Francis Gasquet - The Eve of the Reformation

Urbanus Regius, A comparison betwene the old learnynge and the newe , translated by William Turner. Southwark: Nicholson, 1537, sig. Aij to Cvij.

Opera (ed. Le Clerc), Ep. 583.

Ibid., Ep. 751.

Remigio Sabbadini, La Scuola e gli studi di Guarino Guarini Veronese , pp. 217-18.

R. Sabbadini, Guarino Veronese et il suo epistolario , p. 57.

The Earl was a confrater and special friend of the monks of Christchurch, Canterbury. In 1468-69, Prior Goldstone wrote to the Earl, who had been abroad “on pilgrimage” for four years, to try and obtain for Canterbury the usual jubilee privileges of 1470. In his Obit in the Canterbury Necrology (MS. Arund. 68 f. 45d) he is described as “vir undecumque doctissimus, omnium liberalium artium divinarumque simul ac secularium litterarum scientia peritissimus.”

Leland ( De Scriptoribus Britannicis , 482) calls him Tillœus, and this has been generally translated as Tilly. In the Canterbury Letter Books (Rolls Series, iii. 291) it appears that Prior Selling was greatly interested in a boy named Richard Tyll. In 1475, Thomas Goldstone, the warden of Canterbury Hall, writes to Prior Selling about new clothes and a tunic and other expenses “scolaris tui Ricardi Tyll.” In the same volume, p. 315, is a letter of fraternity given to “Agnes, widow of William Tyll,” and on February 7, 1491, she received permission to be buried where her husband, William Tyll, had been interred, “juxta tumbam sancti Thomæ martyris.”

Canterbury Letters (Camden Soc.), pp. 13, 15.

C. C. C. C. MS. 417 f. 54d: “Item hoc anno videlicet 6 Kal. Oct. D. Willms Selling celebravit primam suam missam et fuit sacerdos summæ missæ per totam illam ebdomadam.”

Literæ Cantuarr. (Rolls Series), iii. 239.

Leland, De Scriptoribus Britannicis , p. 482. Cf. also Canterbury Letters (Camden Soc.), p. xxvii.

Leland, ut supra .

Umberto Dallari, I rotuli dei Lettori, &c., dello studio Bolognese dal 1384 al 1799 , p. 51.

Serafino Mazzetti, Memorie storiche sopra l’università di Bologna , p. 308.

Leland, ut supra .

B. Mus. Arundel MS. 68, f. 4. The Obit in Christchurch MS. D. 12, says: “Sacræ Theologiæ Doctor. Hic in divinis agendis multum devotus et lingua Græca et Latina valde eruditus… O quam laudabiliter se habuit opera merito laudanda manifesto declarant.”

In the Canterbury Registers (Reg. R.) there is a record which evidently relates to Selling’s previous stay in Rome as a student. On October 3, 1469, the date of Selling’s second departure for Rome, the Prior and convent of Christchurch granted a letter to Pietro dei Milleni, a citizen of Rome, making him a confrater of the monastery in return for the kindness shown to Dr. William Selling, when in the Eternal City. This letter, doubtless, Selling carried with him in 1469.

The Old English Bible and other Essays , p. 306.

B. Mus. Cotton MS. Julius F. vii., f. 118.

One of Prior Selling’s first acts of administration was apparently to procure a master for the grammar school at Canterbury. He writes to the Archbishop: “Also please it your good faderhood to have in knowledge that according to your commandment, I have provided for a schoolmaster for your gramerscole in Canterbury, the which hath lately taught gramer at Wynchester and atte Seynt Antonyes in London. That, as I trust to God, shall so guide him that it shall be worship and pleasure to your Lordship and profit and encreas to them that he shall have in governance.” — Hist. MSS. Com. 9th Report, App. p. 105.

I. Noble Johnson, Life of Linacre , p. 11. Among the great benefactors to Canterbury College, Oxford, was Doctor Thomas Chaundeler, Warden of New College. In 1473, the year after the election of Prior Selling, the Chapter of Christchurch, Canterbury, passed a resolution that, in memory of his great benefits to them, his name should be mentioned daily in the conventual mass at Canterbury, and that at dinner each day at Oxford he should be named as founder.

Galeni, De Temperamentis libri tres, Thoma Linacro interpretante , is dedicated to Pope Leo X., with a letter from Linacre dated 1521. “The widow’s mite was approved by Him whose vicar on earth” Pope Leo is, so this book is only intended to recall common studies, though in itself of little interest to one having the care of the world.

G. Lilii, Elogia , ed. P. Jovii, p. 91.

Ibid., lxiii. p. 145.

Sir Thomas More writing to Colet says: “I pass my time here (at Oxford) with Grocyn, Linacre, and our (George) Lilly: the first as you know the only master of my life, when you are absent; the second, the director of my studies; the third, my dearest companion in all the affairs of life” (J. Stapleton, Tres Thomæ , p. 165.) Another constant companion of More at Oxford was Cuthbert Tunstall, one of the most learned men of his day, afterwards in succession Bishop of London and Durham. Tunstall dedicated to More his tract De arte supputandi , which he printed at Paris in 1529.

Reg. Warham, in Knight’s Erasmus , p. 22 note .

Encyclop. Brit. sub nomine .

Ibid.

Ugo Balzani, Un’ ambasciata inglese a Roma , Società Romana di storia patria, iii. p. 175 seqq. Of this an epitome is given in Bacon’s Henry VII. , p. 95. Count Ugo Balzani says: “Il prior di Canterbury sembra essere veramente stato l’anima dell’ ambasciata.” Burchardus, Rerum Urbanarum Commentarii (ed. Thuasne), i. p. 257, gives a full account of the reception of this embassy in Rome and by the Pope.

Harl. MS. 6237, and Add. MS. 15,673.

In the same beautifully written volume is a printed tract addressed to the Venetian Senate in 1471 against princes taking church property. The tract had been sent to the Prior of Christchurch by Christopher Urswick, with a letter, in which, to induce him to read it, he says it is approved by Hermolaus Barbarus and Guarini. Christopher Urswick was almoner to Henry VII., and to him Erasmus dedicated three of his works.

Leland, De Scriptoribus Britannicis , 482.

This information I owe to the kindness of Dr. Montague James.

Canterbury Letters (Camden Soc.), p. xxvii.

Ibid., p. 36, a letter in which Dr. Langton asks Prior Selling to “attend to the drawing of it.” The draft sermon is in Cleop. A. iii.

Richard Pace, De Fructu , p. 27. The work De Fructu was composed at Constance, where Pace was ambassador, and where he had met his old master, Paul Bombasius. He dedicates the tract to Colet, who had done so much to introduce true classical Latin into England, in place of the barbarous language formerly used. The work was suggested to him by a conversation he had in England two years before, on his return from Rome, with a gentleman he met at dinner, who strongly objected to a literary education for his children, on the ground that he disapproved of certain expressions made use of by Erasmus. The tract shows on what a very intimate footing Pace was with Bombasius.