Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/129

 to an undisturbed tradition, John Wyclif was a scholar at Balliol, either as soon as he came up or after preliminary training at a grammar school. He afterwards became fellow and master of the college. Under the Balliol statutes no one could be made master who was not already a fellow; and, though the condition might be literally fulfilled by electing an outsider successively fellow and master, this supposition seems to be more hazardous than to accept the statement that Balliol was originally Wyclif's college. But there is no record, so far as is known, of the date when he came into residence, either at Oxford or at Balliol.

As Wyclif was a fellow, and as he would doubtless specialise in theology as early as possible, it may be supposed that the fellowship which he accepted was a clerical one. Now it is on record that, up to the year 1340, no fellow of Balliol was allowed to proceed to a degree in theology, whereas in that year six fellowships were founded on the express condition that their holders should incept in divinity within thirteen years. Wyclif was a Bachelor of Divinity in 1366, but there is nothing to show that he had not taken that degree several years earlier. If he was bent on remaining at Oxford, and remaining as a secular clergyman devoted to the study of theology, it seems likely that he would have sought to gain a footing in some other college after incepting as a Master of Arts, unless the theological fellowships had been endowed at the time when he took that degree. The approximate age at which the M.A. degree was taken in those days may be put at