Neville was released from prison through the intervention of Pope Sixtus IV, who about 1475 sent to England another Greek scribe and diplomatist, George Hermonymus of Sparta, charged with a letter to Edward IV.  Besides Andronicus Contoblacas at Basle, Hermonymus was at the time the only Greek in Northern Europe who was prepared to teach his native tongue; in consequence most of the humanists of the day, Reuchlin, Erasmus, Budaeus and many others, turned to him for instruction, though he was indeed a poor teacher.  He secured the Archbishop’s release, and therewith a handsome reward to himself; but lingering on, he found himself compelled to spend about a year in London—­in prison:  some Italian merchants having trumped up against him a charge of espionage, from which he only escaped by paying the uttermost farthing.  That he suffered such a disagreeable experience perhaps indicates that no one in London was much interested in him or his language.

Another Greek who was copying manuscripts in England at this time was John Serbopoulos, also of Constantinople, who between 1489 and 1500 wrote a number of Greek manuscripts at Reading:  two copies of Gaza’s Grammar, Isocrates ad Demonicum and ad Nicoclem, several commentators on Aristotle’s Ethics, Chrysostom on St. Matthew, a Psalter and the completion of the Corpus Suidas which his fellow-countryman Emmanuel had begun.  In one of his colophons (1494) he specifies Reading Abbey as his place of abode; for the others he merely says Reading.  Possibly he was in the abbey the whole time; but even a temporary visit, during which he wrote Gaza and Isocrates, is an indication that one at least of the monastic houses was not hostile to the revival of learning.

Not that any doubt is possible on this point, since the researches of Abbot Gasquet into the life of William Selling, who was Prior of Christchurch, Canterbury, 1472-95.  After entering the monastery, about 1448, Selling was sent to finish his studies at Canterbury College, the home of the Benedictines in Oxford.[20] In 1464 he was allowed to go with a companion, William Hadley, to Italy; where they spent two or three years over taking degrees in Theology, and heard lectures at Padua, Bologna, and Rome.  Twice in later years Selling went to Italy again; and he brought back with him to England manuscripts of Homer and Euripides, and Livy, and Cicero’s de Republica.  Some of these have survived and are to be found in Cambridge libraries; others perished in the fire which broke out when Henry VIII’s Visitors came to Canterbury to dissolve Christchurch.  But Selling’s interest in learning was not confined to the collection of manuscripts.  A translation of a sermon of Chrysostom made by him in 1488 is extant; and an antiquarian visitor to Canterbury copied into his note-book ’certain Greek terminations, as taught by Dr. Sellinge of Christchurch’.

[20] The Canterbury gate of Christ Church, Oxford, still marks its site.  A generation or so later Linacre and More were students there; both having a connexion with Canterbury.