Before he died in 1384, he initiated the translation of the Bible from Latin into the English of his day.

Climaxing his denunciation, Arundel wrote: “To fill up the measure of his malice, he devised the expedient of a new translation of the scriptures into the mother tongue.” Indeed, what most enraged church leaders was that Wycliffe wanted to give people the Bible in their own language.

Nevertheless, a few prominent individuals had access to the Scriptures in vernacular languages. One was Anne of Bohemia, who married King Richard II of England in 1382. She possessed Wycliffe’s English translations of the Gospels, which she studied constantly.