"H. WINSTON.
⁎⁎⁎
⁎⁎⁎"
[2] The word "these" is not in the original; and two of the three signatures at foot are not readable.
WHERE LOLLARD WAS BURIED, AND WHAT BECAME OF HIS BONES.
In referring to the passage of Heda's history relating to bishop-boiling, the following curious fact caught my eye. Speaking of the same bishop, Florentius de Wevelichoven, he says:
"Fecit et exhumari ossa cujusdam hæretici Matthæi Lollaert atque ante atrium Pontificale comburi, cineresque in fossas urbis dispergi."—Hist. Episcopor. Ultraject. p. 259.
Now though the Christian name, Matthæus, of this Lollaert does not agree with that usually assigned to Lollard, viz., Walter; nor yet this assertion that his bones were dug up, and burned at Utrecht, with the current story that Lollard was buried alive at Cologne; yet it is evident from the note upon this passage on p. 263., that Heda is speaking of the founder of the sect of the Lollards. In this note he refers to Prateolus and Walsingham, to which I turned in order to ascertain where he got his information; but, alas, in vain! They only give a very meagre account of the origin of the Lollards. Heda must therefore have had some independent source from which he wrote, as he could hardly have invented the story. The form of name, Lollaert, would make it more than probable that Lollard was a Dutchman, which agrees very well with the account that he preached in Germany.
How much is it to be wished that some member of the many learned Dutch Antiquarian Societies now in existence, would endeavour at last to clear up the history of Lollard by reference to the records of the city of Utrecht, if they are still in being, and extend so far back as the fourteenth century.
Florentius became Bishop of Utrecht in 1379, and died 1394.
J. B. MCC.
British Museum.