"WyclifFe, John, the first translator of the entire Bible into English, and " the morning-star of the Refor- mation," was also eminent as a scholar, a diplomatist, and a preacher. There seem to have been three other persons of the same name contemporaneous with him; one a seneschal of Merton College in 135G (probably the author of a weak chiliastic treatise entitled The Last Age of the Church, usually attributed to the Reformer [ed. Todd, Dublin, 1840]), another who was master of Balliol College in 1340, ami still another who was vicar of May- field from 13G1 to 1380.
I. Antecedents. — The career and work of Wycliffe can- not well be appreciated without a brief review of some of the literary and ecclesiastical, and especially the Bib- lical, circumstances of the times.
1. The midnight of the Dark Ages had been broken by the establishment of high-schools, whose light was sen- sibly felt along the pathways of scientific and religious inquiry. Europe was emerging from the semi-barba- rism which the northern hordes had poured over the older seats of civilization, and the invaders themselves, now Cliristianized and educated, were sending back streams of missionary and literary culture to their fa- therlands. England was foremost in realizing these ameliorating influences. From the times of the Roman sway she had enjoyed pre-eminent advantages through contact with Latin Christianity, which then embodied all the learning and piety of the Western empire; and the displacement of the Britons by the Anglo-Saxons, and the subjugation of these in turn by the Normans, had added successively elements of refinement to her originally wild strength, as the compound English lan- guage itself attests to-day. At the period of which we write the French tongue was still used in courts of law, a vestige of which exists in many of the commonest le- gal terms to the present day; and side by side was the Latin as the medium of literary intercourse, which likewise is yet indicated by other legal titles of well- known processes. The English universities, estalilished about two centuries prior to WyclifFe's graduation, and a little later than those of Italy and Paris, but some three centuries before the oldest of Germany, were orig- inally divinity schools, or, at least, were conducted by
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divines and largely for sacred learning. In fact, theology was the chief and ahnost the sole science of that early day, and the only other forms of knowledge that took a scholastic form were languages and philosophy, botli of which then had a decidedly theological aim and color- ing. ]\[oreover, the students were almost exclusively novitiates of some of the various monastic ranks with wliich at that time all parts of Europe particularly swarmed. Wyclitfe himself, while in college, was a can- didate for holy orders, and his own studies of course lay in that direction, as doubtless did those of most of his pupils.
2. The Lollards, as all the predecessors of Protestant- ism in England were called, had already begun a com- parison of the glaring corruptions of Rome with the simple truths and practices of early Christianity, as well as with tlie obvious laws of morality and social decen- cy; and in this discussion, which usually was rather in- directly than ostensibly carried on, the Bible, and espe- cially the New Test., was of course continually appealed to as an authority against the papal dogmas, ecclesias- tical traditions, and priestly dominations. These latter were especially open to the shafts of ridicule, and, as in the Reformation afterwards, the wits of Wycliflfe's day, including Chaucer and Gower, were not slow in pointing out Romish inconsistencies to the public eye. The mass of the people were thorougldy awake to the re- ligious questions thus raised, and every educated per- son who mingled freely with them, as Wycliffe did, had constant occasion to ascertain their feelings and appre- hend their necessities.
3. The political condition of the country at the time greatly stimidated these debates, which had not yet been nationally agitated elsewhere. One century be- fore Wycliffe was born, the English barons had extorted from the violent and vacillating king John the famous Mafjna CAar^a, which, although quickly denied by that prince, and denounced by the pope, who claimed the vassalage of the realm, yet, renewed by the next and confirmed by the subsequent sovereign, has remained to tliis day the substantial basis and bulwark of British constitutional liberty. From that document definitely dates the great struggle between the Romish and the secular arm, on the one side, and the aristocratic and the popular rights, on the other, which has characterized English as well as Continental history ever since. The reign of Henry III, who followed John upon the throne of England, was but a series of contests between the king and the newly instituted House of Commons; which after a lull during the reign of Edward I, who was the next prince, but who was chiefly occupied in settling the Scottish succession, broke out afresh under Edward II, and culminated in his dethronement and horrid death. All these fluctuations of civil power the Roman pontiff watched at a safe distance, like a vulture snuffing the field of battle, ever ready to pounce upon the weak or the wounded of either side. Edward III, who came to the throne at the age of fourteen, three years after the above-assumed date of Wycliffe's birth, soon engaged in wars with Scotland and France, which occupied his entire reign ; but he nevertheless resisted the claims of Rome, and Parliament sujiported him by statutes declaring the independence of the English cler- gy. Tlie effect of all these political turmoils was to create and foster a spirit of free inquiry into human rights, both civil and ecclesiastical. The seeds of the English Reformation of a later age were widely and deeply sown by these public measures and private ex- periences.