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Historical person

John Wycliffe

c. 1320s–1384

John Wycliffe was an English theologian, philosopher and priest whose career was centred on the University of Oxford. Born in Yorkshire in the early fourteenth century, he became a prominent Oxford scholar, served as master of Balliol College and pursued advanced study in theology. By the early 1370s he had become one of the university’s leading intellectual figures and was increasingly connected with royal government and with John of Gaunt.

During the later 1370s and early 1380s Wycliffe developed increasingly controversial arguments about ecclesiastical wealth, authority and doctrine. His writings and followers helped inspire the movement later labelled Lollardy, and his name became closely associated with vernacular scripture, although modern scholarship is cautious about attributing the entire Middle English Bible translation directly to him. He died at Lutterworth on 31 December 1384; decades later the Council of Constance condemned him, and his remains were exhumed and burned.

Wycliffe appears directly in Mel Starr’s A Trail of Ink, where the theft of his books draws Hugh de Singleton into an Oxford murder investigation, and in Master Wycliffe’s Summons, where he asks Hugh to examine the suspicious death of one of his scholars in 1375.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring John Wycliffe (1 series)

The Chronicles of Hugh de Singleton, Surgeon in Order

by Mel Starr 17 books 4.2(32,327)

The Chronicles of Hugh de Singleton, Surgeon follow a Paris-trained medieval surgeon who becomes bailiff to Lord Gilbert Talbot at Bampton in Oxfordshire. Beginning in the mid-1360s, Hugh applies medical observation, practical reasoning and the authority of his manor office to deaths and disappearances that local custom, reputation…

All books in this series