form of discontent found its exponent in John Wycliffe, the great
forerunner of the Reformation, whose austere figure stands out above the
crowd of notables in English history, with an outline not unlike that of
another forerunner of a greater change.

The early life of Wycliffe is obscure. Lewis, on the authority of
Leland,[462] says that he was born near Richmond, in Yorkshire. Fuller,
though with some hesitation, prefers Durham.[463] He emerges into distinct
notice in 1360, ten years subsequent to the passing of the first Statute of
Provisors, having then acquired a great Oxford reputation as a lecturer in
divinity, and having earned for himself powerful friends and powerful
enemies. He had made his name distinguished by attacks upon the clergy for
their indolence and profligacy: attacks both written and orally
delivered--those written, we observe, being written in English, not in
Latin.[464] In 1365, Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, appointed him Warden
of Canterbury Hall; the appointment, however, was made with some
irregularity, and the following year, Archbishop Islip dying, his
successor, Langham, deprived Wycliffe, and the sentence was confirmed by
the king. It seemed, nevertheless, that no personal reflection was intended
by this decision, for Edward III. nominated the ex-warden one of his
chaplains immediately after, and employed him on an important mission to
Bruges, where a conference on the benefice question was to be held with a
papal commission.

Other church preferment was subsequently given to Wycliffe; but Oxford
remained the chief scene of his work. He continued to hold his
professorship of divinity; and from this office the character of his
history took its complexion. At a time when books were rare and difficult
to be procured, lecturers who had truth to communicate fresh drawn from the
fountain, held an influence which in these days it is as difficult to
imagine as, however, it is impossible to overrate. Students from all Europe
flocked to the feet of a celebrated professor, who became the leader of a
party by the mere fact of his position.

The burden of Wycliffe's teaching was the exposure of the indolent fictions
which passed under the name of religion in the established theory of the
church. He was a man of most simple life; austere in appearance, with bare
feet and russet mantle.[465] As a soldier of Christ, he saw in his Great
Master and his Apostles the patterns whom he was bound to imita