Yet the strictness was mingled, as of old, with paternal tenderness, and children appear to have treated their masters with a singular mixture of familiarity and reverence. And it is pleasant to find among the same collection of school fragments a little distich which speaks of peacemaking:—

There is good reason for believing that schoolboys of the fourteenth century were much what they are in the nineteenth, and fully possessed of that love of robbing orchards, which seems peculiar to the race. Chaucer has something to say on this head, but Lydgate’s confessions are exceedingly pitiful:—

I must, however, add a few school pictures of a graver and sweeter character. Chaucer, who painted English society as he saw it with his own eyes, has not forgotten to describe the village school where “an hepe of children comen of Christen blood,” acquired as much learning as was suitable to their age and condition:—

And among these children he describes one, “a widewe’s lytel sone,” whom his pious mother had taught whenever he saw an image of Christ’s Mother, to kneel down and say an Ave Maria; and he goes on to tell us how

He was too young, however, to understand the meaning of the words, though, be it observed, his elder schoolfellows were more erudite than himself:—

And when “his felow which elder was than he,” had expounded the sense of the words, and made him understand that it was sung in reverence of Christ’s Mother, the little scholar makes known his resolve to do his diligence to con it all by Christmas, in honour of Our Lady.

In these parochial schools, as we have elsewhere seen, children of the lower orders, even from St Dunstan’s time, were taught grammar and church music gratuitously. It has been very constantly affirmed that the education here spoken of was exclusively given to those intended for the monastic and ecclesiastical states. But there is direct evidence, that the parochial schools were frequented by the children of the peasantry indiscriminately, and by those of the very lowest and poorest condition. The proof of this is to be found in the statutes of the realm. About the year 1406 a law was passed, wherein, after complaint being made that in opposition to certain ancient statutes, a vast number of the children of husbandmen, who laboured with cart and plough and had no lands, were apprenticed to handicraft trades, and thereby induced a great scarcity of husbandmen and labourers in many parts of the country, it was enacted that henceforth no one should be allowed so to apprentice his child to any trade, unless he rented land to the annual value of twenty shillings. The object of this blundering and tyrannical piece of legislation was, of course, to keep down the lower orders from endeavouring to raise themselves in the scale of society, and to oppose that upward movement which had been one of the results of the enfranchisement of so large a number of feudal serfs in the reign of Edward III. But whilst decreeing that day-labourers with the cart and plough should thus be kept back from advancing, or helping their children to advance, in point of station and wealth, the very same statute encourages them to send their children to school. “Every man or woman, of whatever state or condition they be, shall be at liberty to send their son or daughter to take learning in any kind of school that pleaseth them within the realm.” This clause seems to have had reference to a petition which had been presented to parliament by certain lords in the reign of Richard II., to the effect that children of serfs and the lower sort might not be sent to school, and particularly to the schools of monasteries, wherein many were trained as ecclesiastics, and thence rose to dignities in the State. The statute aimed at appeasing the jealous pride of the nobles, who regarded with dismay the prospect of bondsmen and husbandmen emerging from their state of servitude; whilst at the same time, the influence of the ecclesiastical body was strong enough to preserve for the lower classes their hitherto undisputed right of receiving such education as circumstances placed within their reach. I need not pause to comment on the light which such a passage of history sheds on the supposed solicitude of monks and clergy to check the spread of learning for the furtherance of selfish ends. But it is clear that the permission formally granted by this statute would have been a simple mockery, unless schools existed adapted to the class in question; and it may satisfy us of the fact that village schools, in Chaucer’s time, were really frequented by much the same class of scholars as in our own; and that not merely in special and more populated localities, but in remote rural districts. William Caxton, who was born about the time of the passing of this statute, tells us that he learned his English in the Weald of Kent, a tract of country which, fertile as it now is, was, even a century later than Caxton’s time, a waste wilderness, thinly inhabited, save by herds of deer and hogs, and a few adventurous men who undertook to clear the forest and break up the land with the plough.[287] Yet in this wild country Caxton learnt his English, “a broad and rude English, as is anywhere spoken in England.” And in after-life, apologising to his readers for the plain unadorned style which his “simple cunning” uses, he speaks of his early education, “whereof I humbly and heartily thank God, and am bounden to pray for my father’s and mother’s souls, who in my youth sent me to school.” His education, we know, was carried on in London at a later date, but it must have been begun in some very primitive parochial school of Kent, where his companions could only have been rustics. The teaching in such schools was, doubtless, simple enough, but however small may have been the amount of secular learning acquired by the scholars, all received instruction in Christian doctrine, and learnt their prayers; the duty of providing such instruction for the poorer members of their flocks being earnestly pressed on the parish priests in the visitation articles and synodal decrees of John of Peckham and other English prelates.

Prayers and instructions, both secular and religious, were often taught to those who could not read, in a versified form, as had been the custom in Saxon times. Thus there is a curious poem of this period addressed to “Those who gete their lyvynge by the onest craft of masonry,” in which the young mason is instructed, rather minutely, how to behave himself when he comes to the house of God. Wherever he works, he is to come to Mass when he hears the bell. Before entering church he must take holy water, and is to understand that in doing so devoutly, he quenches venial sin. Then he must put back his hood, that is, uncover his head, and as he enters the church, look to the great Rood, and kneeling down on both knees “pull up his herte to Christe anon!” He must stand and bless himself at the Gospel, and avoid carelessly leaning against the wall; and when he hears the bell ring for the “holy sakerynge,”—

Versified instructions of this kind were capable of being remembered by many who never learnt to read, and were evidently in very common use. We find them in all languages and on all subjects. Thus the old French treatise entitled “Stans puer ad mensam,” selected by Caxton for one of his translations, and another called “Les contenances de la table,” which exists in a great variety of forms, give excellent rules for behaving at table and saying grace:—

After dinner he is reminded to pray for the dead:—

And the child is thus gently warned against the bad habit of noisy disputes at table:—

Teaching of some sort the peasantry certainly received, whatever means may have been used to convey it; they probably knew little of grammatical analysis, or the relative lengths of the European rivers, but it may be doubted whether, with all our cumbrous machinery of State education, we have hit on any system which is likely to form the Christian character so successfully in the hearts of our people as that which existed in the days of St. Anselm or Chaucer. “The majority of husbandmen are saved,” writes the former, “because they live with simplicity, and feed the people of God with their hands; and therefore they are blessed.”[288] And the poet who never paints a fancy picture, thus portrays from the life the character of his poor ploughman:—

Have we not a right to say that such a character had somewhere and by some means received a thoroughly Christian education, even though he may never have learnt to read or write, and were wholly innocent of grammar?

I must not be tempted to enter on the endless theme of school sports and customs. But it is proper to mention that English schoolboys had their patron saints, of whom St. Gregory the Great was one. So we learn from the—shall I call it poetry?—of the Puritan, Barnaby Googe, who tells us that

On his feast the boys were called into school by certain songs; presents were distributed, to make them love their school, and one of their number was made to represent the bishop. But a yet more universally acknowledged patron was St. Nicholas of Myra, in honour of whom schoolboys of all ranks and conditions elected their boy-bishop, and played pranks in which jest and earnest were strangely blended together. The “childe bishope” preached a sermon, and afterwards received welcome offerings of pence. And this custom was one of those to which the people clung with the greatest tenacity, so that it continued to survive down to the close of Elizabeth’s reign.

The character of the studies followed at this time in the higher English academies, may perhaps be best gathered from an examination of the kind of learning displayed by the poet already so often quoted. If Chaucer is to be taken as in any way a fair representative of an educated Englishman of his time, it is plain that there was, in a certain sense, no want of learning in the English schools, though his critics acknowledged that however varied and extensive his reading may have been, it was loose and inaccurate. In this respect the English were far behind the Italians. I am not aware that Dante has ever been convicted of a blunder in his classical allusions, but in Chaucer such solecisms abound. “All through the poem,” says Craik, in his critical examination of the House of Fame, “there runs the spirit of the strange, barbarous, classical scholarship of the Middle Ages. The Æneid is not wholly unknown to the author, but it may be questioned if his actual acquaintance with the work extended much beyond the opening lines. An abridgment, indeed, of the story of Æneas follows, but that might have been got at second-hand. The same mixture of the Gothic and the classic occurs throughout that is found in all the poetry of the period, whether French, English, or Italian.” He proceeds to quote lines, in which “the harper Orion” is made to do duty for Arion; Mount Cithæron is supposed to figure as the individual “Dan Citherus;” the musician Marsyas, who was flayed alive, appears as “Mersia, that lost her skin,” and so on. However, it is agreed that Chaucer was, in a certain inaccurate way, familiar with the stories of the Latin classics, and possessed of whatever learning was to be acquired in the schools of London and the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris, in all of which, according to Leland, he had “gained great glory.”[289] At the universities, moreover he had learned men for his cronies; his two most familiar college friends were John Gower and Randolph Strode, both of whom, like himself, afterwards attained poetic fame. It is to them that he dedicated his Troilus and Creseide, addressing them as “the philosophical Strode” and “the moral Gower.” The name of Gower is too well known to require any comment, but all readers may not be equally familiar with that of Strode, so we will briefly state that he was a Scotchman by birth, a fellow of Merton, afterwards a pilgrim to the Holy Land, and the author of a poem in the vernacular, entitled “Phantasma,” which critics scruple not to place on a level with Chaucer’s verse. He finally entered the Dominican Order, and greatly distinguished himself in the controversy against Wickliffe, thereby earning the distinguished honour of some very coarse abuse from the pen of Bale.

Chaucer was educated for the law, and Speght records the doubtful tradition that he was at one time a member of the Inner Temple, at which period of his career he is said to have been fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan friar in Fleet Street. At any rate, his education was that of a “clerk,” and the office he eventually filled under the Crown was that of Comptroller of the Customs and Subsidies of wool, skins, and tanned hides in the port of London—an office about as suitable to him as that of gauger was to Robert Burns. He seems to have felt its incongruity with a poet’s sensitiveness, and its necessary “reckonings” are often alluded to in his verses as sad trials of patience. He was perfectly at home in the French tongue, and his familiarity with Italian is stoutly maintained by some, and as vehemently denied by others. Lydgate says that he translated Dante, but no fragment of such a work is known to exist. He was an incessant reader, as he is never weary of letting us know. When he had done his “reckonings,” his manner was to go home to his house and sit at his books, “as dumb as any stone,” and read till he was half blind. Once, he tells us, he spent a whole day reading Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis, from the Commentary of Macrobius. He had a great liking for old books, and expresses it sweetly enough—

He seems to have had a decided taste for mathematical and scientific pursuits. The writings and example of Roger Bacon had given a great stimulus to these pursuits in England, and Hallam mentions the names of several Englishmen of the fourteenth century who distinguished themselves as mathematicians, such as Archbishop Bradwardine, the profound Doctor, as he was called. Among Chaucer’s prose works is a Treatise on the Astrolabe, written for the instruction of his youngest son, Lewis, who was studying at Oxford under a tutor. He dedicates the work to his boy in the following words:—

“Lytel Lewis, my sonne, I perceive well by certaine evidences thine abilitie to learne sciences touching numbers and proportions, and also wel consider I thy busie prayer in especiall to learne the Treatise of the Astrolabie ... therefore I have given thee a sufficient Astrolabie for an orizont, compounded after the latitude of Oxenford.” He has compiled it, he adds, because the charts of the Astrolabe that he has seen were “too hard for thy tender age of ten yeares to conceive,” and he has written it in English, “for Latine ne canst thou nat yet but smal, my lytel sonne.”

In one of his poems he gives an exposition of the theory of gravitation, and appeals to Aristotle and “Dan Plato” in confirmation of his philosophy. He also explains the propagation of sound, which he declares to be produced by a series of undulations of air like those that appear when you throw a stone into the water. He was familiar with the jargon of the astrologers and alchemists, and his commentators assure us that he displays a very considerable knowledge of the real science of chemistry as well as of its quackery, which last does not escape his lash. For quacks of all sorts indeed he has no indulgence, and spends his humour on the doctor of physic, whom he describes as “well grounded in astronomy,” able to help his patients by his knowledge of magic, no great reader of his Bible, which was not a very fashionable study with the followers of Averrhoes and Avicenna, but on excellent terms with his apothecary, and ready to help him to get rid of plenty of drugs and electuaries. It will be remembered that at the time when Chaucer wrote, the “Doctor of Physic,” though a graduate of the universities, and a very important person in his way, had no great claims to the character of a man of science. John Gaddesden, a fellow of Merton, and court physician to Edward, wrote a book called the “Rosa Anglica,” on his great and successful method of treating patients for the smallpox, which consisted in hanging their rooms and enveloping their persons in scarlet cloth! He informs us that, with the blessing of God, he purposes writing another book on Chiromancy, or fortune-telling by the hand, condescends to give directions to the court ladies for preparing their perfumes, washes, and hair-dyes, and interlards his quack recipes with scraps of original verse.

In his treatment of religious subjects Chaucer represents the tone of feeling which prevailed among a very large class of Englishmen in his day. He was a political partisan of John of Gaunt, and therefore gave the Lollards a certain kind of support. To a man of free life and coarse humour it was both tempting and easy to exercise his wit on fat monks and lazy friars, and to grumble like a true Englishman at their demands on his purse. Doubtless there were plenty of unworthy representatives of both professions to stand as the originals of his poetical caricatures, and broadly enough did he paint their unseemly features. But that was all; and his biographer, Godwin, admits that, so far from sharing any of the heretical opinions of the Lollards, his poems unmistakably prove his adherence to the Catholic dogmas, especially those which they most malignantly attacked, namely, the Sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist; while his devotion to the Blessed Virgin is expressed in a thousand passages, such as the following:—

Occleve, his disciple, himself no mean poet, bears testimony to the fact that his lamented master was a devout client of the Queen of Heaven:—

Contemporary with Chaucer, the father of our poetry, was Sir John Mandeville, who commonly enjoys the credit of being the father of English prose, and whose travels let into the popular mind a glimmering light as to the whereabouts of Tartary, Persia, Armenia, Lybia, Chaldea, and Ethiopia, all which he visited, besides some Eastern lands that he calls by the name of “Amazoyn,” “Ind the Less and the More,” and “many isles that be abouten Ind.” In his “Itinerary” he describes his visit to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, apologising for possible inaccuracies by reminding the indulgent reader that “thynges passed out of long time from a man’s mynd turnen soon into forgetting; because that the mynd of man ne may not be comprehended ne withholden for the freelty of mankind.” The “Itinerary” was written in Latin, and translated by the author first into French, and from thence into English, and enjoyed great popularity. And the publication of these travels, together with those of Marco Polo, stimulated an interest in the study of geography, so that we begin to find more frequent mention in the catalogues of monastic libraries of maps and charts. The whole science of map-drawing, it may be observed, had developed in the cloister; the German monks showing themselves indefatigable in improving this branch of science. About the year 1370 Prior Nicholas Hereford of Evesham Abbey, after collecting a fine assortment of books, caused a great map of the world to be executed, at the cost of six marks, for the use of his convent. And a certain Camaldolese monk, named Fra Mauro, made use of the information derived from the writings of Marco Polo, and produced a grand Mappamondo, wherein he depicts the sea rolling round the southern extremity of Africa. On the margin of his map appear some learned notes, referring the phenomena of the tides to the moon’s attraction—a piece of natural philosophy, however, which, as we have seen, was not unknown to Bede.

It has been already said that during the reign of Edward III. the English universities had to sustain the twofold attack of Lollardism and the Black Death, by the united effects of which they were reduced to so low a condition, as at one time to have ceased to be regarded as seats of learning. Nine tenths of the English clergy are said to have been swept away by the terrible plague, together with the population of entire cities, and the necessity of the case obliged the bishops to fill the vacant benefices with men of inferior education, a practice which for the moment told severely on the state of the schools. But the effects of the pestilence were less fatally disastrous than those caused by the heresy of Wickliffe. When in 1361, that celebrated man, then master of Baliol College, Oxford, first made himself notorious by his attacks on the mendicant orders, he seems to have done little more than repeat the old threadbare calumnies of William de St. Amour and Richard Fitz Ralph. His views were of course exceedingly relished by the secular doctors, and his reputed talents induced the primate, Simon Islip, to offer him the wardenship of Canterbury Hall, then newly founded, partly for secular and partly for monastic students. In order to make room for him, the former warden, Woodhal, a Canterbury monk, had to retire, and three other monastic students who held scholarships in the college were at the same time removed. Langham, the successor of Islip, pronounced these proceedings irregular, and restored Woodhal to his post. The matter was referred to the decision of Pope Urban V., who decided in favour of Woodhal, and from that day Wickliffe became the deadly enemy of the papal power. The university, or rather the secular regents of the university, immediately took part with him against the Pope and the Friars, and in 1372, to mark their adherence to his cause, elected him Professor of Divinity. He succeeded, moreover, in obtaining the powerful support of John of Gaunt, and on occasion of a congress, held at Bruges, to settle various points in dispute between the English Government and the Holy See, the name of John Wickliffe appears in the list of Royal Commissioners. All this time there had been no whisper of heresy, nor was it until after his return to England, when he was promoted to a prebend in the collegiate church of Westbury, and a little later was presented by John of Gaunt to the rectory of Lutterworth, that he began to disseminate his pernicious doctrines. Besides his peculiar views regarding the possession of property, he had started views on the subject of predestination, analogous to those afterwards embraced by Calvin, and attacked the supremacy of the Pope, and the doctrines of penance, indulgences, the worship of the saints and of holy images, and prayer for the dead. He and his followers propagated their opinions by a sort of popular preaching suited to the tastes of the common people, and accompanied by a certain low buffoonery, in all ages specially attractive to rude audiences of the Anglo-Saxon race. The coarse invectives levelled against the clergy found eager reception among such hearers; for there is perhaps to most men an irresistible fascination in doctrines which aim at bringing down any dominant class of society to a lower level. The English commons were at this period seething in a chronic state of insurrection, and the Lollard denunciations of the priests and land-holders were extremely to the taste of the Socialists of the fourteenth century. It is therefore quite easy to understand how it was that Hob Miller and Colin Lout should have thought it an excellent joke to ridicule and despise their betters; but that Wickliffe should have found warm supporters in the university of Oxford is a fact that may well surprise and startle us. But Lollardism had a double aspect, its theological heresies were at first as little relished at Oxford as at Rome, but its enmity to the religious orders happened to chime in with the views of the secular faction, and therefore they gave it their support. An appeal had already been made, not to Rome, but to Parliament, for a law to prohibit any member of the university joining a religious order before his eighteenth year, and the Oxonian divines were not ashamed to accept, together with the desired statute, a prohibition to carry the matter to Rome. They next established the rule that no religious, whether monk or friar, should be admitted to graduate in arts, while at the same time, by the university statutes, no one could fill a theological professorship without so graduating. The monks appealed to the Holy See, and obtained a dispensation from this unjust law, and thus increased the ill-will of their thwarted and malicious adversaries. The struggle was at its height when Wickliffe raised his cry against the mendicant orders, whom he declared to be Antichrist, and proctors of Satan; and he at once found plenty of grave divines who were willing to regard him as a useful ally, and forgive both his heresies and his nonsense for the support he furnished to their side of the quarrel. Hence, in 1377, when Gregory XI. sent Bulls to the Archbishop of Canterbury the Bishop of London, and the university of Oxford, calling on them to take active measures for the condemnation of the heresiarch, we are assured by Walsingham that the heads of the university deliberated whether or no they should receive the Bull, nor does it appear certain that it ever was received. At last, however, in 1381, Wickliffe startled even his Oxford allies by his attack on the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, and a decree was drawn up, and signed by William de Burton, the chancellor, and twelve of the chief divines, condemning his errors, and forbidding them to be promulgated in the university. Hereupon Wickliffe scrupled not to appeal to the Crown and Parliament, but the English people were not yet quite prepared for such a step, and the act caused general scandal. Even John of Gaunt, who had hitherto, from political motives, given him his countenance, now withdrew his protection, and declared his teaching on the Sacrament of the Altar to be a “doctrine of devils.”

Oxford, however, had not yet entirely given up his cause. In 1382, when Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury, set on foot vigorous measures for the eradication of the new heresies, he met with stout resistance from Rigge, who had succeeded De Burton in the office of chancellor of the university, and who flatly refused to silence a Lollard professor. Courtenay at last obtained a royal mandate, in virtue of which Wickliffe and his most obstinate adherents were expelled the university, a good number of professors purchasing immunity, however by a ready recantation of their errors, for few evinced any desire of becoming martyrs in the cause.

The steps taken by Courtenay vindicated the authority of the Church but they were far from being sufficient to purge the university from the heretical leaven, or remedy the evils caused by these internal troubles. So far is Ayliffe’s statement that the Wickliffites restored sound learning at Oxford, from possessing a shadow of truth, that the period when this heresy was rampant among her doctors was precisely that when her schools had confessedly sunk to their very lowest state of decay. The authorities were themselves perfectly aware of the fact, and represented it as one of the unhappy effects produced by papal provisions. But the statutes of Provisors, passed in the reign of Edward III., by which all such provisions were forbidden under severe penalties, instead of applying a remedy to this evil, only hastened the decline of learning. It was found that the Crown was far less disposed to promote men of learning than the Popes had been; and, to quote the words of Lingard, “experience showed that the statutes in question operated to the depression of learning and the deterioration of the universities.” Accordingly in the year 1399 petitions were presented to Convocation from Oxford and Cambridge, setting forth that while the Popes were permitted to bestow benefices by provision, the preference had always been given to men of talent and industry, and that the effect of such preference had been to quicken the application and increase the number of the students; but that since the passing of the Act against Provisors, their members had been neglected by the patrons of livings, the students had disappeared, and the schools were nearly abandoned.[290] Sixteen years later the House of Commons awoke to a sense of the suicidal character of their own policy, and petitioned King Henry V. that, to save the universities from destruction, he would suffer the statutes against Provisors to be repealed. The King referred the matter to the bishops, who, however, had no wish at all to interfere with the existing legislation, and contented themselves with passing a law in convocation obliging every patron of a benefice for the next ten years to present a graduate of one of the universities.

These facts may serve as sufficient reply to the vaunted “restoration of learning” achieved by the Lollards. The effect of their influence in the universities, coupled with that of an anti-Roman course of legislation, had been to bring those institutions to the very verge of ruin, and that in spite of the extraordinary efforts which were being made by private munificence to enlarge and perfect the collegiate system of education. Indeed, though Wickliffe himself was a man of undoubted ability, the attempt to convert him into a restorer of humane letters, savours of the absurd.[291] His learning was precisely the same which, when found in the possession of friars and other scholastics, earns for them such bitter taunts and gibes as “locusts,” who devoured all the green things in the land, and darkened it with bad Latin and captious logic. Wickliffe’s Latin was not better than that of his adversaries, and his logic was of that true Oxonian temper which Wood qualifies as “frivolous sophistry whereby scholars could at any time be for or against anything proposed.” The well-known ballad in which an Oxford student puzzles his simple-minded parent by proving a pigeon and an eel pie to be convertible terms, seems hardly a caricature when we read the shifts, or, as Wood terms them, the “screws” by which the Lollard chief sought to prove that he meant the precise contrary of what he had been convicted of saying. “He so qualified his doctrines with conditions,” says Lingard, “and explained them away by distinctions, as to give an appearance of innocence to tenets the most mischievous. On the subject of the Holy Eucharist he intrenched himself behind unintelligible distinctions, the meaning of which it would have puzzled the most acute logician to detect.”[292] And Rohrbacher observes that instead of appealing to the Scriptures explained by the Fathers, he took refuge in “arguments and dialectic subtleties, wrapped up in an obscure and barbarous phraseology;” in other words, he exhibited precisely the same description of learning, the display of which has earned so many hard epithets for the academic “locusts.”

Wickliffe’s literary fame rests chiefly on his translation of the Bible into the vulgar tongue, often incorrectly spoken of as the earliest English version. It is not clear that he himself ever translated more than the Gospels, for of the various manuscripts which bear his name, some are now admitted to have been the production of later Lollard writers. His English is declared by Mr. Craik to be “coarse and slovenly,” and far more harsh and obscure than that of Mandeville or Chaucer. His version was made the vehicle for conveying his peculiar tenets, by means of corruptions of the Sacred Text, and was accompanied by certain Prologues or Glosses, explaining it in an heretical sense. On this account it was enacted by Archbishop Arundel, in a Provincial Synod held in 1408, that “no one should hereafter translate any text of Holy Scripture into English by way of a book, and that no such book, composed lately, in the time of Wickliffe, or since his death, shall be read.” This decree has been erroneously interpreted as a prohibition to the laity to read the Scriptures. But its real meaning is very clearly explained by the Canonist Lyndwood,[293] a contemporary of Arundel’s, as being, first, a prohibition to any private person to translate the Scriptures into English without authority; and secondly, a prohibition to use or read any such unauthorised and incorrect versions. And he expressly adds that from the terms “newly composed, in the time of Wickliffe, or since his death,” it is evident that the Lollard versions only are prohibited, but that every one is still at liberty to read those formerly translated from the text of Scripture into English or any other modern idiom. Lyndwood died in 1446, and was living when the decree in question was first published. His testimony as to its meaning as then understood and interpreted, as well as to the fact that other earlier versions did exist at that time, cannot therefore be called in question. Moreover, Fox the Protestant martyrologist, tells us, on the authority of Polydore Vergil, that this same Archbishop Arundel, who is so often accused of prohibiting the reading of the Scriptures, preached the funeral sermon of Queen Anne of Bohemia, and mentioned among other things in her praise that she was a diligent reader of the Four Gospels written in Bohemian, English, and Latin, with divers expositions, which book she had sent to him to be viewed and examined.

If this account be correct, it equally vindicates Arundel from the charge of prohibiting the Scriptures, and Queen Anne from that of Lollardism on the ground of reading them, for it will be observed the copy she used had been first submitted to the archbishop’s approval, and his formal permission had been obtained. We have also another interesting testimony to the existence of these earlier versions, and an explanation of the decree against those of the Lollards, in the words of Sir Thomas More, who, in his Dialogue, notices the prohibitory Constitution of Arundel in the following terms:—

“Ye shall understand that the great arch-heretic, Wickliffe (whereas the Holy Bible was long before his time by virtuous and well-learned men translated into the English tongue, and by good and godly people, with devotion and soberness, well and reverently read) took upon him, of a malicious purpose, to translate it anew. In which translation he purposely corrupted the Holy Text, maliciously planting therein such words as might in the reader’s ears serve to the proof of such heresies as he went about to sow; which he not only set forth in his own translation of the Bible, but also in certain prologues or glosses, which he made hereupon. So that after it was perceived what harm the people took by the translations, prologues, and glosses of Wickliffe’s, and also of some others who after him helped to set forth his sect, then, for that cause, it was at a council holden at Oxford provided, upon great pain, that no man should henceforth translate the Scriptures into the English tongue upon his own authority by way of book or treatise, nor no man should read such books as were newly made in the time of Wickliffe, or since, or that should be made any time after, till the same translation were by the Diocesan or Provincial Council approved. But that it neither forbade the translations to be read that were already well done of old before Wickliffe’s time, nor condemned his because it was new, but because it was naught, nor prohibited new to be made, but only provided that they shall not be read if they be made amiss, till by good examination they be amended; except they be such translations as those of Wickliffe and Tindal, which the malicious mind of the translator hath so handled that it were lost labour to go about to mend them.”

He goes on to say that he has seen, and, if necessary, could show, copies of English Bibles, “fair and old,” approved by the Diocesans, which have been left with lay men and women, and used by Catholic folk with soberness and devotion, and that the clergy never kept any Bibles from the laity save those that were “naught,” and not so approved; that is, those in which heretical corruptions of the text had been introduced, or to which were attached the pernicious Lollard glosses. And he explains how it was that no printer had yet ventured to print an English Bible, a great and expensive undertaking, which might, after all, have been unsaleable, through the question which might have been raised whether it were printed from a version made before or since the days of Wickliffe. The whole passage is sufficiently explicit, both as to the fact of approved English versions of the Scriptures existing before the time of Wickliffe, and also as to the received interpretation of Arundel’s decree. We have the very explicit testimony of Cranmer to the same effect. “It is not much above a hundred years,” he writes, “since Scripture hath not been accustomed to be read in the vulgar tongue within this realm; many hundred years before that it was translated and read in the Saxon tongue, and when that language waxed old and out of common usage, because folks should not lack the fruit of reading it, it was translated again into the newer language.”[294] It is, however, by no means easy in all cases to distinguish these early versions from their later imitations. All the translations of the Scriptures preserved in manuscript in the Oxford libraries have been commonly assigned to Wickliffe, although Dr. Thomas James is of opinion that a close examination of some of them would show them to be of much more ancient date. He is also disposed to think that one of the prologues ordinarily assigned to one of Wickliffe’s disciples belongs to an earlier translation. Lewis, in his “History of the English Translations of the Bible,” supposes this prologue to have been written in 1396 by John Purvey, one of Wickliffe’s most learned followers; but its allusions to the care taken to consult St. Jerome, and the gloss of Nicholas de Lyra, do not seem to harmonise very well with this theory. Dr. James considers that the copies preserved in the Bodleian Library, and in Christ Church Library, are of ancient Catholic versions, that in Queen’s College Library alone being properly assigned to Wickliffe. Lewis opposes this view, yet he admits that the Bodleian and Queen’s College versions are different from that of Christ Church. Warton claims one of these for John of Trevisa, and Weever assigns one to the Venerable Richard of Hampole, an Austin hermit, who lived about the year 1349, near the Monastery of Hampole in Yorkshire, and, according to Camden, wrote many books full of “heavenly unction,” and whose translation of the Psalter is still preserved. Whatever may be the real history of these three versions (and it is evident that critics are by no means unanimous as to their authorship), several fragments exist of different books of Scripture which are admitted to be of ancient date. In the library of Bennet College, Cambridge, a translation is preserved of two of the Gospels and St. Paul’s Epistles, with a gloss, written in the English spoken after the Conquest. In Sydney Sussex College are portions of the Old Testament commented on in like manner. A translation of the Psalter, with a gloss, is in the Harleian Library, besides the Psalter of Richard of Hampole, mentioned above, to which is prefixed a prologue, in which the author explains that he has sought no strange English, but only that which was commonest and easiest, and has been careful to consult the holy doctors. There are also, according to Lewis, other translations extant of the Psalter, the New Testament, and the Church Lessons and Hymns, all made before the time of Wickliffe. It must be borne in mind that the manuscripts preserved in our libraries are mere fragments accidentally saved from destruction, and can scarcely be taken as evidence of what existed in England before the Reformation. The pious visitors of Edward VI., in their zeal to purify the university of Popish service books, destroyed every manuscript they could lay hands on, which exhibited illuminations or other ornaments, without the slightest reference to its contents. Whole libraries were then sold for waste paper, and bought by bakers to feed their ovens, or for other base purposes. But among the scanty relics that escaped the hands of these worse than Vandals, stray leaves are to be found of sermons, treatises, and mutilated hymns, many of which are in the vernacular English of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. One of these interesting fragments has been printed by Messrs Wright and Halliwell in the Reliquiæ Antiquæ, and is assigned by them to the fourteenth century. The preacher appears to have been familiar with some English version of the Canticle of Canticles, and introduces a passage which may be quoted as a beautiful specimen of our ancient English idiom:—“Behold my derlyng speketh to me; arys, come nerre my beautiful, now wynter is passid; that is, the coulde wynd of worldly covertise that mad me hard y-froze as yse: the floures scheweth them on erth, the voys of the tortel is herd in our herber; that is, the soule that the kyng of heven has y-lad to his vyne celler, syngeth chast songes of mornyng for hir sinnes and for deth of Christ hir mate: she will no more sette on grene bows lovynge worldlye things, bote fedeth hir with love of Christ, the clene white corne, and fleeth up to the holes of His five woundes, lookyng with sympel eyne into the cler waters of holie writ.”

From what has been said, it may be gathered that before the time of Wickliffe, the Scriptures were in no sense shut up from the laity; that considerable portions of them were rendered into English, and are known to have been actually in the possession of lay persons, and that it was not until the corrupt versions and glosses of the Lollards were made instruments of disseminating pernicious errors, that any decrees were made on the subject. Even then the restrictions were not prohibitions: the laity were still allowed to read approved Catholic versions: though it is very probable, that at a time when so large a portion of the population was infected with Lollardism, and when there was a disposition to make the Sacred Text, interpreted by each man’s whim, the rule of each man’s belief, the private reading of the English Scriptures by lay persons was not greatly encouraged. In fact, prohibitions or restrictions of this sort were never promulgated by the ecclesiastical authorities, until rendered necessary by the perverse misuse of the Sacred Volume by heretics. Thus, in France no such restrictions existed until 1229 when the extravagant doctrines which the Albigenses pretended to adduce from Scripture, obliged the Council of Toulouse to forbid the translation of the Sacred Books, the use of which had, up to that time, been freely permitted. In no case was the Latin Bible withdrawn from the laity,[295] and it must be remembered that in those days the majority of those who could read at all, could read Latin. Lewis, indeed, would have us believe that before Wickliffe’s time, even the Latin Bible was not allowed in common use; and gravely assures us, that the monks and friars collected copies and laid them up in their libraries, not (as one might suppose) for the obvious purpose of reading them, but “to imprison them from the curates and secular priests, and so prevent them from preaching the Word of God to the people.” Nonsense of this sort is scarcely worth refuting, though it finds a place in very grave writers, and by certain readers is often enough believed. Bibles were, of course, comparatively rare and expensive books, and not within reach of every poor curate’s purse. But so far from any conspiracy existing to make them rarer, it was a common devotion among those who possessed such a treasure, to bequeath it by will to some public church, there to be set up and chained, ad usum communem. This practice is often supposed to have originated with the Reformers, and a modern artist has depicted, with great skill, the grey-haired peasant approaching the chained Bible set forth by order of his sacred majesty king Edward VI., and turning over its pages with pious awe. It was, however, a good thought stolen from the ancients, as there is abundant evidence to show. Thus, in 1378 a Bible and Concordance were left by will by Thomas Farnylaw, to be set up and chained in the north aisle of St. Nicholas’ Church, Newcastle; and in 1385, a Bible and Concordance were to be found chained in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor.

These Bibles were, of course, copies of the Latin Vulgate, for it is not pretended that any effort was made to place a version of the Scriptures, in the vulgar tongue, at the command of the unlettered laity. The Catholic system of education did not aim at enabling every poor man to read his Bible, but rather at making him know his faith. Nevertheless, so true is it that a strong Scriptural element has always predominated in the teaching of the Church, that the first attempts to provide the poor with cheap literature of any sort were called Biblia Pauperum, or the Bibles of the poor. They were rude engravings of Scriptural subjects, or stories of the saints, taken off carved wooden blocks, and accompanied with texts of Scripture, or pious verses. These were known as block-books, and were reproduced at a much cheaper rate than books written out by hand. Of course they were not Bibles, but they show that even in the age most tainted by the Lollard heresy, there was a disposition on the part of Catholic teachers to supply the people with instruction into which a certain Biblical element had been infused. The block-books were likewise used to strike off small school manuals of grammar, and a book of this sort was technically called a “Donatus.” If the grammars were welcome boons to schoolboys, the Bibles of the poor were not less convenient for the use of preachers, who could not carry so cumbrous a volume as a whole Bible into the pulpit, and were often glad to help their memory by a selection of suitable texts. Specimens of these block-books are preserved as curiosities by modern bibliopolists, and the contrivance seems to have been the immediate forerunner of the more important invention of printing. But in mentioning them we are somewhat departing from the order of time, as they can hardly be assigned an earlier date than the beginning of the fifteenth century.