Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Wednesday, 4 June 2025

Resistance to Cardinal Wolsey’s plan to suppress Bayham Abbey


The BBC News website reported on a search for descendants of the local community who were literally up in arms in 1525 in resistance to Cardinal Wolsey’s suppression of the Premonstratensian Bayham Abbey, which lies  in Kent, close to the border with Sussex.

Bayham was one of the monasteries Wolsey, as Papal Legate, sought to dissolve to provide the endowment for his new college foundations in the form of a school in his home town of Ipswich and Cardinal College in Oxford, which eventually evolved into Christ Church.

At Bayham the local community were not at all pleased with this prospect and managed to temporarily restore the displaced canons. In the longer run they were not successful.

There are still quite substantial remains of the principal claustral buildings which are in the care of English Heritage.


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1 comment:

Matthew F Kluk said...

The Cardinal had trouble every way he turned. Requiescat.

6 June 2025 at 14:03

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