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England of the fifteenth century was rife with social change, religious dissent, and political upheaval. Amid this ferment lived John Capgrave O.S.A. — Austin (Augustinian) friar, doctor of theology, a leading figure in the society of East Anglia, a noted and prolific author, an outstanding religious leader, and such a saintly person that King Henry VII wished him to be canonized.
Nowhere are the tensions and anxieties of this critical period, spanning the close of the medieval age and the dawn of early modern eras, more eloquently conveyed than in Capgrave's written works.
John Capgrave, the learned and travelled friar of Lynn in Norfolk, England, was the best known man of letters of his time - the generation of his fellow-author Osbern Bokenham O.S.A., and the one after Geoffrey Chaucer.
One of the most learned men of his day, he was a distinguished theologian, philosopher, and historian.
He was a notable figure both in the vibrant literary culture of and in European intellectual history.
He has also proved to be the most prolific writer of all English Augustinians.
He was born at Lynn in Norfolk, England on the 21st April 1393. Lynn was a thriving port on the estuary of the Ouse River in northwestern Norfolk.
Lynn stood at the south-eastern tip of the great English estuary known as the Wash. The town was in medieval times called Bishop's
Lynn. This is because it was taken under the wing of the Bishop of Norwich in the late eleventh century, one of the earliest of numerous deliberate seigneurial foundations of "new towns" that took place between that time and the mid-thirteenth century. When Henry VIII subsequently took over the lordship of the town it was renamed
King's Lynn.
Of all the religious orders in
Lynn, only the Augustinians (Austin Friars) were able to secure a site close within the built-up section of the town. Their convent is not mentioned in the Newland survey of ca.1267-1283, however, and it seems it was not established until the last years of that century. The site incorporated a church, chapter house, and residence.
John Capgrave joined the Augustinian Order in Lynn, studied his fundamental theology at their Augustinian house in London, and became a priest in 1417 or 1418. He then remained in London, teaching and studying until 1422.
He took the degree of Doctor of Divinity - the highest degree then awarded - in about 1433.
This most probably was at Cambridge, although Oxford also has claimed him. Both places had an Augustinian studium generale (an international house of study for the education of Augustinians.
He was the author of forty-four books, of which only thirteen have survived.
The period of his literary output extended from about 1433 until his election as Provincial of the Augustinians of England and Ireland in about 1452, when he was sixty years of age. He then resumed writing when once again he was not the Provincial.
Capgrave spent much of his seventy-one years in the priory (convento) of the Augustinian Order in the thriving port of Lynn on the estuary of the Ouse River in northwestern Norfolk.
At the time of Capgrave's birth in 1393, Lynn was the ninth largest city in England, with a population of around 5,000.
It boasted some seventy-five craft guilds and a merchant class that thrived upon the trade in wool, cloth, grain, and wine.
At the centre of town stood a house (convento) belonging to the Augustinians, who were committed to preaching and worship in urban areas.
Capgrave would have been very occupied in his home town, for the Augustinians were frequently called on to mediate conflicts between civic factions such as the merchants and the craft guilds.
Capgrave grew prominent within his order. From about 1441 to 1453, he was the leader of the community in the Lynn house (convento), which was the largest Augustinian house in England.
In 1446 the Lynn convento housed 30 priests and 16 candidates, not counting those who were deacons, subdeacons and clerics in minor orders.
He would also have met the major political figures who lodged with the Augustinians while visiting Lynn; indeed, on one occasion in 1446 to Capgrave, as Prior, fell the task to entertain King Henry VI, who stayed in the Lynn convento. The King was then only twenty-four years of age, and was making a pilgrimage to England's holy places.
In his petition to the King Capgrave declared that his house numbered 30 priests - deacons, subdeacons, clerics in minor orders not counted - and sixteen postulants. The royal visit was anything but peaceful. Somebody used the occasion to make false accusations against the local Augustinians.
When the misinformed king angrily challenged Capgrave about the matter, Capgrave bravely made a successful defence of the Order.
The king was pacified and impressed by both Capgrave's fearlessness and by the flourishing convento he discovered, and henceforth took the convento under the protection of the royal family.
Out of interest, it can be noted that the Augustinian Priory at Lynn received another royal visit from another English monarch on 25th August 1489.
King Henry VII, Queen Elizabeth and many great lords and nobles came to Lynn and stayed at Austin Friars, where the king was presented with ten great pikes, ten trenches, three couple of beams, twelve swans, two oxen, twenty sheep, a ton of wine, 30 dozen bread, two tons of ale, two tons of beer, and two loads of wood.
The purpose of the donation, and whether the Austin Friars were the donors, is not recorded.
Photo (above).
The opening initial of Capgrave's commentary In Exodum, depicting the author kneeling before the duke, who paid for its production. From a manuscript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
(Continued on the next page.)
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