James. After a few sermons he received a summons to appear before Bishop Walter Skirlaw of Durham. He returned from Newcastle, but on arriving at Chester-le-Street the rupture from which he was suffering became so painful that he was forced to hire a horse, leaving his cloak and purse as a pledge at the inn. He arrived at Bishop Auckland on December 7, and was at once flung into prison. A few days later he was brought up for his examination. The bishop suspected, from his inability to produce any authority for preaching outside his diocese, that he was a Lollard, and questioned him closely concerning the sacrament of the altar. His answers proving unsatisfactory, he was sent back to prison. There he was visited by a master from Newcastle, who tried to persuade him to recant, first by offers of promotion, then by threats. “If you don’t do as you are told, you will be burnt,” said the master. “God’s will be done,” replied Wyche, and, in spite of arguments and deputations of all sorts, he remained steadfast. In February 1402, Wyche was brought before the bishop and condemned to degradation and imprisonment. So he was once more thrust back into the cell at Auckland, in horrible pain, but with sufficient food. From this prison he wrote a long letter to his friends at Newcastle, urging them to pray that he might persevere to the end, and asking them to send him some sheets of the gospel in red ink. These might be got through to him by means of a priest living near St. Andrew’s Auckland. A copy of this letter found its way to Prague, and probably fell under the notice of Hus. Coming to light after many centuries, it has recently been published in the English Historical Review (vol. v.).
With the despatch of this letter our knowledge of Wyche once more becomes uncertain. Fourteen propositions were brought against him at his trial; he defended them all by profuse quotations from the Scriptures.[1] But he could not resist the pressure brought to bear upon him, and, following the other English Lollards of the time, he recanted, and was made vicar of Deptford, near Greenwich. As the following letter which he wrote to Hus shows, his recantation was not very sincere. His signature, “Wychewitz,” which has misled so many historians, is either a deliberate disguise or a Czech confusion of his name.
- ↑ See Fasciculi Zisanorium (Rolls Series), 370–82, 501-5.
