SOURCE: Hudson, Anne. “Wyclif and the English Language.” In Wyclif in His Times, edited by Anthony Kenny, pp. 85-103. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1986.

In the following essay, Hudson stresses Wyclif's promotion of the use of written English in the fourteenth century, regardless of whether or not he personally translated the Latin Bible into the English vernacular.

In the introduction to the first paper in the series of Balliol lectures, the Master spoke of two things concerning Wyclif which were familiar to him as a schoolboy: that Wyclif caused the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and that Wyclif translated the Bible, both ‘facts’ that many would now feel to be discredited. It is not within the brief for this paper to reinstate Wyclif as a cause, if not the cause, of the Peasants' Revolt, though I believe that a credible case can be made for this now unfashionable view.¹ The...