Wyclif
WICKLIFFE, or WICLIF (the name is spelled in several ways), JOHN, an English reformer; born in the village of Ispreswel (later Hipswell), Yorkshire, England, between 1315 and 1320, the year 1324 assigned by Lewis and accepted by several subsequent biographers being too late to tally with other facts in his life. Of his childhood and youth no account has been preserved.
He probably went to Oxford when a mere lad, and he certainly had a remarkable university career; but all details are wanting till 1356, when we find him (if there is not a confusion with another John Wyclif) seneschal of Merton College. In 1361 he was master or warden of Balliol, and though in May of the same year he was appointed rector of Fillingham in Lincoln, the university continued for a long time the main seat of his activity. About four years later, Simon Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, appointed him (if this be not again the other Wyclif) warden of the new foundation of Canterbury Hall, but after Islip's death he was expelled by the monkish members, whose action was sanctioned by papal bull in 1370 and confirmed by royal decree in 1372.
Meanwhile he had become Professor (i. e., doctor) of Theology. Lehler thinks WYCOMBE it not improbable that he was a member of the famous Parliament of 1366, and at any rate he wrote about this time a tractate or dialogue in defense of the national policy toward the Pope. In 1374 he one of the commissioners sent to Bruges to arrange a concordat, and about the same time he received from the king himself (Edward III.) the rectory of Lutterworth in Leicestershire. Wit With Edward's younger son, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, he was in special favor; but this very favor was probably the proximate cause of the first hostile action of the clergy. Summoned before the Convocation in 1377, he was saved from all danger by the high-handed protection of the Duke of Lancaster and his friends, who made their way into the assembly and rendered all judicial proceeding impossible; and though in the following year a formidable process was instituted against him by direct command of Gregory XI., the papal commissioners were induced by the intercession of the Princess Joanna and the evident sympathy of the citizens to do no more than to forbid him further to disseminate his obnoxious doctrines.
But in the course of the following years he grew more and more estranged from the orthodox creed, and his endeavors to propagate his opinions were of wider scope than before.
In 1378 the election first of Urban VI. and then of Clement VIII. produced a schism in the Church; each Pope condemned his rival as antipope, and Wyclif declared that they were both right, and that the papacy was Antichrist. He called in question the doctrine of transubstantiation, and declared that pilgrimages and monastic vows had no authority from Scripture. His views were accepted by numerous disciples, and disseminated by preachers through the length and breadth of the land. The ecclesiastical authorities endeavored to suppress the movement by fair means and foul; but though many of its leaders were silenced, the great originator of the whole continued to the end boldly to bear witness to the truth. Died in 1384.