of a good estate. During William's boyhood the great civil war terminated in the overthrow of the church and throne, and the establishment of the presbyterian form of worship, and of a republican government; and as the elder Wycherley was attached to the royal cause, he was not disposed to intrust the education of his son to the puritans, and therefore sent him at fifteen years of age to France. He resided for a considerable time on the banks of the Charente, and was admitted to the society of the beautiful and accomplished duchess of Montausier—better known as Julie d'Angennes de Rambouillet—and a splendid circle of French nobles, by whom he was initiated into the fashionable manners and habits of the day. He appears at no time to have known or cared much about any religion; but at this period he became a convert to the Romish church, probably in part because it was fashionable, in part because he disliked the austerities of the puritans, who were at this time dominant in England. When the Restoration took place, Wycherley returned home, and became a member of Queen's college, Oxford. About this time he was persuaded by Bishop Barlow to abjure the errors of the Church of Rome, and from "a good-for-nothing papist" was converted into "a good-for-nothing protestant." On leaving college, where he failed to take a degree, Wycherley entered at the Middle temple; but he had no taste for legal studies, and spent his time in the fashionable pursuits of the day, frequenting the theatres, and enjoying the other amusements and pleasures of the town. From an early age he had been in the habit of writing verses; and having turned his attention to dramatic compositions, he published "Love in a Wood" in 1672; the "Gentleman Dancing Master" in 1673; the "Country Wife" in 1675; and the "Plain Dealer" in 1677. It is probable, however, that these plays were composed some time before they were acted, though certainly not at the dates Wycherley himself in his old age assigned to them. After the production of his first play he became one of the favourites of the abandoned duchess of Cleveland, by whom he was introduced at court, where he attracted the attention of the king, who was pleased with his conversation and manners. On one occasion when Wycherley was confined by a fever to his lodgings in Bow Street, Charles called on him, and finding that his health was shattered and his spirits depressed, advised him to go to the south of France, and gave him, it is said, £500 to defray the expense of the journey. The duke of Buckingham too, who was then master of the household, made Wycherley one of his equerries, and gave him a commission in his own regiment. He spent the winter in France with the best effect on his health; and shortly after his return to England, in accordance with the prevailing fashion of the period, he volunteered to serve in the navy, and was present at one of the battles fought between Prince Rupert and De Ruyter in 1673. On his return he celebrated the engagement in a copy of verses, which have been pronounced "too bad for the bellman." After the publication of his immoral but well-written play, the "Plain Dealer," Wycherley was selected by the king to conduct the education of his natural son, the duke of Richmond, with a salary of £1500 a year. But before entering on the duties of his office he went to amuse himself at Tunbridge Wells, where he was accidentally introduced to the countess of Drogheda, a gay and rich young widow. An intimacy speedily sprung up between them, and Wycherley prevailed upon the lady to marry him. The ceremony was performed privately, and for some reason or other, without the knowledge of the king. Charles was displeased with this conduct, which he thought both disrespectful and disingenuous, and the royal favour was in consequence completely withdrawn from the poet. To complete his misfortunes, his wife proved ill-tempered, imperious, and so extravagantly jealous, that when Wycherley met his friends, which she occasionally allowed him to do, in the Cock tavern opposite to his own house, he was obliged to have the windows always open, in order that her ladyship might be satisfied that no woman was of the party. Her death, which took place soon after, released him from this bondage; but a series of disasters fell upon him in rapid succession. His wife bequeathed her fortune to him, but the will was disputed; the expense of the lawsuit, and probably his own extravagance, involved him in debt, and he was at last thrown into the Fleet, where he languished during seven years, apparently quite forgotten by his gay associates. At length James II., who now filled the throne, happened to witness the performance of the "Plain Dealer," and was so delighted with the play, that having learned the distressed condition of the writer, he gave immediate orders for the payment of his debts, and settled on the unfortunate poet a pension of £200 a year. Wycherley's reconversion to the Church of Rome probably took place at this time, and may not have been altogether unconnected with the king's unwonted munificence. Shortly after his release from prison he succeeded, on the death of his father, to the family estate; but it was strictly entailed, and his extravagant and vicious habits involved him in continual embarrassments. In 1704, after twenty-seven years of silence, he published a large folio volume of miscellaneous and utterly worthless verses, of which it has been said "the style and versification are beneath criticism; the morals are those of Rochester." At this period he formed an acquaintance with Pope, who was then only sixteen, and who was at first proud of the friendship of the author of the "Plain Dealer" and the "Country Wife," and interchanged with him letters "full of affection, humility, and fulsome flattery." Wycherley availed himself of the assistance of the youthful poet to retouch and polish his "feeble stumbling verses," but became at length so sore under Pope's criticisms, that a marked coldness ensued, and the unnatural friendship was dissolved. The aged dramatist continued to the last to indulge in the follies and vices of youth. He survived to the age of seventy-five, and ten days before his death, which took place in December, 1715, he married a young girl merely to injure his nephew and heir-at-law. His bride soon after became the wife of a Captain Shrimpton, who sold Wycherley's manuscripts to a bookseller. They were revised and published by Theobald in 1728, but added nothing to the author's reputation. Wycherley's plays are said to have been the produce of long and patient labour. He had no claim to originality, and the subjects of most of his pieces were borrowed from the French and Spanish stage. His dialogues and scenes bear the marks of careful elaboration and display, considerable liveliness and wit, with occasional clear epigrammatic sayings; but they often violate probability and dramatic propriety. He was a man of a most depraved character, and his plays are a perfect reflection of his own corruption and profligacy.—J. T.
WYCLIFFE or WICLIF, John de, the earliest and most illustrious of English reformers, has been made the subject of several able biographies in our own time—those of Le Bas and Dr. Vaughan in this country, and of Lechler, Böhringer, Lewald, and other continental writers. But owing to the long neglect of biographers and historians, many of the facts of his life are still involved in much doubt and obscurity. In the latest treatment of his life and writings—that of the Rev. W. W. Shirley prefixed to his edition of the Fasciculi Zizaniorum Magistri Johannis Wyclif, published in 1858 under the direction of the master of the rolls—the author is at issue on several points of importance with all preceding biographers. We do not undertake to give a judgment on these unsettled points; but as Mr. Shirley's sketch exhibits the results of the latest researches, we shall take leave to follow it in the following rapid outline. Leland is our earliest informant regarding the time and place of the reformer's birth. He gives the year 1324 as the probable date; and the two accounts which he has given in different places of his origin and birthplace, are perhaps not so irreconcilable, says Mr. Shirley, as they have been sometimes considered. He says in one passage that he was born at Spreswell, "a good mile from Richmond in Yorkshire;" in another that he drew his origin, originem duxit, from the village of Wyclif some ten miles distant. He was born, that is, at Spreswell (probably a corruption for Ipswell, a place still existing at precisely that distance from Richmond, on the banks of the Swale), and was a member of the family of Wyclif of Wyclif, in the parish of that name. He studied at Oxford, but of the early years of his university life nothing is known with certainty. It is usual with his biographers to state that he entered the university as a commoner of Queen's college, and that he was one of the first batch of members of that foundation, as appears from a list of the original members alleged to be extant; but the truth is, according to Mr. Shirley, that no such list can be discovered, that commoners were then confined to the unendowed halls of the university, and that Wycliffe's connection with that college, of which he never was, strictly speaking, a member, belongs to a later part of his life, when he hired a set of rooms in the college which was usually let to strangers. It is also commonly stated that Wycliffe produced his first work in 1356, entitled the "Last Age of the Church" (published in 1841 by
