666 WYGLIFFE'8 CANON RY AT LINCOLN October papal documents ^ that we can hardly doubt that Thornbury was this successful rival, and that Caistor was the prebend which WyclifEe thought should have come to him. We get, accordingly, a better terminus a quoior Wycliffe's disappointment, March 1375, and we note that the statement that Thornbury had held the prebend of Caistor since its voidance by Ingleby's death does not favour any tenure of it by Wycliffe, even for a short time ; and that by using a general reservation, Wycliffe could have been passed over according to custom without any trouble at all about the first-fruits. The terminus ad quern can, moreover, be fixed earlier than July 1377; in fact, it is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that all was over by October 1375. For, unless I am very much mistaken, the passage in the De civili Dominio, iii. 17, is not the first allusion to his Lincoln prebend to be found in Wycliffe's writings. The nearest in date to July 1 377 is in chapters 43 and 44 of the De civili Dominio, i, the third tractate of the Summa (pp. 358 ff.), within some eighty pages of the end. No part of the De civili Dominio, i, can be later than December 1376, and no part earlier than January ; in fact it is extremely difficult to devise any consistent or well-considered scheme of chronology for Wycliffe's writings which does not make the gradual publica- tion of the lectures contained in this book begin soon after Easter and continue into December 1 376, vacations excepted. Chapters 43 and 44 would fall accordingly about the beginning of December 1376. Wycliffe, in these chapters, has much to say on Frederick of Lavagna, on Lincoln, and on papal methods of patronage ; and on p. 387 he writes as follows : Old, quaeso, crederetur, si caput ecclesiae hodie concedit michi aUquid, non cameraliter sed manifeste, per bullas patulas ad sumptus non modicos et labores ; et eras, sine obice a me posito, aversa voluntate pape, propter afiEeccionem affinitatis, peccunie, vel sanguinis aut aliam personalem, falsificat bullas atque sentenciam hodie confectas ? It seems evident that Wycliffe, when he wrote these lines, had his own Lincoln fjrebend in his mind, and almost certain that he had heard of Thornbury 's appointment. Wycliffe, we may infer, had been passed over before 1376 was out. We note the words aversa voluntate pape and the absence of any mention of sollicitudo for the first-fruits. The next allusion, working backwards, is in the De Mandatis. The De Mandatis is the first tractate of the Summa and is separated from the De civili Dominio, i, by the De Statu Innocentiae, a very short work, the shortest tractate of the Summa} These two ' Calendar of Papal Letters, iv. 194, 210, 227.
- Neither so far have been published, but the late Dr. F. D. Matthew kindly gave
me acoesB to his copies.
