The difficulties which our Prelate found in the correction of unfit pastors on the one hand, and on the other his insatiable zeal for the good of his flock, rendered him extremely careful who he admitted to the pastoral charge. Hence that inflexible and scrupulous niceness in observing the canons relative to church promotions from which no considerations of flesh and blood, nor ties of friendship, nor fear of power, could warp him one line during his whole life. So that in his last moments, and just ready to appear before the Searcher of hearts, he called his judge to witness of the purity of his views in all pastoral promotions, tho as a fallible man he might have been often mistaken. His excellent letters furnish us with several edifying instances of his solicitude to reject unfit pastors and to seek out such as were duly qualified for the charge. However he never rejected any, without giving his reason and those the most solid and substantial, nor without softening the refusal with necessary condescension, especially where the presenters, or presentees, were persons to whom he owed a particular regard.

Scarce had Grossetete been elected Bishop when he gave proof of his firmness this way and signified to the world how he intended to conduct himself for the future on the like occasions. A certain monk who had the nomination to a large cure presented for the same, a deacon without tonsure, clad in red, contrary to the canons of the Council, with a ring on his finger. And in the rest of his mean and carriage a mere layman or rather a soldier and by his answers, almost without learning. The very first sight, and much more a near examen of so irregular a subject filled our zealous Prelate with such indignation that he not only rejected the presentee but gave the blind presenter so severe a reprimand that one of the Bishop's friends, viz Dr Michael Beleth, who only heard the report, thought our Prelate had exceeded the bounds of moderation, and thereupon wrote him a friendly remonstrance. For which the humble Bishop gave his friend thanks, and begged him continue his good office of monitor and corrector to him, and then to justify himself gave first a description of the presentee as above and then his own words to his presenter, which are worth hearing.

The Bishop of Lincoln who returned from Lions about Michaelmas 1250, seeing the little effect of his zeal, whether for reducing his refactory children or for the general correction of abuses, as also the general confusion which threatened the Church, whether in the broils between the Pontificate and the Empire or the incursions of the Saracens on the Holy Land, he resolved within himself to imitate his most pious and learned friend, Dr Nicholas de Farnham Bishop of Durham, who but two years before had resigned his bishoprick and bid farewell to this world, the better to prepare himself for the next. Nevertheless, as our Prelate's zeal was no less considerate than it was ardent, he could not help reflecting on the bad consequences of his friend's resignation which was a long vacancy of that important see and therefore fearfull of the like fate for his own Church, or that the King would intrude upon it some worthless creature of his own, he wisely kept his counsel to himself and suspended the execution till a more favourable opportunity offered for doing it with safety. Preferring the publick good of his Church to his own private satisfaction which he promised himself in a more quiet course of prayer, contemplation and study.

To enjoy some part of his projected abdication of the episcopacy he discharged himself of the most distracting part of his office upon Dr Robert de Marisco his official and since Archdeacon of Oxford and Dean of Lincoln. He was however far from being idle himself. He continued with his usual ardour to oppose and root out abuses, whether from the particular field of his own diocese, or from the general one of the whole English Church. In the beginning of 1251 he made a general visitation of all his clergy and religious of both sexes, and in spite of his great age and infirmities continued to preach frequently to his people and clergy. All that he found living contrary to the canons, especially in the article of chastity, he chastised according to the same canons, without distinction of clergy or religious, natives or foreigners, English or Romans. Such of these last as were not edifying in their lives, he rejected tho armed with papal provisions and abhorred them as so many venimous and destroying serpents.

The vigorous, but prudent Bishop of Lincoln, did not think it enough to reject bad subjects, unless he sought out good ones to put in their place; for otherwise his church might have been left destitute of pastors. Neither did he stay till these good ones presented themselves, for thus the worthy seldom or ever do. But whenever he found, or heard of any, conspicuous for their virtue and learning, he could never rest till he had settled them in his diocese. These being some of the most illustrious persons of the age it will not be disagreeable to the reader to say a word of them nor will it be anyways leaving our heroick prelate to make some acquaintance with those about him or in continual relation with him. The chief of these were Nicholas the Grecian, William de Sherwood, John de Basingstoke, Thomas the Welchman [Wallensis], Roger Wesham [Weseham], Richard de Cornwall, Thomas Archdeacon of Huntingdon, John de Offington [Offinton], all secular doctors. And as Leland expreses it, all Peers of the English School in this age.

Nicholas the Grecian was a native of St Albanus and is called by Matthew Paris, Clerk of the Abbot of St Albanus, whether that he owed his education or some promotion to him, he was made Canon and Subdeacon of Lincoln under Bishop Grossetete and Parson of Dachet [Datchet] in Bucks on the presentation of the Abbot and Convent of St Albans. Nicholas drew his name of Grecian from his skill in the Greek tongue, out of which he helped our prelate to translate the Testament of the 12 Patriarchs. He was still living in 1260.

William Sherwood, student of Oxford, and afterwards of Paris, and Treasurer of the Church of Lincoln and Prebendary of the rich prebend of Aylesbury in the said Church is celebrated by Roger Bacon, his contemporary and acquaintance as an universal scholar, deeply read in all the sciences, but especially in the mathematicks. Of him, the said religious doctor, hath this eulogium in his lesser work addressed to Pope Clement IV, ‘What I add, may be proved by the most famous Christian philosophers of the present age; of which number is brother Albertus of the order of preaching friars, and Master William de Sherwood treasurer of the Church of Lincoln, far Superior in knowledge to Albertus. For to him none is superior in communi Philosophia.’

If they who have excelled in any one virtue, or in any one science, are objects worthy of publick notice and esteem, they must be still more worthy of both who have excelled in all the sciences and virtues together. And they are the most worthy of all, who raised by the excellency of their virtue and learning, to the first dignities in the Church and to the first seat in the temple of fame, owed their reputation, dignities and merit neither to the fortuitous advantages of high birth, nor to the recommendations of powerful friends, but to the sole power of their abilities, and to the superior lustre of their virtues, which forced the world to take notice of them, and to draw them out of their native obscurity, in order to place them on the seats of honour.

One of these extraordinary characters will be here laid before the Reader, in the person of the illustrious Robert Grossetete or Great-head Bishop of Lincoln in the Thirteenth Century, of whose life, a very knowing Protestant and one that has scarce had his fellow in English Ecclesiastical knowledge, assures us that were it drawn at full length, it would exhibit the picture of a perfect Christian Bishop; and we may add, if any thing can be added to so comprehensive a eulogium, that of a perfect scholar, Grossetete being at once an illustrious linguist, poet, orator, philosopher and mathematician, as well as a prime theologist, and eminent prelate. Nevertheless this eminent prelate and scholar, once so renowned in his generation, and so deserving of the remembrance of all generations to come, is fallen into such oblivion among his own countrymen, and the lame notion the few have of him, with whom he still retaineth some part of his fame, has been the occasion of the following compilation the design whereof is to inform the ignorance of the former and to rectify the imperfect notion of the latter. An English work destined to celebrate the worthies of antiquity, and to retrieve their memory from the shade of oblivion, hath no particular article on this most renowned English worthy, and only makes a transient, tho very honourable mention of him, in the life of Doctor Roger Bacon one of his scholars.

Adam Marsh (de Marisco) (c.1200–59)

A Franciscan friar and devoted friend of Grosseteste from boyhood. He was taught by Grosseteste at Oxford and went on to become a highly respected Biblical scholar. He was buried next to Grosseteste in Lincoln Cathedral. See Adam Marsh, The Letters of Adam Marsh, edited and translated by C. H. Lawrence. 2 vols. Oxford Medieval Text (Oxford, 2006).

Alexander Hales (c.1185–1245)

A highly important scholastic philosopher of the Franciscan School. John de la Rochelle was his pupil and later collaborator. See Christopher M. Cullen, ‘Alexander of Hales’ and Gérard Sondag, ‘John de la Rochelle’, in Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, edited by J. E. Gracia and T. B. Noone (Oxford, 2006), pp. 104–08 and pp. 334–35.

Boniface of Savoy (1206/7–70)

The Archbishop of Belley in France before he was given the see of Canterbury. He was also the uncle of Queen Eleanor, wife of Henry III. The King tried to have him elected to the see of Winchester and when this was unsuccessful he was nominated to Canterbury, which the Pope approved in order to placate Henry. He was consecrated at Lyon personally by the Pope in 1245 but he did not take up his position in England until 1249. After his death he was regarded as something of a saint on the continent, in England he was less celebrated, his later reputation resting largely on Matthew Paris's assessment of him as a violent, greedy and neglectful foreigner. See Leland E. Wilshire, ‘Boniface of Savoy, Carthusian and Archbishop of Canterbury, 1207–1270’, Analecta Cartusiana 31 (1977), 4–90.

Constantina

Probably the daughter of Michael Acominatus, Archbishop of Athens. Matthew Paris tells us that John de Basingstoke spoke of a nineteenyear- old girl whose knowledge exceeded that of his own acquired at the University of Paris. It is Basingstoke who made Grosseteste aware of the existence of the Testimony of the Twelve Patriarchs. Paris also tells us that he had knowledge of a Greek numbering system based on a system of strokes. See M. de Jonge, ‘Robert Grosseteste and the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs’, Journal of Theological Studies, New Series 42 (1991), 115–25.

Gerald of Wales (Geraldus Cambrensis) (c.1146–1220)

A priest and author, his, Topographia Hibernica (1186–87) was an account of his travels in Ireland.

While Bishop Grossetete's suit with his Chapter was carrying on another started up, which tho begun later, was sooner terminated. This second controversy, was with W. Abbot of Bardney, one of the ancientist monasteries in the Kingdom, on the River Witham a little below Lincoln and incidently with the monastick Chapter of Canterbury. The Abbot of Bardney being in contest with Doctor Thomas the Welchman, Archdeacon of Lincoln, who in 1234 [or] 2 endeavoured to make the said Abbot pay a debt of his predecessor’s, the cause was brought by the Archdeacon before the Bishop. Thereupon the Abbot interjected an appeal, but the Bishop laid him under an excommunication, and Matthew Paris saith he did it in great wrath, as being an enemy to the privileges of regulars. But as the Bishop of Lincoln allowed of the just and authentick privileges, soe he was an enemy to pretended ones, and this as we have just seen as well in his own secular as in regular chapters. However the excommunicated Abbot appealed to the Chapter of Canterbury, which as Metropolitical Chapter pretended to a power of receiving appeals, a gravamina, during the double vacancy of the sees of Canterbury and Rome. This pretension was opposed not only by the Bishop of Lincoln but by all the bishops of the realm who leagued themselves against the Kentish Chapter. Hence our Prelate, after appealing to the Holy See against the Abbot's appeal to Canterbury, deposed the refractory appealing Abbot. In the meantime, the Chapter of Canterbury received the Abbot of Bardney's appeal, and presumed even to excommunicate the Bishop of Lincoln with his fellow Bishop and quondam school-fellow Richard de Wendover, Doctor of Theology of the University of Paris and now Bishop of Rochester. On this sentence of the Chapter being notified to our Prelate, he took the paper and tramped it under his feet adding withal, if we believe Matthew Paris, these words. ‘May these monks never pray for me any otherwise (than by their excommunications).’ A saying more agreeable to Matthew's warm and satyrical temper, who makes the Bishop sometimes speak as himself would do in like occasion rather than to the character of our meek tho firm Prelate.

The sketch of Bishop Grossetete's life and virtues is thus delineated in a few words by Matthew Parisa where he styleth him, ‘That great Doctor of the Church, thoroughly versed in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. The lover of truth, the diligent searcher into the Holy Scriptures, the protector of the widow and orphan, the instructor of the people, the teacher of the clergy, the patron of scholars, the director of priests, the persecutor of the unchaste, the corrector of monks, the reprover of prelates, the bold and open reprehender of king and pope, and lastly the Hammer (alias scourge) and contemner of the Romans.’

These outlines of our prelate's life the Reader will see filled up throughout his whole story. There he will see him, a Lover of truth and wisdom, which from his youth he preferred to corporeal satisfactions. A ‘diligent searcher of the Holy Scriptures’, which he made the foundation of his sacred studies and pressed the same rational method upon his disciples. A ‘protector of the widow and orphan’, whom he assisted himself and interceded for with others. An ‘instructor of the people’, to whom he constantly preached to under the distractions of his professorship, and the occupations of the episcopacy. A ‘teacher of the clergy’, whether in his synods, or ordinations, or visitations. A ‘director of priests’, not only by wise regulations but by the vigorous and indefatigable execution thereof and by his own example. A ‘patron of Scholars’, whether in directing the studies of his diocesan University of Oxford, or by promoting to the Church dignities, such as were respectable for their learning and virtue. A ‘persecutor of the unchaste’, whether among the clergy, religious or laity, more especially among the two first of those three orders, whom when found incorrigible, he deprived of their benefices and expelled from his diocese. A ‘corrector of monks’, in seeing that they observed the rules of perfection, prescribed to them by their holy founders and by them professed, especially in the articles of poverty and chastity. In reforming the relaxed by wise constitutions, and putting the disorderly under penance. A ‘reprover of prelates’, whether abbots, rectors, doctors or bishops, sometimes by charitable and eloquent letters, and sometimes by the censures of the Church. A bold ‘reprehender of kings and popes’, by remonstrating to them, in a free, yet humble and respectful manner, whenever he found them reprehensible.

The many oppositions our prelate was obliged to make against the measures of the Court were so just as to their object, and so tempered with prudence and respect for those in dignity, that he always maintained himself in the King's favour and esteem. And the King shewd on many occasions how much he was convinced of the uprightness of his intentions and how great confidence he had in his virtue and abilities, above all the other prelates in his kingdom. He used to write to him to enquire about his health and inform him of his own and his royal family's estate. And consulted him at all difficult occasions. Once the Bishop's infirmities and a multiplicity of affairs having hindered him from going to court as often as the King desired his Majesty wrote to him a letter full of affection and tender complaints for his Lordship's not enquiring after his or his family's situation, either personally or by proxy. To which the Bishop returned this polite, philosophic and Christian answer.

This volume provides the first printed edition of an eighteenth-century study of the life and writings of a renowned thirteenth-century bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grosseteste (c.1168–1253). The author of the study is the Catholic priest Philip Perry (1720–74), who obtained a doctorate of theology in Paris and served as rector of the English College in Valladolid. The essay can be seen as a contribution to the eighteenth-century English Catholic endeavour to reclaim the pre-Reformation national past, as well as an indication of how Grosseteste's contested reputation reverberated down the centuries.

The author, Fr Philip Perry

Philip Mark Perry was born to an established recusant family at Bilston, Staffordshire. At the age of twenty, having demonstrated academic promise, he was sent to study philosophy at the English College at Douai, an institution which had recently experienced something of a renaissance under the presidency of Robert Witham. During this two-year course Perry continued to show scholarly potential and in 1742 he was selected to attend St Gregory's English College in Paris, there to join an elect group of scholars who were pursuing the rigorous theological course at the Sorbonne. These studies were interrupted by an illness which forced his return to Staffordshire; though he finally obtained his MA in 1748. Three years later he was ordained priest and after continuing his demanding programme of study he gained his doctorate in theology in 1754.

After this date Fr Perry was in England, where for eight years he was chaplain to Rowland Eyre at Hassop Hall, Bakewell, in Derbyshire. It seems that it was during these years that he wrote his Essay on the life and manners of Robert Grossetete. From 1762 he lived at Heythrop Park, Oxfordshire, where he was chaplain to George Talbot, 14th Earl of Shrewsbury. Three years later he was living once more in Staffordshire at Longbirch, with the Vicar Apostolic of the Midlands, the Catholic apologist John Hornyold. Here he accumulated an impressive library, helped in some measure by his friend, the famous hagiographer Alban Butler, who would procure books for him in London. His own inventory of the books in his library tells us that on the open shelves there were 283 works (426 volumes), with a further 92 volumes on Church History in glass cases.