1324 is too early rather than too late a date for his birth.
The treatment of John Wycliffe's Oxford life is embarrassed by serious questions of identification. The following notices occur of a John Wycliffe at Oxford during the period of the reformer's residence; all of them, except the fourth, may be identical with him, but only in the first two cases is the identification quite certain.
(1) A John Wycliffe is mentioned as master of Balliol College in 1361. This would make it probable, though not certain, that Wycliffe must have been at some former period a ‘scholar’ or (as we should now say) fellow of that college. But Balliol was founded as a college of students of arts, not of theology. By the original statutes and by a special interpretation of them issued in 1325 by the two ‘external masters’ (see the printed statutes; cf. Rashdall, Universities in the Middle Ages, ii. 474), under whose government the college was originally placed, a fellow necessarily resigned his fellowship on betaking himself to the study of theology. There may therefore have been an interval between the fellowship and the mastership. In 1340 Sir William Felton left a bequest for the support of six new theological fellowships. The bequest consisted in the advowson of Abbotsley, and the college did not enter into possession of it till the death of its then incumbent in 1361, when John Wycliffe, as master or warden, was inducted on behalf of the college (Lincoln Register, Gynwell, Institutions, f. 367; Lewis, p. 4; Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. App. p. 447). That a youth born at Wycliffe should have been sent to the college founded by John Balliol, lord of Barnard Castle on the opposite bank of the Tees, is natural enough; and, as it was by Balliol College that Wycliffe was appointed to Fillingham, and it is certain that the vicar of Fillingham went on to Ludgershall and thence to the reformer's well-known living at Lutterworth, the identification of the master of Balliol with the reformer becomes certain. Wycliffe's mastership must have been of short duration. Another person is mentioned as master in 1356, and Wycliffe had probably ceased to hold the office before the end of 1361, if the next allusion is to be referred to the same John Wycliffe.
(2) In the last-mentioned year (1361) a certain ‘John de Wyclif, of the diocese of York, M.A.,’ appears in the roll of supplicants for provisions to benefices despatched by the university of Oxford to the papal court. He supplicated for a prebend, canonry, and dignity at York, ‘notwithstanding that he has the church of Fillingham, in the diocese of Lincoln, value thirty marks.’ The petition was not granted, but a prebend in the collegiate church of Westbury in the diocese of Worcester was given instead of it (Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers, ed. Bliss, Petitions, i. 390). Had John Wycliffe been at this time master of Balliol, it would have been necessary to state the fact. He probably resigned on accepting the rectory of Fillingham in May of the same year (Lincoln Register, Gynwell, f. 123). As it is certain (see below) that the reformer was vicar of Fillingham, the above allusion must be to the same person.
(3) A certain ‘Master John Wiclif’ appears in the accounts of Queen's College for 1371–2, for 1374–5, and for 1380–1 as paying rent for rooms as a ‘pensioner’ or ‘commoner’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 2nd Rep. App. p. 142). Shirley's identification of this Wiclif with the reformer would be plausible enough but for the extreme probability that the pensioner of Queen's was the same as the following, of whose existence Shirley was not aware.
(4) A certain John Wyclif appears in the Queen's College computus for 1371–2 as one of the ‘almonry boys’ of that college, for whom a ‘Doctrinale’ (of Alexander de Villa Dei) and other things were purchased (ib. 2nd Rep. App. p. 141). The reformer obviously could not have been beginning his Latin grammar in 1371, but the boy of 1371 may possibly have become a master by 1374, though the time is undoubtedly rather short.
(5) A ‘John Wyclif’ appears as the weekly seneschal or steward (and therefore fellow) of Merton College in 1356 (Brodrick, Memorials of Merton College, p. 36). The principal objection to the identification of this John Wyclif with the reformer arises from the extreme probability of the Mertonian's identity with the next John Wycliffe.
(6) The most famous question of identification is connected with the appointment of a certain John Wyclif to the mastership or wardenship of Canterbury Hall by Simon Islip, archbishop of Canterbury, in 1365. This college had been founded by Islip in 1362 as a place of theological study for a warden and six fellows, of whom the warden and three fellows were to be monks of Christ Church, Canterbury, and the remaining three fellows secular priests; but, in consequence of the feud which inevitably resulted from such an arrangement, the archbishop in 1365 removed the monks and replaced the monastic warden Woodhall by a ‘John de Wyclif,’ who is described (Lewis, p. 292) as coming from the diocese of York. In 1367, however, Islip's successor in the archbishopric,
