Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/117

 foundations of houses, and, as some believe, also of the village stocks."

Now, of course, this theory of a Speswell-on-Tees imposes on its advocates the necessity of explaining away Leland's "good myle from Richemont." Some have evolved an Old Richmond on the river bank, three or four miles below Wycliffe, and have interpreted the "good myle" in the sense of a Scot's "mile and a bit," where the bit is apt to be more than the mile. There is now on the same spot a village called Barforth, which, according to Lewis's Topographical Dictionary, was "formerly called Old Richmond"; and a place of this name appears in Carey's map of the North Riding of Yorkshire. The evidence is very recent,—and as "Richemont" was in its present position long before Leland's time we should hardly be any better off if we were to accept it. Others say that the antiquary was well informed as to Spreswell, but ill informed as to the distance from Richmond; and with respect to this alternative it is only fair to remember that Leland or his informers made some curious mistakes in matters of locality and distance. There are at least two of these mistakes in the Itinerary within fifty lines of the passage which has given so much trouble to the biographers of Wyclif, from which it would seem that Leland had no very clear and precise picture of the Richmondshire country in his mind. Without building anything upon the name of Spreswell and it is as easy to conclude that the local tradition refers to Thorpeswell as that Leland's original was the otherwise undistinguished village of