I HAVE already said (in the Preface to No. IV.) that I think this tract to be by another hand than Wyclif's, but the tone of thought is very like his. The date of it is evidently after 1383, as Bishop Spenser's crusade in Flanders is mentioned as a thing of the past (Chapter XVI.).
When we read the complaint (Chap. XXII.) of the clergy who leave their parishes and go to school (that is, of course, to the University), in order to lead a loose life there, we are not suppose that the writer had any dislike to the Universities. Oxford was a chief centre of Wyclifite influence, and Wyclif himself, in 1368, received from his bishop two years' leave of absence from his living (Fillingham) to study at Oxford, where, our tract tells us, "good priests traveilen faste to lerne goddis lawe." Its author had rubbed shoulders with the men who went to study "Civil and Canon," and did little good thereat, or at most learned to "crack a little Latin in Consistories." The scholar is as indignant against fast men who degrade the seat of learning, as the reformer against priests who neglect their parishes. We may suppose the writer to be one of Wyclif's Oxford friends—perhaps Herford or Purvey.
Copied from the Corpus MS. X. and collated with the Dublin MS. AA.
| CHAP. I. | Curates care too much for worldly goods. |
| II. | Men run about after benefices and buy them. The money thus spent would be better employed in reducing taxation. |
| III. | Wayward curates are Satans transformed into angels of light—angels not of God but of the devil. |
| IV. | Curates study law books instead of the Bible. |
| V. | They go to law for trifles of tithe, bringing heavy charges on their subjects, or cursing and imprisoning them. |
| VI. | They set their parishioners an example of worldliness. |
