Lollards of Coventry, 1486–1522

New insights into the nature of religious dissent in England prior to the English Reformation.

Coventry harboured an important community of Lollards in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. This volume presents all known evidence related to these heretics and, framed by a contextual introduction, offers new insights into the nature of religious dissent in England just prior to the English Reformation.In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Coventry harboured a community of Lollards, adherents of medieval England's only popular heresy. Allowed to flourish relatively unmolested for decades, the Coventry Lollards came under close episcopal scrutiny in 1511 and 1512 when Geoffrey Blyth, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, began a concerted effort to uncover and eradicate their community. This volume presents a remarkable record of the testimony compiled during Blyth's crackdown, along with all other surviving evidence for heretical activities in Coventry. The documents, offered here both in their original languages of Latin and Middle English and in modern English translation, give new insights into the nature of religious dissent in the years just prior to the first stirrings of the English Reformation.