17,376 of the Additional MSS in the British Museum, It is on vellum, 7? by 5} in. in size, A memorandum by the late on the fly-leaf, relates the curious adventures
Library of Trinity College, Dublin, ascribed to John Hyde, t Beitrige, as before, p.1. It was, however, a tendency of the Mercian, or Midland, to absorb collateral dialects into itself ; and possibly some who spoke Kentish might write Mercian. See a passage quoted from John de Trevisa in Traill’s Social vf the Hingis tts e anguish of this passage was given as as: ecimen in the Guide-book to the Wyclif Exhibition before Be ached, p. aa We have inserted the Latin text from the MS itself, fol. 50, It is noticeable how much it differs from the Vulgate.
§ See the edition of The Psalter or Psalms of David and certain Canticles ... by Richard Rolle, of Hampole, ed. by H. R. Bramley, 1884, Pp. Vv. The MSS used by the editor are Univ. Coll. MS Ixiv. ; Sidney Sussex Coll. MS 45. 3; and the Laudian MS 286,
|| Chronicles, The reference ig to 2 Ch 71,
VERSIONS (ENGLISH)
Ps 1361 Super flumina babilonis illic sedimus & flewimus : dum recordarenvur syon. @ Abouen the flodes of babilon thar we sat and gret: whils we vmthou3t* of syon. @ fflodis of babilon are all thinges that are lufid here. and passis, that holy men beholdis and forsakes, sittand abouen thaim. & gretis thair oun pilgrymage & thair synne. that are rauysht in til the flodis. whils thei thynk of syon. that is, of heuen, where nothing rennys, bot all that ioy is to gedur. worldis men gretis. bot nou3t bot for tynsil of thair godes. or thair frendis. as thei ioy nou3t bot in thair welth. ilk man shal grete. bot thinkand of syon.
iii. WYCLIFITE.—To understand aright the Biblical labours of Wyclif and those who worked with him, we must take a brief survey of the events amidst which he grew up, and try to discern their general drift.
The reign of Edward 11. is often described as one of outward glory and prosperity. It was so in part, but it was much more (the latter part of it, at least) a period of upheaval and slow-working revolutionary movements. It was a period in which the sentiment of national independence be- came more strong and definite, both in civil and religious matters. In 1338 the German electors asserted their right to choose a king, whose title should not need confirmation by the pope.+ The ‘captivity’ of the papacy itself, when from 1378 to 1409 an anti-Rome was fixed at Avignon, tended materially to strengthen this sentiment. The claims of a spiritual sovereignty, the visible seat of which was at a spot just outside the French frontier, became perceptibly weakened, as regards England at least, in a country which regarded France as its natural enemy. Evidence of the growth of this anti-papal feeling was shown in the
assing of the Statute of Provisors in 1351, of the Onin aes of Preemunire in 1353, and of the for- midable statute bearing that name in 1393. The great battles of the reign, and its great calamity of the Black Death, both, rightly interpreted, taught the same lesson. At Creey and Poitiers it was the national militia of England that over- threw the feudal chivalry of France ; the yeoman’s cloth-yard shaft that unhorsed the mail-clad noble. After the Black Death of 1348-49, which ceased only after it had swept away half the entire popu- lation, those of the working classes who were left, whether as labourers in the fields or handicrafts- men in the towns, were masters of the situation. No statutes of labourers could prevent them from demanding and obtaining higher wages. For the next thirty years the struggle went on between the forces of upheaval, on the one hand, and repression on the other, till it culminated in the Peasant Revolt, and in the scenes of riot at Bury and St. Albans.
This spirit of the age is seen reflected in the two poets who, with Wyclif, are the greatest names in its literature. William Langland, born about 1332, took for the hero of his discursive poem, no noble, but a peasant, Piers the Plowman, who ‘rises, in the poet’s conception, from being only a representative English labourer, to the type of Christ himself.’ And of the many characters who grew into life under the creative hand of Chaucer, the one drawn with the finest and most loving touch, the ‘ poure persoun of a toune,’ was a ploughman’s brother.
Of John Wyclif himself, at least for the earlier part of his life, but few facts are known with cer- tainty. He was a Yorkshireman, and, according to Leland,§ came from the village of Wyclif-on- Tees. That he entered Oxford is certain ; and, as he was afterwards Master of Balliol College, a college founded not long before by a neighbouring