lly only a revision of the
first can hardly be adduced as a strong argument on the other side. The
ethics of literary acknowledgment were not appreciated in Trevisa's
days, and I believe that a very similar relation can be found on
comparison of what is known as the 'Vulgate' text of Mandeville with
that of the Cotton manuscript, which the second translator appears to
have used freely, though in this case without improving on it. At any
rate, William Caxton seems a better authority than an eighteenth-century
divine as to the authorship of a translation made only a few years
before he was born. We know that Trevisa was what we may call a
professional translator, well equipped for his task; and we find him in
the preface to the _Polychronicon_ discussing the translation of the
Bible in a strikingly similar spirit to that in which it is discussed in
the Prologue to one of the translations which have come down to us. It
is to be hoped that the subject may receive further investigation, and
that without the importation of theological bias.

We meet with the name of John Purvey once more in one of the longest and
most interesting of the pieces here printed, the Examination of William
Thorpe before Archbishop Arundel, held at Saltwood Castle in Kent in
1407. 'I know none more covetous shrews,' said the Archbishop to Thorpe
in his railing way, 'than ye are when that ye have a benefice. For, lo!
I gave to John Purvey a benefice (that of West Hythe, which Purvey held
for fourteen months from August 1401) but a mile out of this castle, and
I heard more complaints about his covetousness for tithes and other
misdoings than I did of all men that were advanced within my diocese.'
'Sir,' replied Thorpe, 'Sir, Purvey is neither with you now for the
benefice ye gave him, nor holdeth he faithfully with the learning that
he taught and writ beforetime; and thus he sheweth himself neither to be
hot nor cold; and therefore he and his fellows may sore dread that if
they turn not hastily to the way that they have forsaken, peradventure
they be put out of the number of Christ's chosen people.'

The Archbishop's answer was to mutter threats against Purvey as a 'false
harlot'; and so the Bible-translator, if such he were, was abused on
both sides. The dialogue about him is a fair instance of the vividness
with which Thorpe's account of his trial illustrates the fortunes of
Wyclif's followers when they scattered before their persecutors without
an