An example of the Purvey revision of the Wycliffite translation. This well-decorated manuscript was copied around the time of the Council of Constance (1415-18) at which Wycliffe was declared a heretic, and during a period when parliament passed several measures intended to suppress translations of the Bible into English.

Literature: Edward Bernard, Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae in unum collecti, Vol. 2 (Oxford, 1697), p. 31, no. 1339; Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden (eds), The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, with the Apocryphal books, in the earliest English versions made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and his followers, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1850), no. 139, p. lviii; Neil R. Ker and Alan J. Piper, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, Volume IV: Paisley–York (Oxford, 1969), p. 630; Paul Yeats-Edwards, Winchester College (Warden and Fellows’ Library) Medieval Manuscript Collection: Brief History and Catalogue (London, 1978), p. 10; Paul Quarrie, Winchester College and the King James Bible (Winchester, 2011), pp. 29, 32; Mary Dove, The First English Bible: The Text and Context of the Wycliffite Versions (Cambridge, 2011), p. 305; Matti Peikola, ‘Tables of Lections in Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible’ in Eyal Poleg and Laura Light (eds), Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible (Brill, 2013), pp. 251–78, 376; Richard Foster (ed.), 50 Treasures from Winchester College (London, 2018), p. 82.

Provenance: Given to the College by Guy Dobbins (Scholar of Winchester College, 1567 and Fellow, 1585-1614), 1609.

Location: Fellows’ Library