HE plan on which this volume has been written, and (I trust) the excuse for adding one more to the considerable number of recent works on Wyclif, are perhaps sufficiently indicated in the first few chapters, and particularly in the fourth. It might not have been worthwhile to rewrite the story of this English worthy of the fourteenth century, even with the encouragement of a few fresh facts and sidelights to develop and illustrate his character, if it had not been for the opportunity thus afforded of doing something to popularise the picture of John Wyclif as an Oxford Schoolman, and the picture of the Schoolmen in general as pioneers of the Reformation of Religion and the Revival of Learning.
In a volume not specially intended for laborious students, it would scarcely have been appropriate to enter on a detailed examination of Wyclif's scholastic and controversial writings. Such a work remains to be accomplished, but it cannot well be undertaken until the Wyclif Society has completed its task. For a similar reason I have not introduced a full
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