WYCLIF fine monuments; but Glentworth and Fillingham are of more interest than all these. Glentworth, for its very interesting church, and Fillingham, because from 1361 to 1368 it was the home of the great John Wyclif, who held the living as a 'fellow' of Balliol College, Oxford.
Wyclif was made Master of Balliol in 1360, and became rector of Fillingham in the same year. In 1368 he moved to Ludgershall in Bucks, and in 1374 to Lutterworth, where he died on December 31, 1384. He was a consistent opposer of the doctrine of transubstantiation, for which he was condemned by the University of Oxford; and he renounced allegiance to the Pope, who issued no less than five Bulls against him. The Archbishop of Canterbury persecuted him in his latter years, and forty-four years after his death his bones were exhumed and burnt by order of the Synod of Constance, and the ashes cast into the Swift. He made the first complete translation of the Bible into English from the Vulgate, and in this he was assisted by Nicolas of Hereford, who took the Old Testament, Wyclif doing the New. Chaucer, who died in 1400, thus describes him in his Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales":—
A good man was ther of religioun,
And was a poure Persoun of a toun;
But riche he was of holy thought and werk.
He was also a lerned man, a clerk
That Christes gospel trewly wolde preche.
Wide was his parische, and houses fer asonder,
But he ne lefte not for reyne ne thonder,
In sicknesse nor in mischiefe to visite
The ferrest in his parische, muche and lite,
Upon his feet, and in his hand a staf.
This noble ensample to his sheep he gaf,
That first he wrought and afterward be taughte.
Out of the Gospel he the wordes caughte
And this figure he added eek thereto,
That if golde ruste, what shal iren do?
A better preest, I trowe, ther nowher non is,
He wayted after no pompe and reverence,
Ne maked him a spiced conscience,
But Christes lore, and his apostles twelve,
He taught, but first he folowed it himselve.
Glentworth has a typical pre-Norman tower, built of small stones with dressed quoins. It has the two stringcourses, the first being two-thirds of the way up from the ground with only
