The sentence was confirmed by the king's government. Wycliffe withdrew to Lutterworth, never again to appear in Oxford, and "his whole party in the university received a blow from which it seems to have never thoroughly recovered." Nothing but his advanced age and the approach of death saved him from further severities at the hands of the exasperated church. He was summoned in 1384 to appear at Rome before the pope, and his reply excusing himself is still extant. On the 29th December of the same year he was hearing mass in his own church at Lutterworth when a stroke of paralysis deprived him of speech, and on the last day of the year he expired.
As a reformer, his influence was long felt in England and Scotland as a formidable disturber of the papal church. The Lollards of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were numerous in both countries, and were the true progenitors of the protestants of the sixteenth century. The influence of his writings was powerfully felt even in foreign countries, and in Bohemia in particular they had much to do in enlightening and stirring up the minds of John Huss and Jerome of Prague. If England owed much to the reformers of Germany and Switzerland in the sixteenth century, these countries had owed not a little to Wycliffe and his disciples in an earlier age. Hence the deep interest manifested by German theologians and historians of the present day in the teaching of Wycliffe, which has in fact been more thoroughly investigated abroad than in the reformer's native land. The truth is, as Mr. Shirley remarks with a just warmth of expression, that "to the memory of Wycliffe—one of the greatest of Englishmen—his country has been singularly and painfully ungrateful. Of his works, the greatest—the 'Trialogus,' one of the most thoughtful of the middle ages—has twice been printed abroad, in England never. Of his original English works nothing beyond one or two tracts (the 'General Prologue to the Bible,' and 'Wycliffe's Wycket') have seen the light. If considered only as the father of English prose, the great reformer might claim more reverential treatment at our hands. As it is in the light of subsequent events that we see the greatness of Wycliffe as a reformer, so it is from the later growth of the language that we best learn to appreciate the beauty of his writings. But it was less the reformer, or the master of English prose, than the great schoolman that inspired the respect of his contemporaries; and next to the deep influence of his personal holiness, and the attractive greatness of his moral character, it was to his supreme command of the weapons of scholastic discussion that he owed his astonishing influence." The "Fasciculi Zizaniorum" contains many interesting documents, historical and doctrinal, bearing upon his life and opinions; and the Wycliffe Society brought out in 1845 a very valuable volume, edited by Dr. Vaughan, containing in addition to "Facts and Observations" concerning his life, a collection of "Tracts or Treatises, with Selections and Translations from his Manuscripts and Latin Works," and a valuable Catalogue raisonné of the writings of Wycliffe still in manuscript. This volume embraces also a translation of the "Trialogus."—P. L.
WYKEHAM, William de, founder of Winchester school and New college, Oxford, was born at Wykeham or Wickham in Hampshire, of poor but respectable parentage, and was put to school at Winchester at the expense of Nicolas Uvedale, lord of the manor of Wickham, and governor of Winchester castle. He had no university education, but he was early distinguished for natural genius, a talent for business, and great proficiency in architecture, the only science and art which he seems to have mastered. After he had been for some time secretary to the constable of Winchester castle, he was recommended by Uvedale to Edington, bishop of Winchester, who took him into his service, and by the influence of both these patrons he was introduced to the knowledge of Edward III. about the year 1348, by whom he was, in the first instance, extensively employed as a surveyor and architect, and afterwards promoted to the highest offices both ecclesiastical and civil in the kingdom. The earliest office held by him under the king, of which there is any evidence in records, was that of clerk of all the king's works on his manors of Heale and Yethamsted, the patent of which is dated 10th May, 1356. In the same year he was made surveyor of the king's works at the castle and park of Windsor; and at his instigation King Edward pulled down and rebuilt great part of Windsor castle. He was also the architect of Queenborough castle in the isle of Sheppey. Meanwhile he had entered upon an ecclesiastical career, by taking deacon's orders; and before he was ordained priest, in 1362, he was already the holder by the king's favour of several preferments in the church, including the rectory of Pulham in Norfolk, the prebend of Flixton in the Cathedral church of Lichfield, and the deanery of the royal free chapel or collegiate church of St. Martin-le-Grand, London. Rising rapidly in the king's esteem and confidence, he was appointed, in 1359, chief warder and surveyor of the royal castles of Windsor, Leeds, Dover, and Hadlam, and of the manors of Old and New Windsor, Wickemer, and sundry other castles and manors, with the parks belonging to them; and his talents for public business soon pointed him out as a man capable of filling with credit the highest public posts. On the 11th of May, 1364, he was made keeper of the privy seal, and soon after he is found styled the king's secretary, or what we should now call principal secretary of state. In 1366, when he made a return of the entire number and value of the benefices held by him—on occasion of the bull of Pope Urban V. against pluralities—the total produce of them amounted to £873 6s. 8d.; but in the same and the following years he was promoted to still more lucrative and dignified offices. In 1366 he succeeded his friend, Edyngton, in the see of Winchester; and in 1367 he was appointed by the king lord high chancellor of England, which latter office he continued to hold till 14th March, 1371, when he gave place, along with other churchmen in high civil office, to a ministry of laymen which the king appointed in compliance with a petition from the lords and commons. His administration as a bishop was distinguished by great vigour in reforming abuses, and by splendid liberality in the execution of public ecclesiastical works, and the creation of new educational foundations. He repaired, at a cost of twenty thousand merks, all the castles or palaces—no fewer than twelve in number—then belonging to the see of Winchester. He reformed the religious houses of all sorts existing in his extensive diocese, including the ancient hospital of St. Cross, near Winchester. He rebuilt the greater part of his cathedral in a style of great elegance and grandeur, and he created the two celebrated foundations of Winchester college and New college," for the honour of God and increase of his worship, for the support and exaltation of the christian faith, and for the improvement of the liberal arts and sciences." The preparatory college or school at Winchester was opened in 1373, but the building was not finished till 1393. New college, Oxford, for which the other was intended to be a nursery, was begun in 1380, and finished in 1386, but the teaching was commenced in the same year as at Winchester. These magnificent foundations still flourish in undiminished lustre and usefulness—the noblest monuments of the founder's renown as a public benefactor, and admirable examples of the purity of his taste and the grandeur of his conceptions as an architect. In the last thirty years of his life he experienced many vicissitudes of fortune as a statesman, owing to the troubles of the later reign of Edward III. and the intrigues and broils of the minority and early reign of Richard II. He was a second time made lord-chancellor by Richard in 1389, and continued in office till 1391, when he succeeded for a time in reconciling the young king and the ambitious duke of Gloucester. The last parliament which he attended was that held on the 30th September, 1399, when Richard was deposed, and the crown transferred to Henry IV. He died at South Waltham, 27th September, 1404. His life was written by Bishop Lowth, an illustrious alumnus of Winchester school and New college.—P. L.
WYNANTS, Jan, an able Dutch landscape painter, was born at Haarlem about 1610. He has the credit of having been the master of his fellow-townsman, Philip Wouvverman, who occasionally inserted the figures in the landscapes of his master. Wynants was still living in 1675. His pictures are carefully painted, and are generally excellent in the middle ground, but the foregrounds are too much broken in colour, and his distances are often too blue. Adrian Vandevelde and Lingelbach, also, sometimes painted figures for Wynants.—R. N. W.
WYNDHAM, the surname of a noble and powerful English family which deduces its descent from Ailwardus, a Saxon thane who possessed the estate of Wymondham—subsequently called Wyndham—in Norfolk, and assumed this name about the time of the Norman conquest. The first of his descendants who figured prominently in the history of the country was Sir John Wyndham, a zealous Lancastrian. He rendered important service at the battle of Stoke in 1487 against Lambert Simnel and his adherents, and was knighted by Henry VII. immediately after the victory; but being subsequently implicated in a Yorkist con-
