priests and clergy and a few great people perhaps had Latin
Bibles. And although Caedmon's songs had long been forgotten, at
different times some parts of the Bible had been translated into
English, so that the common people sometimes heard a Bible story.
But an English Bible as a whole did not exist; and if to-day it
is the commonest and cheapest book in all the land, it is to John
Wyclif in the first place that we owe it.

John Wyclif was born, it is thought, about 1324 in a little
Yorkshire village. Not much is known of his early days except
that he went to school and to Oxford University. In time he
became one of the most learned men of his day, and was made Head,
or Master, of Balliol College.

This is the first time in this book that we have heard of a
university. The monasteries had, until now, been the centers of
learning. But now the two great universities of Oxford and
Cambridge were taking their place. Men no longer went to the
monasteries to learn, but to the universities; and this was one
reason, perhaps, why the land had become filled with so many idle
monks. Their profession of teaching had been taken from them,
and they had found nothing else with which to fill their time.

But at first the universities were very like monasteries. The
clerks, as the students were called, often took some kind of
vow,--they wore a gown and shaved their heads in some fashion or
other. The colleges, too, were built very much after the style
of monasteries, as may be seen in some of the old college
buildings of Oxford or Cambridge to this day. The life in every
way was like the life in a monastery. It was only by slow