sions in any way he pleased, and that
Purvey seems to have preferred the text of the earlier version and the
prologues of the later hardly proves that the later version is due to
him. If we must drag him in at all, it would be much more reasonable to
assign to him the completion of Nicholas of Hereford's unfinished work.

Lightly arrived at as it was, Waterland's 'guess' was adopted by
Forshall and Madden in their fine edition of the two versions published
in 1850, and as buttressed up by them with what seems to me a very weak
additional argument, has ever since been repeated as an established
fact.[8] The readiness with which the conjecture was accepted can only
be accounted for by the desire to make the work of translation centre at
Lutterworth instead of, as I believe to have been the case, at Oxford.
It seems to be considered that we shall be robbing Wyclif of his due
unless the translations are connected with him as closely as possible.
Burdened as he was in his last years with age and infirmities, it is
surely enough if he inspired others to work at this great task; we need
not insist that he must have written at least part of the first
translation with his own hands, and that the second must have begun
under his immediate eye. I would submit, indeed, that the tone of the
second translator's reference to 'the English Bible late translated' (p.
195) is quite incompatible with any such theory. We know from the
manuscript note in the Bodleian MS. that Nicholas of Hereford began the
translation of the Old Testament; and when his work was interrupted by
the necessity for flight, it is far more likely that it was taken up by
some other of Wyclif's numerous disciples at Oxford rather than by the
master himself, while the fact that it was the work of his disciples,
urged no doubt by his wish, would amply account for such references as
may be found to it under Wyclif's name. For the second translation, it
seems to me that the tone of the reference already quoted, and the
detailed account (see p. 194) which the translator gives of the method
in which he went to work, compel us to seek an independent origin, and
to look for some other translator less immediately under Wyclif's
influence. The freedom with which the Bible admittedly circulated for
many years, and the well-known allusion by Sir Thomas More to an English
translation untouched by any taint of heresy, point also in the same
direction. That the second version is rea