GROCYN, WILLIAM, ono of the revivers of literature, was born at Bristol in 1442, and received his early education at Winchester School. He was elected thence to New College, Oxford, in 1467, and in 1479 was presented by the warden and fellows of that society to the rectory of Newton Longueville, in Buckinghamshire. In 1485 he was made a prebendary of Linoolo, and in 1483 set out upon his travels into foreign countries. His great object was to obtain a thorough knowledge of the Greek language, which was then but little cultivated in England. Accordingly he went into Italy, where ho studied for some time under Demetrius Chalcondylas, Politiano, and Hermolaus Barbarus. He returned to England, and fixed himself in Exeter College, Oxford, in 1491, where he took the degree of B.D. Hero too he publicly taught the Greek language, and was the first who introduced a better prouunciation of it than been before known in England. The cultivation of this language however in the uni versity alarmed many as a dangerous innovation; and Wood informs us that the members became divided upon it into two factions, distin guished by the appellations of Greeks and Trojans. It was at this
period that Erasmus visited Oxford, and resided during the greater part of his stay there in Grocyn's house. Erasmus, who mentions him with great and merited commendation, calls him patronus et pre ceptor. In the course of his career Grocyn had one or two other preferments, and in 1506 became master of Allhallows College, at Maidstone, in Kent, though he continued to live mostly at Oxford. He died at Maidstone in 1519, of palsy, with which he had been seized a year before. His will is printed in the Appendix to Knight's 'Life of Erasmus' A. Latin epistle of Grocyn to Aldus afanutius is prefixed to Linacre's translation of Proclus's 'De Splimra,' at the end of the 'Astronomi Veteres' of 1499. The productions ascribed to him by Bale, Leland, and Tanner are not extant in print. (Knight, Life of Erasmus ; Erasmi, Epist., fol., Ludg. Bat., 1706, pp. 95, 291; Wood, Atlience Oxon., ed. Bliss. i., 30-32.)