Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/113

 no one appears to have made a more definite statement until John Leland (who travelled and wrote in the reign of Henry VIII., upwards of two centuries after the event of which he speaks) mentions as a matter of hearsay that Wyclif was born at Spreswell, a good mile from Richmond in Yorkshire. In another place he says that the Reformer derived his origin from the village of Wycliffe, which is on the river Tees, some ten miles from Richmond.

These two statements of the antiquary have caused no slight perplexity amongst later writers. Even if they are consistent with each other, which is not quite clear, a double difficulty is created by the facts that there is no such place as Spreswell, actually or historically, within a mile or so of Richmond, and that the people of Wycliffe-on-Tees have for many generations piously laid claim to a Spreswell—or Speswell—of their own.

It was Whitaker who first suggested, in his History of Richmondshire, some ninety years ago, that Spreswell was only Leland's incorrect rendering of Ipswell or Hipswell—a village of this name still existing near Richmond. Dr. Shirley preferred to think that Leland had made no mistake, having written Ipreswell, which a copyist subsequently converted into Spreswell. Mr. F. D. Matthew and Mr. Poole, relying upon Stow's transcript from Leland's work, maintain that the copyist actually wrote Ipreswell, and that the S first makes its appearance in Hearne's printed copy of the Itinerary.

All this looks natural enough; but it does not make the birth of a Wycliffe of Wycliffe at Ipreswell