Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/125

 conviction must be the result of a series of inferences, for it is idle to expect absolute proof after the lapse of five centuries. It will be said that the fact of a John Wycliffe acting in 1363 and 1369 as patron of the living, whilst it proves that there was a lord of the manor bearing that name in the years just mentioned, does not prove that he was John "the Heretic." True; but let us not miss the significance of the fact that no John Wycliffe at all is shown in the genealogy, as preserved in the family records. The close catalogue, which would not be in the keeping of the Wycliffes, retains the name of John as patron of the living of Wycliffe, with the strong presumption that he was lord of the manor during the widowhood of Dame Catherine. The genealogy, which is full and uninterrupted from the middle of the fifteenth century, makes not the slightest reference to him. What is the reasonable, not to say the necessary, inference? Clearly that this John Wycliffe had been deliberately erased from the record, for some reason which commended itself to this exceptionally devout and consistent family of Romanists.

According to the genealogy, it should have been William Wycliffe who appointed his namesake of Balliol after the death of his father. If he was alive in 1363, John must surely have been his elder brother. If he was dead, John may have been his next brother, or conceivably his uncle; for it is possible (though clearly improbable) that 13 19 is the date of Roger's birth. As a matter of fact, John "Haereticus" refers in one of his Determinations to a brother "olim mortuum" In any case John Wycliffe was an