John Wycliffe was born in a small town on a sheep farm 200 miles from London. Not much is known about what year he was born, but the convention is 1324. We don’t know when he arrived at Oxford University, but we know that we was there in 1345. Wycliffe was heavily involved in Oxford and was also the master of the nearby Balliol College. For most of his life Wycliffe worked at churches near Oxford while living on Oxford’s campus. It was during this time that Wycliffe translated the bible to English. Wycliffe was also sent as an ambassador to Rome to talk with the pope about the church of England. Wycliffe ultimately was refused, so he went back to England. He began to preach about his opinions on the doctrines of the Catholic Church. He preached how God was the head of the church, not the pope. Funnily enough there were two popes at this time because of the east-west schism. Because of this, Wycliffe was declared a heretic.
The pope was angry with Wycliffe. Wycliffe was excommunicated, and had to go into hiding to keep himself safe from the angry Roman Catholics. Wycliffe did not die a bloody death, as you might expect. He suffered a stroke and passed from that. He was buried in Lutterworth churchward. Oddly enough, the pope declared Wycliffe a heretic after his death. The pope had Wycliffe’s corpse dug up, burned, and thrown into the River Swift. The pope also had most of Wycliffe’s writings burnt.
Wycliffe was the “morning star of the protestant reformation”. Wycliffe’s works inspired those to come, including Jan Hus, Martian Luther, and others.