William Grocyn

Who was William Grocyn?

William Grocyn was an English scholar, a friend of Erasmus.

He was born at Colerne, Wiltshire. Intended by his parents for the church, he was sent to Winchester College, and in 1465 was elected to a scholarship at New College, Oxford. In 1467 he became a fellow, and among his pupils was William Warham, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1479, Grocyn accepted the rectory of Newton Longville, in Buckinghamshire, but continued to live at Oxford. As reader in divinity at Magdalen College in 1481, he held a disputation with John Taylor, professor of divinity, in the presence of King Richard III; the king acknowledged his skill as a debater by the present of a deer and five marks. In 1485, Grocyn became prebendary of Lincoln Cathedral. In about 1488, he left England for Italy, and before his return in 1491 he had visited Florence, Rome and Padua, and studied Greek and Latin under Demetrius Chalcondyles and Politian. As lecturer at Exeter College, Oxford he helped indoctrinate his countrymen in the new Greek learning.

Erasmus says in one of his letters that Grocyn taught Greek at Oxford before his visit to Italy. The Warden of New College, Thomas Chaundler, invited Cornelius Vitelli, then on a visit to Oxford, to act as praelector. This was about 1475, and as Vitelli was certainly familiar with Greek literature, Grocyn may have learned Greek from him. He seems to have lived in Oxford until 1499, but by the time his friend John Colet became dean of St Paul's in 1504 he was living in London. He was chosen by Colet to deliver lectures in St Paul's. Having at first denounced those who impugned the authenticity of the Hierarchia ecclesiastica ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, he was led to modify his views by further investigation, and openly declared that he had been mistaken. He also counted Thomas Linacre, William Lilye, William Latimer and Thomas More among his friends, and Erasmus writing in 1514 says that he was supported by Grocyn in London, and calls him "the friend and preceptor of us all".