The Fenland Black Oak Table in Lichfield Cathedral and the call to build welcoming communities from which no-one is excluded

The Fenland Black Oak Table is ‘in residence’ in Lichfield Cathedral until Easter (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026; click on images for full-screen viewing)

Patrick Comerford

The Fenland Black Oak Table is a spectacular 13-metre table made from a section of 5,000-year-old black oak, and is ‘in residence’ in Lichfield Cathedral until Easter, with opportunities to learn about the ancient black oak from which it is made and the many centuries of history it has witnessed.

During my visit to Lichfield Cathedral, as well as taking part in the daily cycle of liturgy and prayer, and spending time at the exhibition of icons by Hanna-Leena Ward, I also spent time on Mondat afternoon viewing the ‘Table for the Nation’, which has been on display or in residency in the cathedral since last May.

The table is a magnificent piece of craftsmanship and also provides a focal point for community events, hospitality, worship, and services. Visitors are invited to discover more about the table from accompanying information panels. But is not merely an object to be looked at and admired. The table has been designed to be used and it has become a focal point for a number of events and activities throughout its year, organised by the cathedral, and by charities, businesses and community groups.

The accompanying exhibition offers insights into the project and a timeline of events across 5,000 years, and panels detail the history of black oak or bog oak and the 10-year project that turnrd the wood into a functioning table.

In her introduction to the exhibition, the Dean of Lichfield, the Right Revd Jan McFarlane, speaks of being fed at Holy Communion with ‘the living bread in whom all our hungers are satisfied’ and she points out that the table is at the heart of every church, including Lichfield Cathedral:

‘It’s a place of meeting, of hospitality, of being. It’s a constant reminder that God calls us to live in communion with him and with one another, building inclusive and welcoming communities from which no-one is excluded. It’s a reminder of God’s abundant generosity towards us, and how in response to that generous love, we’re to go out and care for our world, seeking to give rather than expecting to receive.’

The Fenland Black Oak Table is a 13-metre table made from a section of 5,000-year-old black oak (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026; click on images for full-screen viewing)

The Fenland Black Oak Table is made from a 5,000 year old tree and Dean McFarlane sees it as a reminder of ‘the wonder of God’s creation and the future of our fragile world, together with our responsibility to care for, and conserve, it for future generations. And as we reflect on the skill of those who have created such a stunningly beautiful table we can be gently challenged to consider the impact our lives, our actions, and the right use of our God-given gifts, might have on those around us.’ She sees the table’s place in the cathedral ‘as a constant reminder of all of this, and as a meeting place for feasting, conversation and gentle challenge.’

The Jubilee Oak Table was made from a 5,000-year-old sub-fossilised black oak tree found in the Fens. It is believed the tree was originally more than 55 metres tall, before falling into the peat where it lay undisturbed for 5,000 years. By comparison, a present-day oak tree is around 20 metres high. The project was 10 years in the making with a team of furniture makers, led by the project leader, Hamish Low, the lead designer Mauro Dell’Orco and the craftsman, Steve Cook.

The Fenland Black Oak project carefully dried and processed the wood and worked with designers to find the best way to preserve the rare discovery. They chose a table as it allowed the wood to be kept at its full length, and to be viewed in all its glory.

This unique example of black oak is one of the rarest forms of timber in the world. It was discovered in 2012, the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee, during routine cultivations on a farm in the Wissington Fens in south-west Norfolk. After its discovery, a team of specialist craftspeople successfully milled and dried 10 beautiful, consecutive planks that were unlike anything ever seen before.

The Jubilee Oak Table was designed to display the length of those planks, and to illustrate and evoke the sense of wonder at the scale of the ancient high forests. This effect was achieved by reducing the visual impact of the under-structure. The design of the top has remained sympathetic to the integrity of the Jubilee Oak. The planks have retained their full length and techniques were developed to enable their individual shapes to be highlighted.

The table has only two pairs of narrowly shaped pedestals joined by a long and slender curved spine that cantilevers by more than three meters at each end. Fourteen ribs are fixed each side of the spine to support the planks. The material is bronze, chosen for its embodied permanence and archaeologists fix it in a transitional period between the Stone Age and the Bronze Age. The bridge construction is both functional, to support the top with the minimum number of parts, and metaphorical, to cross 5,000 years of history.

Because of the length and size of the table, size, the two outer planks can be folded down reducing the width of the table to just 900 mm. Twelve sets of casters positioned under the pedestals allow it to be moved silently and by just two people.

The project was completed in 2022, the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee, and the table was unveiled at Ely Cathedral by Princess Anne on 17 May 2022. It remained at Ely Cathedral until February 2023, then had a year’s residency at Rochester Cathedral from March 2023, and in Lincoln Cathedral from April 2024 as part of ‘Our World; God’s Creation’, a year-long celebration of sustainability, communities and the environment. King Charles visited Lichfield Cathedral in October 2025 to see the table.

The Fenland Black Oak Table – a ‘Table for the Nation’ – has inspired ‘Come to The Table’, this year’s Lent Course at Lichfield Cathedral. The course on Wednesdays in Lent runs from 25 February to 1 April. It explores how Jesus brings healing, builds community and gathers people together around the table. The weekly sessions, from 7 pm to 8:30 pm, include open discussion and space to reflect on how we might become a force for good in a community in need of faith, hope, and love.

• ‘A Table for the Nation’ is in residency at Lichfield Cathedral until Easter.

The Fenland Black Oak Table – a ‘Table for the Nation – has inspired ‘Come to The Table’, this year’s Lent Course at Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026; click on images for full-screen viewing)

When TS Eliot and CS Lewis met for afternoon tea at the Mitre in Oxford

The Mitre on the corner of the High and Turl Street in Oxford … now Gusto Italian, TS Eliot and CS Lewis met there in 1945 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

The Mitre is an historic building in Oxford owned by Lincoln College since 1475 and now known as Gusto Italian restaurant. It may have been one of the ancient centres of learning that eventually led to the foundation of the University of Oxford, but the history of the Mitre history is even older.

The Mitre was closed for a number of years recently as Lincoln College refurbished the accommodation above and behind the premises. As it became a derelict-looking eyesore, many people in Oxford feared it had closed for good.

Their fears rested not only in the antiquity of the Mitre, but also, I suppose, because it has a place in literary history as the place where two of the great literary giants of the last century, TS Eliot and CS Lewis, were brought together by mutual friends in a disastrous effort to reconcile them after very public feuding.

I had another look at Gusto or the Mitre last week while I was in Oxford. It stands on the site of several houses on the corner of the High and Turl Street. They were converted into an inn in 1310. They have changed so much over time it is impossible to say whether any elements from the original places survive, although the cellars may well date back to the 13th century.

Lincoln College became the owner of the inn in 1475 when was donated to the college by the Bishop of Lincoln, Thomas Rotherham. It was probably named after the mitre of the college founder, Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, depicted on the college coat of arms. Fleming had become Archbishop of York when he obtained a royal licence in 1427 empowering him to found a college at Oxford for the special purpose of training theologians to combat Wyclif’s heresy

The mitre and arms of Bishop Richard Fleming in the arms of Lincoln College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The impressive façade of the Mitre dates from 1631. It was an important coaching inn in the 17th century, and as early as 1671 there were coaches running between London and the Mitre on three days a week.

Anthony Wood writes of a coach service in 1671 that ran from the Mitre to the Greyhound in Holborn, London, at 6 am on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, returning on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Wood records that when Prince Maurice of Nassau came to see the library and colleges and ‘he layd at the Miter’. He also reports in 1691 how John Forster, a Fellow of All Souls’ College, ‘died at the Miter Inn late at night, after immoderate drinking.’

By the late 18th century, there was a daily service from the Mitre Inn through Henley to the Bell Savage, Ludgate Hill, London. In 1823, there were two services from the Mitre to Bristol and Bath. The Mitre’s coach business seems to have increased after the coming of the railways, presumably because of the closure of the Angel Hotel. By 1852, there were services to Birmingham, Cheltenham, Chipping Norton, London, Prince of Wales, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday morning at 11; through Tetsworth, Wycombe, and Worcester.

A large mitre on the façade of the former Mitre, now Gusto Ialian, in Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The house and premises were held on a lease from the Rector and Fellows of Lincoln College, while the arched vault or cellar under the High Street was held on a lease from the City of Oxford. Part of the premises in a court adjoining All Saints’ Church behind No 19 was separated in 1883 and converted into a tutor’s residence for Brasenose College, and became known as Brasenose House.

The Mitre ceased to function as a coaching inn in 1926, and became simply an hotel, while the stables in Turl Street behind were converted into the Turl Bar.

The Mitre ceased being an hotel in 1969 when Lincoln College took over all the rooms upstairs to provide accommodation for 50 students. Since then many Lincoln students and a small number of fellows have called the Mitre home.

The Mitre restaurant and bar continued on the ground floor and became a Beni Inn. Whitbread took over the Berni chain from Grand Metropolitan in 1990, and the ground floor of the former hotel then became a Beefeater Restaurant.

The Mitre as a Beefeater restaurant ten years ago (Patrick Comerford)

In recent years, Lincoln College decided the buildings needed repairs and renovations if it was to continue in use. The buildings are listed Grade II* or Grade II, and the total cost was about £16 million. The work began in 2018, and Lincoln College closed the Mitre in 2019.

Regulars thought the pub would reopen once the work was complete in 2021. But it remained closed, and Dave Richardson, speaking on behalf of the Oxford branch of real ale group CAMRA, said it looked ‘increasingly dilapidated’ and had ‘become an eyesore in the heart of the city.’

Since then, the ground floor reopened as a Gusto Italian restaurant in December 2022.

Many people in Oxford had been taken aback when Saint John’s College closed the Lamb and Flag on Saint Giles after takings fell during the pandemic. But it was then taken over by community interest group calling themselves – appropriately – the Inklings and reopened the pub. Across the street on Saint Giles, the Eagle and Child, the pub where the Inklings actually met, has remained closed for some years.

Lincoln College recently repaired and renovated the buildings at the Mitre (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

But members of the Inklings also created a moment in literary in the Mitre almost 80 years ago, when Charles Williams, one of the leading Inklings, invited his mutual friends CS Lewis and TS Eliot, along with another Inkling, Father Gervase Mathew, to tea at the Mitre Hotel one afternoon in 1945.

‘Mr Lewis,’ Eliot exclaimed, ‘you are a much older man than you appear in photographs!’ The meeting could only go downhill after that. ‘I must tell you,’ Eliot continued, ‘I consider A Preface to Paradise Lost your best book.’

Lewis was in disbelief, it is said. He had dedicated that book to Charles Williams, but in it had been highly critical of Eliot. Lewis had once dismissed ‘The Waste Land’ as ‘infernal poetry’ and ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’ as ‘pleasantly unpleasant’, an ‘example of the decay of proper feelings’ and morally dangerous.

Williams died on 15 May 1945, only weeks after the disastrous encounter between Eliot and Lewis in the Mitre. Lewis edited a volume of essays in his honour, but Eliot missed the deadline for his contribution, and Lewis was disappointed. The other contributors included JRR Tolkien, another Inkling.

Lewis loathed Eliot’s poetry, and at times publicly, perhaps even purposefully, misspelled Eliot’s name as Elliot. In The Pilgrim’s Regress (1933), Lewis referred to Eliot indirectly as ‘Mr Neo-Angular.’ He was critical of ‘Anglo Catholicism, Materialism, Sitwellism, Psychoanalysis, and TS Elliot,’ and told his editor that Eliot was ‘the single man who sums up the thing I am fighting against.’

A mitre in stucco work on the façade of the Mitre (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

After their brief encounter in the Mitre, Lewis’s reputation as a popular religious writer grew through the 1940s and 1950s with books such as The Problem of Pain and Mere Christianity,. But Eliot and Lewis would meet again in the 1950s.

Lewis’s Reflection on the Psalms was praised by Gordon Selwyn, Dean of Winchester and the editor of Theology, in a letter to Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher of Canterbury and Archbishop Michael Ramsey of York. The archbishops had decided to revise the psalter used in the Church of England, and they now invited Lewis and Eliot to join the commission, which included scholars, theologians, priests and poets.

For the first time since their encounter in the Mitre in Oxford in 1945, Eliot and Lewis met again at a meeting of the commission in Lambeth Palace on 13 April 1959. In the intervening years, both men had married: Lewis had married Joy Davidman Gresham at the Oxford Registry Office at 42 St Giles (now a dental practice), beside the Quaker meeting house, on 23 April 1956; Eliot married Valerie Fletcher at Saint Barnabas Church, Kensington, on 10 January 1957. After their meeting in April 1959, Lewis wrote a warm letter to ‘My dear Eliot’. After another, three-day meeting of the commission in Magdalene College, Cambridge, in July 1959, Lewis and Eliot and their wives had lunch together.

CS Lewis and Joy Davidman Gresham were married at the Oxford Registry Office at 42 St Giles in 1956 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The commission worked towards publishing The Revised Psalter in 1963. Despite their different perspectives on the essence of poetry and many critical aspects of Anglican faith, Eliot and Lewis became friends during the revision of the Psalter. Their letters from 1959 into the early 1960s are personal, sometimes jocular, and usually brief, where Lewis writes to ‘My Dear Eliot’ about lunches together, the work of the Psalter commission, and other events.

When Joy died, Lewis submitted a memoir of grief under the pseudonym NW Clerk to Faber in 1961. At Faber, Eliot immediately recognised that Lewis was the author despite his use of a pen name, and he published it as A Grief Observed. This short book stands out as Lewis’s most personal piece of writing. Lewis died on 22 November 1963, three years after Joy and in the same year as The Revised Psalter was published.

Lewis, according to his private secretary Walter Hooper, could have been talking about Eliot and himself when he wrote in The Four Loves: ‘Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden).’

In their shared Biblical work, the two greatest Anglican literary figures and apologists of the 20th century had been reconciled and had become fast friends. The Old Library in Magdalene College Cambridge holds both the Valerie Eliot bequest and the CS Lewis Collection.

A mitre in a window on Turl Street recalls the days when the Mitre was also a pub (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Two plaques on the Town Hall recall Jewish life in mediaeval Oxford

Oxford Town Hall on Saint Aldate’s stands on the site of the house of David of Oxford, a prominent Jewish financier (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

I have been in Oxford twice this week, rummaging through the bookshops and taking photographs. It's easy to get there from Stony Stratford, with a good bus connection through Buckingham. One day in Oxford recently, I went to see two plaques on the Town Hall that remember the mediaeval Jewish community, that prospered in the city until the mass expulsion of Jews from England in 1290.

A plaque on the front of the Town Hall in St Aldate’s reads: ‘This street known till 1300 as Great Jewry contained many houses of the Jews including the synagogue which lay to the north of Tom Tower 1931’.

The plaque was unveiled in 1931 by the Mayor of Oxford, Dr William Stobie. It is one of three plaques installed by Oxford City Council in 1931 to mark events connected with mediaeval Jewish life in Oxford. The other two plaques, which I have written about in earlier blog postings, commemorate the mediaeval Jewish Cemetery, by the Danby Gate at the Botanic Garden (29 March 2024), and the martyrdom of Haggai of Oxford, on the remains of Osney Mill (22 December 2023).

The three plaques were the initiative of Dr Herbert Loewe (1882-1940), lecturer in Semitic languages at Exeter College, Oxford, from 1913 until 1931, when he moved to Cambridge as Curator of Oriental Literature and Reader in Rabbinics. Before leaving Oxford in 1931, Loewe was responsible for erecting three plaques.

Loewe’s plaques celebrated the centenary of the birth of Neubauer, a noted Jewish librarian in the Bodleian. When the plaques were erected, fascism was on the rise across Europe. Mussolini was in power in Italy, Hitler was about to take power in Germany, and Oswald Mosley was forming new far-right parties in Britain, with funding from the Oxford industrialist Lord Nuffield, who held strongly antisemitic views. Five years after the plaques were erected, these trends in Britain reached their climax with the Battle of Cable Street in 1936.

A more recent plaque on the rere extension of the Town Hall in Oxford, facing Blue Boar Street, reads: ‘This extension to the Town Hall stands on land at the centre of the Anglo-Saxon town, later the heart of the Medieval Jewish Quarter and fronts a new street laid out by Christ Church in 1553. This plaque records a joint project by Oxford City Council and Amey Building, November 1995.’

Oxford Town Hall on Saint Aldate’s, a street in central Oxford, is the seat of Oxford City Council, a venue for public meetings, entertainment and other events, and the premises of the Museum of Oxford. Although Oxford is a city with its own charter, the building is known as the Town Hall. It is third town hall on the site; it was completed in 1897 and is Grade II* listed.

The town hall was designed by the architect Henry Thomas Hare (1860-1921) in a mixed Elizabethan-Jacobean style, later labelled as ‘Jacobethan’ by John Betjeman. Hare’s building included new premises for Oxford Crown and County Courts, a public library and police station as well as the city council offices. The Prince of Wales opened the new building in 1897.

The Town Hall stands on the site of the house of David of Oxford, a prominent Jewish financier in mediaeval Oxford. When he died in 1244, the house was handed over to the Domus Conversorum, the ‘home for converted Jews’.

The plaque erected on the town hall in Oxford in 1931 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

As the 1931 plaque on the town hall points out, until 1290 Great Jewry in Oxford ran from Carfax to Folly Bridge. Many of the houses there were owned by Jews, although some were let to Christians. There were Jewish houses too in adjoining Pembroke Street, once known as Pennyfarthing Lane, and Brewer Street, once known as Lombard Street.

The only remaining artefact of mediaeval Jewish life in Oxford today is the home of David of Oxford, which lies beneath the Town Hall on St Adate’s, formerly Great Jewry.

The town hall is on the site of the town hall that was built in 1752. The 1752 town hall, in turn, was built on the site of Oxford Guildhall, which in turn was built in 1292, shortly after the forced mass expulsion of Jews from England.

The town hall is on the site of two Jewish homes in mediaeval Oxford: the home of David of Oxford and the home Moses ben Isaac. The home of Moses ben Isaac was on the upper end of the site. It was confiscated from him in 1220 and given by the king for the use of the first Guildhall. The home of David of Oxford was seized after he died in 1244 and was used as a Domus Conversum until after the forced mass expulsion all Jews from England in 1290.

It may be the best preserved mediaeval Jewish site in England. It includes the living room of the mediaeval home of David of Oxford, replete with windows and the outline of a door that gave access to the subterranean cellars that criss-cross St Aldate’s.

The plaque erected on the rere extension of the Town Hall, facing Blue Boar Street, in 1995 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

David of Oxford, formerly known as David of Lincoln, was one of the most prominent Jews in 13th century England. His father was Asher, and it is not clear when exactly he moved to Oxford. However, in 1219, he was one of the six representatives of the wealthy class selected from all English Jewry to apportion tallage or taxes.

David of Oxford had dealings throughout England, including Warwick, Berkshire, Buckingham and Northampton, and his clients included many members of the aristocracy. He did business with other prominent Anglo-Jewish financiers, including Aaron of York, Hamo of Hereford, one of the wealthiest Jews of the day, Benedict of Crispin of London and his brother Jaqcob, and his fellow townsman, Copin of Oxford.

He also played an important role in communal life, though not always by choice. The king used David’s influence to ensure other Jews were paying the tallages (taxes) imposed on them. He was also one of the commission of eight Anglo-Jewish magnates appointed at the request of the communities in 1238 to collaborate with Justices of the Jews in an inquiry ‘touching Jews who are clippers of coin, thieves, and receivers’, in order to root out the alleged abuse and rid the community of a perpetual opportunity for blackmail.

David’s private life became a focus of controversy within the Jewish community in mid-13th century England, and in Oxford in particular, involving the king and leading rabbinic scholars in England and France. David was married to Muriel, who appears to also have been involved in his business affairs. But in 1242, David decided to divorce Muriel because they did not have any children. It seems David wanted a son to inherit his enormous fortune, and so gave Muriel a bill of divorce or get.

When the rabbis ruled against David, the crown intervened on his behalf in two directives issued on 27 August 1242. Cecil Roth, in his book Jews of Oxford, explains the royal intervention. The royal letters were addressed to three masters (magistri) or rabbis – Moses of London, Aaron of Canterbury and Jacob of Oxford – who formed a Jewish court of law or Beth Din.

Rabbi Gershom of Mainz, ‘the Light of the Exile’, a rabbinic authority generally respected in Northern Europe, had ruled it was improper for a man to divorce his wife without her consent, or to remarry if he did so. A Jewish court had the power to invalidate any divorce that did not accord with its rules.

When Muriel protested and sought help, her relatives from Lincoln offered to support her. They included her brother Peytevin – presumably Peytevin the Great, who had his own synagogue in Lincoln, and who was one of the victims of the ritual murder allegation in 1255 associated with Hugh of Lincoln.

French rabbis discussed the case and ruled in favour of Muriel. An ad hoc Beth Din, composed of the three magistri named in the royal letters, then met in Oxford, quashed the divorce and instructed David to take Muriel back again.

David appealed to Henry III and also won the support of Walter de Gray, Archbishop of York. The ruling of the three English rabbis was quashed by royal order, and the divorce was upheld.

In Jewish law, provision must be made for a divorced wife. David’s own house was at the top of Great Jewry, on the site of the present Town Hall on St Aldate’s. But he assigned Muriel a life interest in another house around the corner, at the junction of Jury Lane and Saint Edward’s Lane, and she continued to live there long after his death;

David married his second wife Licoricia of Winchester in 1242. She was an independent financier, the widow of Abraham of Kent, and the mother of three sons, Cokerel, Benedict and Lumbard, and a daughter Belia. She has been described as ‘the most important Jewish woman in medieval England.’ She gave birth in 1243 to a son for David, who was named Asher after his grandfather, but he was usually known as Douceman or Sweteman. However, shortly after his second marriage, David of Oxford died early in 1244.

Licoricia was given administration of her husband’s property after setting relief or death duty of 5,000 marks that was given to the royal Treasury. £2,591 of the amount was ordered to be paid to the new Exchequer recently established at Westminster in connection with the king’s ambitious building projects there. This was used in rebuilding Westminster Abbey and the shrine of Edward the Confessor.

David’s main residence in the Great Jewry may once have housed of a synagogue. Immediately after his death, however, his home, with all the utensils, furniture and clothing, was presented to the Home for Converted Jews (Domus Conversorum) that had been set up recently by the king in London. The house still exists today beneath the Town Hall.

Blue Boar Street on the south side of Oxford Town Hall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Sabbath Shalom

Daily prayer in Lent with early English saints: 42, 26 March 2024, Saint Robert of Lincoln

A 14th century portrait of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (British Library Harley MS 3860, f. 48)

Patrick Comerford

This the last week of Lent, and today is Tuesday in Holy Week (26 March 2024), known in many places as Holy Tuesday, and also as Temple Tuesday.

Throughout Lent this year, I am taking time each morning to reflect on the lives of early, pre-Reformation English saints commemorated in Common Worship.

We are in Norwich today, and stayed overnight in the Saint Giles House Hotel, close to the cathedral and the city centre. Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, A reflection on an early, pre-Reformation English saint;

2, today’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

Robert Grosseteste has been described as ‘the greatest product of Oxford University’ and the real founder of the tradition of scientific thought in mediaeval Oxford’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Early English pre-Reformation saints: 42, Saint Robert of Lincoln

Saint Robert Grosseteste (1253), Bishop of Lincoln, Philosopher and Scientist, is remembered in Common Worship on 9 October.

Robert Grosseteste has been described as ‘a mediaeval Dr Johnson in his powers of mind and personality.’ A leading Biblical scholar and commentator, he also wrote extensively on philosophy and science, and translated Aristotle. His biographer, Sir Richard Southern, said he was the greatest product of Oxford University but a man who ‘difficult to please and difficult to follow.’ AC Crombie, the Australian historian of science, describes him as ‘the real founder of the tradition of scientific thought in mediaeval Oxford.’

Robert Grosseteste (meaning ‘large-head’) was born at Stradbroke in Suffolk ca 1175. He studied at Oxford and Paris and held various posts until, after a grave illness, he returned to Oxford, where he taught at the Franciscan house of studies. He became the Chancellor of Oxford University in 1224, and at the same time he was Archdeacon of Leicester and a canon of Lincoln Cathedral.

He became Bishop of Lincoln in 1235, then the largest diocese in England, which received from him a thorough visitation soon after his arrival. He met opposition in his attempts at vigorous reforms in the shape of the dean and chapter in the cathedral in Lincoln, who saw themselves as beyond his jurisdiction. The dispute was settled in 1245 when the Pope issued a bull giving the bishop full power over the chapter. Robert attended the Council of Lyons that year.

At the papal court in Lyons in 1250, he denounced the Pope and the cardinals for ‘acting contrary to Christ’. The papal see, he told them, ‘the throne of God, the sun of the whole world … has been perverted and it has become a source of perdition and destruction.’

His wide-ranging interests covered mathematics, optics and many of the sciences; he translated large numbers of theological works from Greek and wrote his own theological commentaries and philosophical works.

It has been argued that Grosseteste played a key role in the development of the scientific method. His ideas about how the universe was created are close to the Big Bang Theory, he was the first scientist to identify the cause of the rainbow as refraction and he seems to have understood centuries before anyone else that the universe is expanding.

He introduced to the Latin West the notion of controlled experiment and related it to demonstrative science, as one among many ways of arriving at scientific knowledge. He was the first of the Scholastics to fully understand Aristotle’s vision of the dual path of scientific reasoning: generalising from particular observations into a universal law, and then back again from universal laws to prediction of particulars.

Grosseteste worked from Latin translations of Arabic versions of Aristotle’s texts. These had been translated from the original Greek by Islamic scholars. Jewish scholars based in southern Europe curated and distributed the texts to western scholars.

His commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics was one of the first and most influential of the mediaeval commentaries on this fundamental work. Other important writings belonging to the first period are his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics; independent treatises on astronomy and cosmology, the calendar (with proposals for the reform of the inaccurate calendar then in use), sound, comets, heat, optics, and other scientific subjects; and his scriptural commentaries, especially the Moralitates in evangelica, De cessatione legalium, Hexaëmeron and commentaries on the Pauline Epistles and the Psalms.

He began to study Greek in 1230-1231, and used this learning by translating into Latin translations of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and De caelo, of the De fide orthodoxe of Saint John of Damascus, of Pseudo-Dionysius and of other theological writings. He brought assistants who knew Greek to Lincoln to work with him, and also arranged for a translation of the Psalms from the Hebrew.

His writings on the first chapter of Genesis anticipate of modern cosmological ideas. He read that the first thing created was light, and said that the universe began with pure energy exploding from a point source.

In a paper in the journal Nature Physics ten years ago [July 2014], a group of scientists discussed how they are re-examining Grosseteste’s work. They showed his contributions to the field of optics have yet to be assimilated into the canon of science. For example, his insight into the physics of rainbows enabled the researchers in the Ordered Universe Project at Durham and Oxford Universities to create a new co-ordinate system for colour.

Robert Grosseteste died at Buckden in Huntingdonshire on 9 October 1253. He is buried in a tomb in his memorial chapel in Lincoln Cathedral. The plaque on his tomb says: ‘He was a man of learning and an inspiration to scholars a wise administrator while a true shepherd of his flock, ever concerned to lead them to Christ in whose service he strove to temper justice with mercy, hating the sin while loving the sinner, not sparing the rod though cherishing the weak.’

Dr Jack Cunningham, a theology lecturer at Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln, recently launched a campaign for a statue to be erected in Lincoln to Bishop Robert Grosseteste. ‘Grosseteste was revolutionary in the history of science because he knew that everything was about mathematics and that good scientists should base their knowledge on what they observe and not what they think,’ he says.

Robert Grosseteste wrote important commentaries on Aristotle’s texts … the statue of Aristotle in Aristotelous Square in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 12: 20-36 (NRSVA):

20 Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. 21 They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ 22 Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23 Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.

27 ‘Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say – “Father, save me from this hour”? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.’ Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’ 29 The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, ‘An angel has spoken to him.’ 30 Jesus answered, ‘This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 31 Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ 33 He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. 34 The crowd answered him, ‘We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains for ever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?’ 35 Jesus said to them, ‘The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. 36 While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.’

Robert Grosseteste’s insight into the physics of rainbows enabled researchers at Durham and Oxford to create a new co-ordinate system for colour … a double rainbow over the Burrow Beach at Portrane, Co Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 26 March 2024):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Holy Week Reflection.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by the Revd Canon Dr Peniel Rajkumar, Theologian and Director of Global Mission, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (26 March 2024) invites us to pray in these words:

O Lord, we pray for all those actively pursuing the vision of a different world marked by justice, peace and joy for all.

The Collect:

Almighty and everlasting God,
who in your tender love towards the human race
sent your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ
to take upon him our flesh
and to suffer death upon the cross:
grant that we may follow the example of his patience and humility,
and also be made partakers of his resurrection;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ,
you humbled yourself in taking the form of a servant,
and in obedience died on the cross for our salvation:
give us the mind to follow you
and to proclaim you as Lord and King,
to the glory of God the Father.

Additional Collect:

True and humble king,
hailed by the crowd as Messiah:
grant us the faith to know you and love you,
that we may be found beside you
on the way of the cross,
which is the path of glory.

Yesterday: Saint Richard of Chichester

Tomorrow: William of Ockham

Robert Grosseteste became Chancellor of Oxford University in 1224 and Bishop of Lincoln in 1235 … the arms of Lincoln College Oxford incorporate the arms of the Bishop of Lincoln (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Daily prayer in Lent with early English saints: 39, 23 March 2024, Saint Hugh of Lincoln

Saint Hugh of Lincoln depicted in a statue at Saint Mary Magdalen Church, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

We are approaching the last week of Lent, and tomorrow is Palm Sunday, the Sixth Sunday in Lent (24 March 2024). In the Jewish calendar, the festival of Purim begins this evening (23 March) and continues until tomorrow evening (24 March).

Throughout Lent this year, I am taking time each morning to reflect on the lives of early, pre-Reformation English saints commemorated in Common Worship.

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, A reflection on an early, pre-Reformation English saint;

2, today’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

Saint Hugh of Lincoln (left) and Saint Frideswide of Oxford depicted in a window in Saint Mary’s Church, Shenley Church End (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Early English pre-Reformation saints: 39, Saint Hugh of Lincoln

Saint Hugh of Lincoln is remembered in Common Worship on 17 November.

Hugh was born at Avalon in Burgundy in 1140 and at first made his profession with the Augustinian canons but, when he was 25, he became a monk at the Carthusian Grande Chartreuse. In about 1175, he was invited by the King Henry II, to become prior of his Charterhouse foundation at Witham in Somerset, badly in need of reform even though it had been only recently founded.

In 1186, Hugh was persuaded to accept the See of Lincoln, then the largest diocese in England. He brought huge energy to the diocese and, together with discerning appointments to key posts, he revived the schools in Lincoln, repaired and enlarged the cathedral, visited the See extensively, drew together the clergy to meet in synod and generally brought an efficiency and stability to the Church.

Hugh also showed great compassion for the poor and the oppressed, ensuring that sufferers of leprosy were cared for and that Jews were not persecuted. He both supported his monarch yet also held out against any royal measures he felt to be extreme, while managing not to make an enemy of the king. He died in London on 17 November 1200.

Saint Hugh of Lincoln (right) and King Edward the Confessor in the Cooper Window in Saint Peter’s Church, Berkhamsted (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

John 11: 45-57 (NRSVA):

45 Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. 46 But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done. 47 So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, ‘What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. 48 If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.’ 49 But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, ‘You know nothing at all! 50 You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.’ 51 He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, 52 and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God. 53 So from that day on they planned to put him to death.

54 Jesus therefore no longer walked about openly among the Jews, but went from there to a town called Ephraim in the region near the wilderness; and he remained there with the disciples.

55 Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves. 56 They were looking for Jesus and were asking one another as they stood in the temple, ‘What do you think? Surely he will not come to the festival, will he?’ 57 Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that anyone who knew where Jesus was should let them know, so that they might arrest him.

The pet swan of Saint Hugh of Lincoln is an amusing detail in the Cooper Window in Saint Peter’s Church, Berkhamsted (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 23 March 2024):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), has been ‘Lent Reflection: True repentance is the key to Christian Freedom.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by the Revd Dr Simon Ro, Dean of Graduate School of Theology at Sungkonghoe (Anglican) University, Seoul, Korea.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (23 March 2024) invites us to pray in these words:

We pray Lord for the work and mission of the Anglican Church of Korea. We pray too for the Graduate School of Theology at Sungkonghoe – may they continue to nurture and teach theology for all those seeking to learn.

The Collect:

Most merciful God,
who by the death and resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ
delivered and saved the world:
grant that by faith in him who suffered on the cross
we may triumph in the power of his victory;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ,
you have taught us
that what we do for the least of our brothers and sisters
we do also for you:
give us the will to be the servant of others
as you were the servant of all,
and gave up your life and died for us,
but are alive and reign, now and for ever.

Additional Collect:

Gracious Father,
you gave up your Son
out of love for the world:
lead us to ponder the mysteries of his passion,
that we may know eternal peace
through the shedding of our Saviour’s blood,
Jesus Christ our Lord.

Collect on the Eve of Palm Sunday:

Almighty and everlasting God,
who in your tender love towards the human race
sent your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ
to take upon him our flesh
and to suffer death upon the cross:
grant that we may follow the example of his patience and humility,
and also be made partakers of his resurrection;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday: Saint Gilbert of Sempringham

Tomorrow: Saint Edmund Rich of Abingdon

The Christ the King or Cooper Window in Saint Peter’s Church, Berkhamsted, with Saint Hugh of Lincoln in the bottom left corner (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

From Geoffrey Chaucer to Graham Greene, finding the literary and cultural legacy of Berkhamsted

From Geoffrey Chaucer to Graham Greene, Berkhamsted has a rich literary and cultural heritage (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

There was so much to see in Berkhamsted during my visit earlier this month that I returned again this week. Apart from the castle and Saint Peter’s Church, which I described in a blog posting earlier this week, I was interested to learn more about the town’s many literary and cultural associations, from Geoffrey Chaucer and the ‘Physician’s Tale’ to Maria Edgeworth, William Cowper and Peter Pan, and to Graham Greene, Claud Cockburn and the early days of the BBC.

Geoffrey Chaucer, the author of the Canterbury Tales, is said to have visited Berkhamsted in 1389 to oversee renovations at the castle after he was appointed the clerk of the king’s works. During his time in office, Chaucer organised most of the king's building projects, including repairs to Westminster Palace and Saint George’s Chapel, Windsor, and work on the wharf at the Tower of London.

It is not known whether Chaucer spent much time working at Berkhamsted Castle. It is claimed by some sourves that while Chaucer was at Berkhamsted he got to know – or least know of – John of Gaddesden, who lived nearby in Little Gaddesden and who became the model for the Doctor of Phisick in the Canterbury Tales, written between 1387 and 1400.

Berkhamsted Castle … did Geoffrey Chaucer ever spend any time working there? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

However, Chaucer could never have met John of Gaddesden (1280-1361), who died almost a generation before Chaucer is said to have visited Berkhamsted. Indeed, the ‘Physician’s Tale’ is usually seen as an early work by Chaucer, probably written before much of the rest of the Canterbury Tales. The long digression possibly alludes to an historical event that may date it to 1386, three years before Chaucer is said to have visited Berkhamsted.

John of Gaddesden was a writer in his own right too. He was born near Berkhamsted, but spent most of his academic life in Oxford. He was the author of Rosa Medicinae (‘The Rose of Medicine’), or Rosa Anglica (‘The English Rose’). It was written between 1304 and 1317, and regarded as the first English textbook of medicine.

John of Gaddesden was a theologian, a fellow at Merton College, Oxford, a physician to kings and princes, and the most celebrated medical authorities of his day. It is said his medical works, alongside those of Gilbertus Anglicus, formed part of the core curriculum that underpinned the practice of medicine for the next 400 years.

The hymn writer William Cowper (1731-1800) was born in Berkhamsted Rectory, where his father, the Revd John Cowper, was the Rector, and was baptised in Saint Peter’s Church.

Although William Cowper moved from Berkhamsted when was still a boy, there are frequent references to the town in his poems and letters, and two windows in Saint Peter’s Church commemorate his life and writing. His popular hymns include ‘Oh! for a closer walk with God,’ and he give the English language the phrase ‘God moves in a mysterious way.’

Cowper was an active abolitionist in the anti-slavery movement. In the Victorian era, Cowper became a cult figure and Berkhamsted was a place of pilgrimage. He was quoted by the Revd Martin Luther King in his protest speeches in the 1960s.

Dean Thomas Charles Fry was the headmaster of Berkhamsted School for almost quarter of a century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849), a prolific writer of adults’ and children’s literature, was a significant figure in the evolution of the novel in Europe. She lived in Berkhamsted as a child in the 18th century. She spent her early years with her mother’s family, living at The Limes, now known as Edgeworth House, in Northchurch, Berkhamsted.

Her mother died in 1773 when Maria was five. Later that year, her father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744-1817) from Lichfield, married his second wife Honora Sneyd, and Maria went with them to live on his Irish estate af Edgeworthstown, Co Longford.

Between 1904 and 1907, the five Llewelyn Davies boys were the inspiration for the author and playwright JM Barrie’s Peter Pan. Their grandfather, the Revd John Llewelyn Davies, was outspoken on social issues like poverty and inequality, and active in Christian socialist groups.

Their parents, Sylvia (1866-1910) and Arthur Llewelyn Davies (1863-1907), moved out of London and went to live in Egerton House, an Elizabethan mansion in Berkhamsted, in 1904, the year when Barrie’s play had its debut. The brothers were first cousins of the writer Daphne du Maurier.

The Revd Dr Thomas Charles Fry (1846-1930), was the headmaster of Berkhamsted School in 1887-1910. He was one of the pioneers in the work of the Christian Social Union, and was the author of Old Testament History for Schools, Social Policy for the Church and Sermons on Social Subjects. Later, as the Dean of Lincoln (1910-1930), Fry worked devotedly to raise funds for the restoration of the cathedral.

Saint John’s House, Berkhamsted … the birthplace of Graham Greene (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

While Fry was headmaster of Berkhamsted, his wife’s cousin, Charles Henry Greene (1865-1942), was second master and the housemaster at Saint John’s House. When Fry became Dean of Lincoln in 1910, Greene succeeded him as headmaster of Berkhamsted.

Greene’s brother, Edward Greene, once a highly successful coffee merchant in Brazil, also moved to Berkhamsted, and lived in some splendour at the Hall or Berkhamsted Hall, near the Rectory. Edward Greene bought the house in 1917 and was the last private resident there. The Hall was used by Berkhamsted School as a prep school from 1928, while the former gardens were sold off for housing development. By then, however, the house was suffering from dry rot, and finally it was demolished in 1937.

Both Charles Greene and Edward Grene each had six children and this influential generation of cousins were key figures in literary and cultural life in 20th century.

Graham Greene (1904-1991), one of the ‘School House’ Greenes, is the best known of these cousins. He was a bestselling novelist by the age of 28 and he was often tipped for the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was also known as a politically contrarian, anti-American, a Catholic convert, a sometime publisher, a spy and a friend of Kim Philby.

In The Human Factor (1978), Graham Greene describes a scene in Saint Peter’s Church, Berkhamsted, when a sonic boom suddenly ‘shook the old glass of the west window and rattled the crusader’s helmet which hung on a pillar.’ The helmet is that of Sir Adolphus Carey – who lived 300 years after the crusades.

Sir Hugh Carleton Greene (1910-1987), Graham Greene’s youngest brother, first made his name as a journalist in pre-war Nazi Germany. During World War II, he was in charge of BBC broadcasting to Germany. He later became the director general of the BBC from 1960 to 1969, modernising the BBC at a time of great social change.

After retiring from the BBC, Greene published several books, including a collaboration with his brother Graham Greene, and made television programmes both for the BBC and ITV.

Their oldest brother, Herbert Greene, is often seen as the ‘black sheep’ in the family, and he became the model for several of Graham Greene’s antiheroes, such as Anthony Farrant in England Made Me.

Another brother, Dr Raymond Greene (1901-1982), was a doctor and mountaineer who took part in two Everest expeditions. He chaired Heinemann Medical Books from 1960 to 1980, and his autobiography, Moments of Being, was published in 1974.

The ‘Hall’ Greene cousins included the journalist Felix Greene (1909-1985), a creative figure in the early history of the BBC who set up its American offices in the 1930s. He first visited China for the BBC in 1957, and he was one of the first Western reporters to visit North Vietnam when he travelled there for the San Francisco Chronicle in the 1960s. He published books on China, Vietnam in 1960s and 1970s.

His brother Ben Greene (1901-1978) was a fellow pacifist, a Quaker and a key figure in the pre-war Labour Party. But he moved to the far-right politically, and during World War II he was imprisoned without trial along with the fascist Oswald Mosley.

The literary contemporaries of the Greene cousins at Berkhamsted School included Claud Cockburn (1904-1981), who lived later at Myrtle Grove in Youghal, Co Cork, from 1947, and in Ardmore, Co Waterford, in 1980. For many years, Claud Cockburn was a columnist with The Irish Times while I worked there, and some of his sons, including Patrick Cockburn, also contributed to The Irish Times.

Other writers and literary figures in school with the Greenes at Berkhamsted include Sir Peter Quennell (1905-1993); the diplomat Humphrey Trevelyan (1905-1985), who wrote a number of books about his career, including The India We Left and The Middle East in Revolution; and the diplomat and writer Sir Cecil Parrott (1909-1984), known for his translation of Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk and The Red Commissar, his biography of Hašek, The Bad Bohemian, and his autobiographical books, The Tightrope and The Serpent and the Nightingale.

The children’s authors HE Todd, author of the Bobby Brewster books, and Hilda van Stockum have also lived in Berkhamsted.

Greene's Court … place names are reminders of the literary legacy of Berkhamsted (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Thomas Babington, an Oxford theologian with strong links with the Comberford family

The Divinity School at the Bodleian Library, Oxford … Thomas Babington was Vice Chancellor of Oxford and the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Patrick Comerford

My visit to the small village of Yelvertoft in Northamptonshire last week, to visit All Saints’ Church were Canon Henry Comberford was the rector during the Tudor Reformation era, reminded me of the close links in the mid-16th century between the Comberford family and the Babington family, who were part of a nexus of families that also included the Fitzherbert and Beaumont families, all related through intricate patterns of intermarriage.

As patrons of the living in Yelvertoft for the best part of a century, the clergy nominated by the Comberford family as Rectors of this Northamptonshire parish included the Revd Thomas Babington, who became Rector in 1510, and Canon Henry Comerford, who was the Rector in 1546-1560.

Thomas Babington, who was the Rector of Yelvertoft in 1510, was a first cousin of Canon Henry Comberford and of Richard Comberford, sometimes described as the ancestor of the Comerfords of Kilkenny and Wexford. Like Richard and Henry Comberford, Thomas Babington had studied at Saint John’s College, Cambridge.

Thomas Babington was the uncle of the Revd Dr Francis Babington, and Henry and Richard Comberford were first cousins once removed of this interesting Oxford theologian who survived much of the Tudor Reformation and Marian turmoils, but who was finally forced out of office and into exile in 1565, during the reign of Elizabeth I.

I have an additional interest in the life and influence of Thomas Babington because he was also the Rector of Milton Keynes briefly in 1560.

All Saints’ Church in Milton Keynes Village … Thomas Babington was the Rector of Milton Keynes in 1560 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Francis Babington was the son of Thomas Babington’s brother, Humphrey Babington, and his wife Eleanor Beaumont, a sister of Dorothy Beaumont who married Humphrey Comerford, and of Joan Beaumont who married William Babington.

Francis Babington entered Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1544 (BA 1549). He became a Fellow of Saint John’s College, Cambridge, in 1551, and was there when he proceeded MA in 1552.

About that time he transferred from Cambridge to Oxford, where he ‘incepted’ in arts with the degree MA in 1554 and became a Fellow of All Souls’ College. By 1555, his name is appended to the Roman Catholic articles of belief imposed by Queen Mary.

After three years, he was unanimously chosen Proctor of his new university (1557). He was ordained priest on 5 March 1558 by Edward Bonner, Bishop of London, who had vigorously restored Catholicism in his diocese. Babington took the Bachelor’s and Doctor’s degrees in Divinity (BD, DD) in Oxford successively in 1558 and 1560.

Thomas Babington became a Fellow of All Souls’ College when he moved to Oxford from Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Anthony à Wood suggest Babington’s rapid academic promotion was only because Oxford University was very empty, and wanted theologians ‘to perform the requisite offices.’ Only three doctors in theology had proceeded in six years; and sermons were so rare, that scarce one was given. Elsewhere, however, Wood mentions Francis Babington as renowned for his philosophical and logical disputations.

Queen Elizabeth I’s visitors removed William Wright from office as the Master of Balliol College, Oxford, in 1559 and Babington became the Master (head) of Balliol College, Oxford, on 2 September 1559. However, he resigned the following year when he became the Rector of Lincoln College and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University in 1560. He remained Vice-Chancellor of Oxford until 1562 and Rector of Lincoln College until 1563.

Babington had no objection to holding a plurality of livings and offices. Between 1557 and 1565, he was the Rector or Vicar of at least seven or eight parishes, holding many together: Vicar of Aldworth, Berkshire, Diocese of Salisbury (1557), Rector of Adstock and Sherrington, Buckinghamshire (1557), Rector of Caythorpe, Lincolnshire (1558-1563), and Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire (1560), Rector of Twyford, Buckinghamshire (1560-1563), Rector of Holsworthy, Devon, Diocese of Exeter (1562-1563), and Vicar of Aston cum Aughton, Yorkshire, in the Diocese of York (1565).

Lincoln College, Oxford … Thomas Babington was the Rector of Lincoln College (1560-1563), Vice Chancellor of Oxford (1560-1562) and the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Besides these preferments, he was appointed the Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, in May 1560 and was the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University in 1560-1562. He was also the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in 1560-1561, although the statutes forbade this chair being held by the Vice-Chancellor. The Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity is a senior professor attached to Christ Church, Oxford. The professorship was founded from the benefaction of Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443-1509), mother of Henry VII, and the holders were all priests until 2015.

Babington was chaplain to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and seems about this time to have been high in favour with Elizabeth’s favourite. Wood says Babington was one of Leicester’s five most trusted advisers in Oxford. He was chosen to preach the funeral sermon of Dudley’s wife, Amy Robsart, in Saint Mary's Church, Oxford, in 1560.

Amy Robsart died when she tripped or fell down the stairs at her home and there were persistent rumours that her husband had conspired to arrange her death. Babington’s text was Beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur (‘Blessed are they who died in the Lord’), and during his sermon he ‘tript once or twice by recommending to his auditors the virtues of that lady so pitifully murdered instead of so pitifully slain.’

Christ Church, Oxford … Thomas Babington lost out to Thomas Sampson as dean (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Babington stood as the representative of the more conservative party for election as the Deanery of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1561 against Thomas Sampson, a leading figure in the Puritan party. Strype, in his account of this contest, describes Babington as ‘a man of mean learning and of a complying temper.’ But he failed in his candidature. He seems by this time to have been losing Leicester’s favour, and was more than suspected of being a concealed Papist.

In March 1562, Babington was involved in forcing the appointment of John Man as the Warden of Merton College, against the wishes of the Catholic fellows. Wood has given a graphic description of the whole scene, but Babington remained true to his Catholic sympathies, shared with many members of his wider family circle.

Eventually, however, Babington was forced to resign as the Rector of Lincoln College in 1563. Two years later, he was deprived of his preferments in 1565 because of his Catholic sympathies. In that same year, Samson was deprived as Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, because of his extreme Puritanism.

Babington was forced to flee England, and he died in exile in December 1569.

Within two decades, his kinsman, Anthony Babington was involved in the Babington Plot in 1586 to assassinate Elizabeth I and put her Catholic cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, on the English throne. The chief conspirator was Anthony Babington (1561-1586) of Dethick, a young recusant was recruited by John Ballard, a Jesuit priest. He was executed on 20 September 1586.

Thomas Babington was the Master of Balliol College, Oxford, in 1559-1560 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

A mediaeval church, a chapel and a former hospital survive on the streets of Northampton

Saint John’s, on the corner of Bridge Street and Saint John’s Street, is one of the oldest surviving buildings in Northampton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023; click on images for full-screen viewing)

Patrick Comerford

During my self-guided tour and walk around Northampton, I went in search of churches and chapel, cathedrals and castle ruins, and also found the site of a mediaeval synagogue, and the present modern synagogue.

The former chapel of Saint John’s Hospital and the closed Saint Peter’s Churches are two mediaeval church buildings that caught by attention during the day.

The Church Northampton is the name of a wedding and events venue in the town centre of Northampton. This one-of-a-kind venue in England, has more than eight centuries of history behind it and is brimming with character.

Saint John’s Hospital was opened in 1138 and in the 885 years since then it has been a hospital, hostel and hospice, a soldiers’ burial ground, part of Northampton’s first railway station, and a Roman Catholic church, before its present use as a modern restaurant.

Saint John’s, on the corner of Bridge Street and Saint John’s Street, stands like an isolated but eye-caching complex in the middle of a traffic island. Yet, this one of the oldest surviving buildings in Northampton.

Saint John’s was built in 1138, close to one the main gates of the walled town of Northampton, in a time when hospitals were hostels and guesthouses for pilgrims on their way to Rome or Canterbury, and places of rest for the poor, the sick and for orphans.

The buildings consisted originally of a chapel and infirmary, and a master’s house that was demolished in the 19th century. The site was dedicated to Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist, an unusual double dedication, and was run by a religious community consisting of the Master and Brothers.

Saint John’s Hospital, Northampton, was built in 1138 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Henry II granted Saint John’s Hospital a Royal Charter in 1154-1162, acknowledging its position and purpose. One of the witnesses to this charter was ‘Thomas the Chancellor’, Thomas Becket, later to become Archbishop of Canterbury. The community was sustained by the rents from gifts of land donated by wealthy local people.

During the Wars of the Roses, a large Lancastrian army swarmed south overwhelming the Earl of Warwick and his Yorkist force at Northampton. The Battle of Northampton between Lancastrians and Yorkists was fought in 1460 on the fields of Delapre and many of the 10,000 troops were killed. Some of the bodies were buried in the grounds of Saint John’s, while many others were swept away down the river.

Saint John’s was initially under the immediate patronage of the Bishop of Lincoln. In pre-Reformation days, there were grave charges of mismanagement and the monopolisation of the funds by non-resident masters. These problems materially increased with the formation of the Diocese of Peterborough at the Reformation in 1541, when Northampton ceased to have any connection with Lincoln.

From that time on, the position of Master of Saint John’s, Northampton, came to be regarded as a lucrative sinecure in the gift of the Bishop of Lincoln. The problem first came to a head in 1573, when Bishop Thomas Cooper presented Arthur Wake as Master of Saint John’s.

Wake became a Canon of Christ Church, Oxford in 1567, and Rector of Billing, Northamptonshire, in 1569. But he was deprived of these positions nonconformity in 1573 and retired to Jersey.

However, Wake apparently managed to retain or recover the position of Master of Saint John’s. He continued to live on the Channel Islands, and refused to return to England, despite vigorous protests by leading figures. In a petition to the Privy Council in 1584, they said less than one-twentieth of the hospital revenues were given to ‘the reliefe of any impotent aged or feeble persons.’

Wake died in July 1596 and is buried on the north side of the choir at Christ Church, Oxford.

The post-Reformation abuses of the foundation continued, despite constant litigation, until the death of Canon Richard Tomline Pretyman, who was the Master from 1814 until he died in 1866. Pretyman, who regarded the post as a sinecure, was also the Precentor of Lincoln, where another brother, Canon George Thomas Tomline Pretyman, was the Canon Chancellor; their father, George Pretyman Tomline (1750-1827), was Bishop of Lincoln and Dean of Saint Paul’s (1787-1820) and Bishop of Winchester (1820-1827).

Pretyman died in 1866 and his successor, Nathaniel Thomas Hughes, was appointed in 1871.The master’s house and garden along with with the chapel were sold in 1870 to the Bedford and Northampton Railway Company, which demolished the master’s house and built Saint John’s Street Railway Station.

The hospital itself was refounded in 1876 at Weston Favell, and the hospital and the adjacent chapel were sold to Henry Mulliner.

After 67 years, Saint John’s station was demolished in 1939 and the charitable foundation that still owned the site sold much of the land to fund Saint John’s Convalescence home in Weston Favell.

The chapel re-opened as a Catholic Church in 1955. However, dwindling congregations, a lack of money, a fire and several attacks by vandals led it to close again in October 1990. The Richardsons Group bought the site in 1997. Saint John’s was refurbished completely in 2004-2005, and the building was restored and equipped as a modern restaurant.

Saint Peter’s Church stands on a site between the former Anglo-Saxon palace and Northampton Castle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Saint Peter’s Church on Marefair is one of the finest examples of Norman architecture in the town. The church stands in a pretty churchyard in the town centre, beside the buried remains of a Saxon palace. Inside, I understand, this 900-year-old Norman church is filled with glorious carved treasures.

The church stands on a site between the sites of a former Anglo-Saxon palace and Northampton Castle. Two previous churches have been on the site, one built in wood, the other in stone. The present church was probably built between 1130 and 1140 by Simon de Senlis, who also built All Hallows’ Church, on the site of the later All Saints’ Church, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Anna Palmer was living as an anchoress next to Saint Peter’s Church in the 1390s. She was summoned before John Buckingham, Bishop of Lincoln, on several charges of heresy and one of incontinence. She was accused of being a leader of the Lollards, and was imprisoned in Banbury after calling the bishop an anti-Christ.

The west tower of Saint Peter’s had fallen by 1607 and was rebuilt later in the 17th century, moving it 3.7 metres (12 ft) to the east.

The church was restored by George Gilbert Scott in the 1850s. His work included reroofing the church, rebuilding the east end and lowering the floor of the nave. Scott also reconstructed the clerestory but left the Norman carvings untouched. His son, John Oldrid Scott, carried out a scheme of decoration using stencils on the interior of the east wall in 1878-1879.

Outside, strange half-human faces glare out from under the eaves of the church, together with cruder, timeworn figures. There is a 14th century font, a 12th century grave slab with clear relief carving and some fine Victorian stained glass.

Inside, great Norman arches of plain and banded stone rise and flow with zig-zag waves. They are supported by beautiful carved capitals, each overflowing with foliage, scrollwork, birds and beasts.

These carvings were plastered over in the 17th century but were carefully unpicked with a bone knife in the early 19th century by a local antiquarian, Anne Elizabeth Baker, in a labour of love lasting 11 years. Other highlights include a handsome brass lectern and carved wooden pews and monuments, including the bust of William Smith, the father of British geology.

The church closed in 1995 and was vested in the Churches Conservation Trust in 1998. In 2002 the internal fabric of the church was being damaged by the growth of mould due to excessive condensation. Oldrid Scott’s decorative scheme had been overpainted, but this paint was also removed, revealing the original decoration.

Saint Peter’s Church is now used as a community asset, with concerts, educational, social events and occasional services.

The west tower of Saint Peter’s Church was rebuilt in the 17th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)