Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Henry Craik, ed. English Prose. 1916.
Vol. I. Fourteenth to Sixteenth Century

The Ghost of Bishop Grosteste appears to the Pope

John Capgrave (1393–1464)

IN the thirty-sixth year of his reign died Robert Grosteste, born in Suffolk, and bishop of Lincoln. He bequeathed all his books to the Freres Menouris of Oxenford. He had been at Rome and pleaded for the right of the Church of England under the Pope Innocent. For that same pope raised many new things of this land, and gave the benefices without consent of the king, or patrons, or any other. And this same bishop Robert wrote and said against the pope; and at Rome, in his presence, appealed from him to the high King of Heaven. So came he home, and died. And in his death he appeared to the pope, and smote him in the side with the pike of his cross-staff, and said thus: “Rise, wretch, and come to the doom.” These words heard the cubiculers, and the stroke was seen in his side, for he died anon after that.