Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/424

 vent obtained the king's license to elect a successor. Nicholas broke into the monastery, took forcible possession of the license, and himself appointed an abbot. He maintained his hold of his diocese till his death in March 1304–5 (, Cal. Doc. 1302–1307, No. 387).

[Sweetman's Calendar of Documents, 1252–1307, passim; Ware's Works (Harris), 1764, i. 198; Richey's Short Hist. of the Irish People (Kane), 1887, pp. 178 seq.; Cotton's Fasti, iii. 199; Brady's Episcopal Succession; Gams's Series Episcoporum.] 

NICHOLAS (fl. 1330), Franciscan. [See .]

NICHOLAS (1316?–1386), successively prior and abbot of Westminster Abbey. [See or .]

NICHOLAS (fl. 1386), Carmelite, was lecturer in theology to his order at Oxford. In 1386, at the request of John of Gaunt, he composed a calendar from 1387 to 1462, arranged for the latitude and longitude of Oxford, with an elaborate apparatus of astronomical tables, which were used by Chaucer in his ‘Treatise on the Astrolabe.’

Hakluyt states that Nicholas made a voyage to the lands near the North Pole in 1360. His authorities, Gerardus Mercator and John Dee [q. v.], who make no reference to Nicholas by name, derive their information from James Cnoyen of Bois-le-Duc, a Dutch explorer of uncertain date. Cnoyen's book, written ‘Belgica lingua,’ is lost. Mercator made extracts from it for his own use, and sent them in 1577 to John Dee. These extracts are preserved (Brit. Mus. MS. Cotton, Vitell. C. vii. ff. 264–9). From them it appears that Cnoyen's knowledge was obtained from the narrative of ‘a priest who had an astrolabe.’ The narrative was presented to the king of Norway in 1364. According to this priest's account, an Oxford Franciscan, who was a good astronomer, made a voyage in 1360 through all the northern regions, ‘and described all the wonders of those islands in a book which he gave to the king of England, and inscribed in Latin “Inventio Fortunatæ.”’ No evidence has been discovered to connect, as Hakluyt does, the unnamed Franciscan of Oxford with the Carmelite Nicholas. Dee (ib.) suggests that he may have been the Minorite Hugo of Ireland, a traveller who flourished and wrote about 1360 (see, Script., and , Script.) The ‘Inventio’ has not been found. The earliest allusion to it is in the margin of a map by John Ruysch, which appeared at Rome in the Ptolemy of 1508. Nothing is said about the authorship of the book, and there is reason to doubt whether the writer of the marginal note had seen the original. The expression in the note, ‘mare sugenum’ (which surrounded the magnetic rock), may be merely an echo of Cnoyen's ‘een zugende zee.’

[Arundel MSS. 347 and 207 contain the Calendar, parts of which are also found in several other manuscripts. Chaucer's Astrolabe, ed. Skeat, p. 3; Hakluyt's Voyages, i. 134–5; Mercator's Atlas, ed. 1606, p. 44; B. F. De Costa's Inventio Fortunata, New York, 1881.] 

NICHOLAS or  (fl. 1390), lollard, was probably a native of Hereford. A Nicholas Hereford was prior of Evesham for forty years, and died in 1393 (Vita Ricardi, p. 124), but there is no particular likelihood of any relationship. Hereford was an Oxford student and fellow of Queen's College, where he appears as bursar from 30 Sept. 1374 to 29 Sept. 1375 (Fasciculi Zizaniorum, p. 515). To this circumstance he no doubt owed his intimacy with John Wiclif. He may be the Nicholas of Hereford who was chancellor of Hereford on 20 Feb. 1377, but had vacated that post before 1381 (, Fasti Eccl. Angl. ii. 491). Hereford is stated to have been implicated by the confession of John Ball (d. 1381) [q. v.] in July 1381, when he is described, probably in error, as a master of arts (Fasc. Ziz. p. 274). He had graduated as doctor of divinity by the following spring, and in the letter of the Oxford friars to John, duke of Lancaster, on 18 Feb. 1382, is mentioned as their chief enemy (ib. pp. 294, 296). Throughout Lent of this year Hereford was constantly preaching in support of Wiclif, and against the friars at St. Mary's Church, having for his chief opponent Peter Stokes, the Carmelite. The chancellor, Robert Rigge, refused to take action against Hereford, and finally appointed him to preach the sermon at St. Frideswide's on Ascension day, 15 May, which, delivered in English, proved the climax in the events of the year. In the ‘earthquake council’ held at Blackfriars, London, by William Courtenay [q. v.], archbishop of Canterbury, on 21 May, the doctrines of Wiclif were condemned, and on 30 May the archbishop wrote to the chancellor expressing his surprise at the favour shown to Hereford. On 12 June, at a second meeting of the council, the chancellor received a peremptory mandate suspending Wiclif, Hereford, Philip Repington [q. v.], John Aston [q. v.], and Lawrence Bedeman [q. v.] from all public functions. The chancellor, under pressure, published the mandate at Oxford on Sunday, 15 June. Next day Hereford and Repington appealed to John