564 CHARTERS TO WESTERN BOROUGHS, 1256 October of the chancery warrants is available. On 23 June 23 Richard II a warrant for the issue of the Great Seal for letters patent to Hereford was made, a petition having been received from nos cher et bien amez les maire et citeins de nostre citee de Hereford par la quele ils nous sunt suppliez de lour graunter autiels fraunchises et Hbertees par paroles especiales come les citeins de nostre citee de Wircestre ou les burgeois de nostre ville de Gloucestre.^ Eva Penson. Wycliffe's Canonry at Lincoln Writing %i Wycliffe's Lincoln canonry, Mr. Salter says. That one who had not obtained a prebend should be called ' canon' is strange, but it seems to have been a custom at the papal court, and there are several instances. But such a use is unknown in ordinary documents, and if WycUf is described as ' canon of Lincoln ' in the chancellor's letter of 14 January 1376, it can hardly be doubted that he had obtained a prebend at Lincoln by that time.^ It seems to me that in a document intended for use at the papal court, we cannot press the English use of canonicus ; one might almost expect to find the Roman use. The description is not Wycliffe's but that of the notary. But for other reasons I have difficulty in believing that Wycliffe ever had possession even for a time. I first note that the date, 1375, assigned for the De civili Dominio, iii, is far too early : for (1) it is the fifth tractate of the Summa Theologiae ; and book ii, the fourth tractate, as it alludes to the excommunication of the Florentines (p. 90), must all of it be some months later than March 1376 ; ^ and (2) the De Veritate Sacrae Scripturae, the sixth, belongs as to all its earliest chapters to the first three months of 1377/8. The eleventh chapter, indeed, was published on 24 March 1377/8.* The passage accordingly in which Wycliffe alludes to the Lincoln prebend, and which comes about the middle of the long De civili Dominio, iii (p. 334), cannot be earlier than April or later than September 1377 ; I assign it to the long vacation." But for our
- Chancery Warrant for Issue, no. 12977. * Ante, p. 98.
' Hilary term 1376/7 is, in my opinion, the date of De civili Dominio, ii ; at the beginning of this term the Florentines were very much in evidence in England. (Cf. Eulogium Hist. iii. 335, where the date given in the margin may mislead. )
- Hodie in vigilia annunciacionis, a.d. MCCCLXXVIIJ, p. 258.
- I take it to be one of the ' lectures ' which gave Wiham or Vyrinham, i. e. Binham,
of St. Albans, ground to charge WycUfiFe with the violation of his oath in determining at Oxford after the feast of St. Thomas (July 7. Cf. Opera Minora, p. 415), where Lewis's Determinatio contra unum monachum is given in its complete form. Lewis was, of course, wrong in dating this determinatio in or about 1366 ; it£i proper date is the (academic) year, following the controversy with Woodford on dominion, i. e. 1377-8 for the controversy with Woodford came at the very end of 1376-7, also in the long vacation. (Cf. De civili Dominio, iii, pp. 351 ff.)
