‘to the Community of the Friars Minors at Oxford, with the authority and consent of Friar Thomas de Kyngusbury, Master, Minister of England, A. D. 1388[1579].’
John Tyssyngton subscribed the decree of the Chancellor Berton, condemning Wiclif’s twelve ‘conclusions’ on the sacraments, in 1381[1580]; he is the only Franciscan among the ten doctors whose names appear, and was regent master of the Friars Minors at this time[1581]. Soon afterwards Tyssyngton made an elaborate reply to Wiclif’s Confessio on Transubstantiation in the Franciscan Schools at Oxford, and issued the lecture as a treatise[1582]; though this composition bears marks of undue haste, it was considered to be of great value and was ordered to be kept in the University Archives[1583]. In 1392 Tyssyngton was at the Council of Stamford where the heresies of Henry Crompe, consisting chiefly of conclusions against the friars, were condemned[1584]. He succeeded Thomas Kyngesbery as twenty-seventh Provincial[1585]. Bale and Pits give 1395 as the year of his death: he was buried at London[1586].
The only work of his extant is the Confessio contra confessionem Johannis Wiclif, above referred to.
John Schankton, of the Order of Minors, appears to have been confessor of John Okele, skinner of Oxford. The latter, in his will dated October 20th, 1390, left Schankton 20s. a year for three years,
‘to celebrate masses for my soul and the souls of all those to whom I am in any manner bound, and the souls of all the faithful dead, in the conventual church of the Minorites at Oxford:’
if Schankton died in the course of those three years, he was, before his death, to appoint another friar to fulfil the wishes of the testator[1587].
John Romseye, D.D., succeeded W. Woodford as regent master of the Friars Minors in 1389[1588]. He was buried in the Chapel of All Saints in the Grey Friars’ Church, London[1589].
John Wastenays, Inceptor in theology at Oxford, and possibly one of the ‘wax-doctors,’ is mentioned in the following letter given under the privy seal, temp. Richard II[1590]:
‘Tres cher et bien ame. Nous vous prions, que, en ce que notre cher en dieu frere Johan Wastenays de lordre dez Menours, Commenceour en theologie, ad affaire deuers vous touchant son commencement en la Vniuersitee doxon, lui veullez faire la grace et le fauour que bonement purrey, sauuant lez estatutz et lez priuileges de la vniuersitee auantdicte. Donne souz, etc. (i.e. souz notre priue seal).’
Jacob Fey of Florence studied at Oxford in 1393, when he transcribed a manuscript formerly kept in the library of Santa Croce, Florence, now in the Laurentian library[1591]. The colophon runs:—