Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/415

 moments, so that all may recognise without doubt his affinity to Cain. And such was the end of all his wickedness."

But the most direct and credible testimony which has reached us concerning the death of Wyclif is that presented by Dr. Thomas Gascoigne, who wrote down in 1441 the sworn evidence of an eye-witness. The paper is not long, and it is of sufficient importance to be quoted in full.

"Master John Wycliff, an English priest, was excommunicated after his death by Thomas Arundell, the lord bishop (sic) of Canterbury, and subsequently he was disinterred by a doctor of theology of Oxford, by name Master Richard Flemmyng, of the diocese of York, and now bishop of Lincoln; and his bones were burnt, and his ashes were scattered in a stream near to Lyttyrwort—by order of the pope Martin V.

"And the same Wyclif was paralysed for two years before his death, and he died in the year of our Lord 1384, on the sabbath, on St. Sylvester's day, on the eve of the Circumcision; and in the same year, that is on the day of the Holy Innocents, as he was hearing mass in his church at Lyttyrwort, at the time of the elevation of the host, he fell down, smitten by a severe (magna) paralysis, especially in the tongue, so that neither then nor afterwards could he speak, to the moment of his death. He spoke indeed on going into his church, but being struck by paralysis on the same day he could not speak, nor did he ever speak again.

"John Horn, a priest of eighty years, who was a