foundation of which the site is now occupied by a portion of Christ Church, between the years 1365 and 1367.[1] As to this matter it is only necessary to notice that a certain John Wycliffe was appointed to that office, and afterwards expelled in order to make room for a monk. The deprived warden appealed to Rome and lost his case. Now, this being known, when a religious agitator of the same name had made himself objectionable to the correct catholics of his day, and in particular to the religious orders, it was all but inevitable that the antecedent history of the one should attach itself to the other. There are indeed strong grounds for believing that the warden of Canterbury-hall was the same person with the steward of Merton whose name, as we have already seen, has caused a certain amount of confusion in the reformer's biography. But if on the whole we are inclined to reject the connexion of the latter with Canterbury-hall, it is right that we should explain that this decision is in
- ↑ The best argument in favour of this identification appeared in the Church quarterly Review 5. 119-141, October 1877. On the other hand Shirley's observations in the Fasciculi zizaniorum 513-528 remain of high critical value; although he erred in underestimating the authority of a contemporary chronicle, which he knew only from a translation of the sixteenth century, but of which the original has recently been discovered by Mr. [now sir] E. Maunde Thompson. See the latter's edition of the Chronicon Angliae 1328-1388 p. 115; 1874. In favour of our Wycliffe having been warden of Canterbury-hall it may be urged that Middleworth who had been at Merton and who was made fellow of Canterbury-hall at the same time with Wycliffe, was also at a later date resident, as Wycliffe was, at Queen's; but, as Shirley points out, pp. 519 sq., there was really not much choice, at a time when only six colleges existed and not all were open to all comers. [Nor is it at all certain that the Queen's resident was the same person as the reformer: see H. T. Riley's remarks in the Second Report of the Royal Commission on historical Manuscripts, pp. 141 b sq., 1871; and H. Rashdall, in the Dictionary of National Biography, 63. 203 b; 1900.] As for the extract printed by Dr. Lechler, vol. 2. 574 sq., and in part by Shirley, p. 526, from Wycliffe's treatise De ecclesia xvi [pp. 370 sq., ed. J. Loserth, 1886], it seems to me to decide nothing; Dr. Lechler's inference from the passage depends entirely on the force of a comparative, in familiariori exemplo, which need not be pressed to mean 'in the writer's personal case.' [Though most scholars accept the identification, one of the latest and most learned, Dr. Rashdall, now dean of Carlisle, inclines with me to reject it, ubi supra, p. 204 b.]
