WYCK, JOHN (1652–1700), painter, son of Thomas Wyck (1616–1677), a distinguished Dutch painter of interiors, markets, and Italian seaports, was born at Haarlem on 29 Oct. 1652. He was a pupil of his father, and came when young to England, where he settled. He was a clever painter of horses and other animals, and enjoyed a great reputation for his battle and hunting scenes, in which he imitated Wouwermans. Among his best works are representations of the siege of Namur, the siege of Maestricht, the battle of the Boyne, and other military exploits of William III; these and many of his hunting pieces were engraved by Smith, Faber, and Lens. In Kneller's equestrian portrait of the Duke of Schomberg, and also in that of the Duke of Monmouth by Netscher, the horses and landscape were put in by Wyck. He painted many excellent landscapes, including views in Scotland and in Jersey. Wyck's ‘Horrors of War’ is in the Bridgewater Gallery, and his ‘William III at the Siege of Maestricht’ at Knowsley; his ‘Battle of the Boyne’ was until recently at Blenheim. The finely painted head of a greyhound, formerly at Houghton Hall and now at St. Petersburg, was engraved by Earlom for the Houghton Gallery.
Wyck married in England, and the circumstance is perhaps recorded in an entry in the registers of the Dutch church, Austin Friars: ‘13 April 1690. Johannes van Wijck met Catharina van Mengelinckhuijsen.’ He resided chiefly in London and its vicinity, and died at Mortlake, where he was buried on 26 Oct. 1700. His portrait, painted by Kneller in 1685, was engraved by J. Faber in 1730, and by T. Chambers for the first edition of Walpole's ‘Anecdotes.’
[Nagler's Künstler-Lexicon; Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Moens's Registers of the Dutch Church, Austin Friars, 1884; Mortlake Parish Register.]
WYCLIFFE, JOHN (d. 1384), religious reformer and theologian, was born, according to Leland, at Spresswel, ‘a good myle from Richemont,’ in Yorkshire. Attempts have been made to discover a place called Spreswell or Speswell, about a mile from a supposed ‘Old’ Richmond and half a mile from Wycliffe, which is situated on the Yorkshire side of the Tees, just opposite Barnard Castle, and the next parish to Rokeby. But there is no real evidence for the existence of either Spreswell or Old Richmond (cf. Matthew, English Works of Wyclif, p. 1). Dr. Poole points out that Spreswell is simply a misprint for Ipreswel (now Hipswell), a mile from the existing town of Richmond in the same county. Ipreswel is the form actually found in the earlier copies of Leland. When that writer elsewhere ascribes John Wycliffe's origin to Wycliffe, he presumably means that this was the abode of his family, and the place where he spent his early days. Only a local and family tradition connects him with the Wycliffes of Wycliffe, who had been lords of that manor since the Conquest, but there is nothing improbable in the supposition; and a John de Wycliffe was certainly patron of the living during the reformer's life, and presented to it a fellow of Balliol (Sergeant, John Wyclif, p. 96). Walsingham confirms the fact that he was a north-countryman. It is a curious circumstance that the Wycliffe family adhered to the old faith after the Reformation, and that in consequence half the inhabitants of the village are still Roman catholics (Lechler, John Wycliffe and his English Precursors, Engl. transl. by Lorimer, 1884, p. 82).
The traditional date of Wycliffe's birth (1324) rests only upon a conjecture of Lewis (Hist. of the Life and Sufferings of John Wiclif, p. 1), or rather of Bale, based upon the assumption that he was about sixty when he died of a paralytic stroke in 1384. The facts that Wycliffe is not heard of in public life till 1365, that he did not become a doctor of theology till 1372, and that it was not till 1377 that his theological heresies attracted attention, while the development of his theological position was even then very incomplete, would seem to suggest that
