Page:Englishhistorica36londuoft.djvu/430

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422 AN ' ATTRACTED ' SCRIPT July between the years 1358 and 1363, palaeography supplies an explanation. The scribe who during these years continued the thirteenth-century service book was ' attracted ' by the hand of his predecessors, and either consciously or unconsciously copied it. G. R. Cole-Baker. Englishmen at Wittenberg in the Sixteenth Century The matriculation-book of the university of Wittenberg contains many particulars of the Englishmen who resorted to it at the time when it had become the first capital of protestantism. The first to appear is ' Guillelmus Daltici Ex Anglia 27 Maij 1524 ',* a name which, if this form be correct, cannot be identified. It is well known that William Tyndale went to Germany in May 1524 and, according to the testimony of Cochlaeus, who saw him at Worms, went to Wittenberg to see Luther. In default of other evidence of this visit half the biographers of Tyndale are inclined to doubt that it ever took place. 2 It is indeed con- ceivable that the name of Tyndale is concealed in this first entry, 3 and there is no doubt of the name of * Guilhelmus Roy ex landino, 10 Iu[nii] 1525 ', 4 that is, William Roy, who is known to have been Tyndale 's assistant as the translator and author of various tracts, and who is held by Dr. E. Nestle to have been the forger of the Greek manuscript which deceived Erasmus about the spurious verse in 1 John. 5 It must have been about the same time that Roy was at Wittenberg, that Thomas Dusgate, alias Bennet, visited the place. The reason given by himself at his trial for heresy — he was martyred on 15 January 1532 — is "as follows : " Feeling him- self much cumbered with the concupiscence of the flesh and too weak to overcome it ... he departed from Cambridge and went to Luther in Germany.' After he had declared his * great 1 Album Academiae Vitebergensis, ed. C. E. Foerstemann, 1841, i. 121. 2 See biographies by R. Demaus, 2nd ed., 1886, ed. R. Lovett, pp. 117 f. ; the Diet, of Nat. Biog. ; T. More, Workes, 1557, p. 222 d. ; G. C. Macaulay, ' The English Bible ', Quarterly Review, 1911 ; A. W. Pollard, Records of the English Bible, 1911, pp. 3 f., 108 ; J. J. Momfret, English Versions of the Bible, 1907, pp. 83 f. ; Froude, History of England, 1875, ii. 31 ; Gairdner, Lollardy and the Reformation, 1908, ii. 227 ; H. E. Jacobs, The Lutheran Movement in England, 1890, pp. 14 f. ; The Nation (New York), 16 May 1912 ; L. F. Gruber, ' The Truth about Tyndale's New Testa- ment ', Lutheran Church Review, October 1916, April 1917. 3 Through the courtesy of Dr. Paul Flemming of Pforta, I am able to state that in the opinion of Professor F. A. Weissenborn, the archivist of Halle, who kindly examined the manuscript now in his keeping, my conjectural emendation * Daltin ' for ■ Daltici ' is ' nicht ganz ausgeschlossen This might be taken as an anagram for ' Tindal '. 4 Album, i. 125. 5 Introduction to the Critical Study of the New Testament, p. 5.