Robert Glover was one of twelve Lollard heretics or Coventry Martyrs burnt at the stake in Coventry on 19[1] September 1555 after a bigoted inquisition.
Robert was born in the village of Mancetter, Warwickshire, c.
1515, the second son of John Glover of Baxterley,
Warwickshire. He was educated at Eton College and then King’s College,
Cambridge, aged 18. He gained a B.A. 4 or 5 years later and then a M. A. aged
26. He married Mary, niece of Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, and had three
sons and one daughter. Latimer was burned at the stake in 1555, alongside
Nicholas Ridley.[2]
Latimer argued at his trial the doctrines of the having the real presence
of Christ in the mass, or transubstantiation, and the assuaging of
feelings of the mass were unbiblical.
The burning of Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley. From Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.
The three Glover brothers, Robert’s wife Mary and previous
ancestors like Hugh Latimer were known to be Protestants, with a tendency to
Lutheranism, at a time in Mary Tudor’s reign, 1553–8, and her insistence of
Roman Catholicism being the sole doctrine.
The home of the Robert Glover. The Manor House,
south-west of Mancetter church, is a timber-framed building dating from about
1330 and preserves a great deal of the original building. The family had
extensive property in the area and Robert was therefore a ‘Gentleman’. His
brother, John Glover, built a handsome house called Baxterley Hall.
The
following account of how Robert was martyred is taken from Harwood.[3] In September, 1555, Bishop
Ralph Baine, a Catholic bishop[4] appointed in 1554, examined
Robert Glover at Coventry who had been imprisoned for heresy. He ordered Glover
and other heretics to be taken to Lichfield.[5] According to a letter
written to Mary, Robert travelled on horseback and when he arrived in Lichfield
at 4pm he was given supper at the Swan and then placed in the ‘church prison’.
His jailor was Anthony Draycot, chancellor to the bishop, and both a lawyer and
fervent Roman Catholic.[6] The ‘church prison’ could
have been the current Duckit.
Robert wrote he was “placed next to the dungeon, narrow of
room, strong of building, and very cold, with small light and here allowed to
have a bundle of straw instead of my bed, without a chair, form, or anything
else to raise myself withal”. The next night he was given a bed, but denied a
request for pen, ink and paper.
Robert was then interrogated by Draycott
and a prebendary. When Bishop Baine returned to Lichfield, he was called into the
chamber adjoining his prison (Consistory Court below St Chad’s Head Chapel) and
questioned Robert concerning his faith. The bishop commanded Robert to be
silent, endeavoured to intimidate him, and upbraided him with the name of ‘proud,
arrogant heretick’. It is said Glover answered the interrogations of the bishop
with undaunted resolution and confidence, but was condemned by the Consistory
Court, and sentenced to death in the flames.
Marginalia in Foxes’ Book of Martyrs showing Robert Glover and Cornelius Bungey.
According to Foxe he prayed all
night before his execution and said to a priest friend in the morning “he is
come, he is come”. He was burned alongside Cornelius Bungey, a hatmaker from
Coventry, who had been interrogated with Glover. An inscription on a monument
in Mancetter Church has:
TO THE SACRED MEMORY
OF
ROBERT GLOVER.
Martyr:
Laurence Saunders was a prominent cleric
who was also martyred in 1555 at Coventry. All three martyrs were educated
gentry and steadfast in their beliefs.
Glover, Bungey, Saunders and nine other
Coventry Martyrs are remembered by a granite monument, 6 m high, in the form of
a Celtic wheel-head cross stands on the island above the Coventry Ring Road, at
the junction of New Union Street and Quinton Road.
South side rooms were built mid-13th century, probably in phases. The Duckit might have been the treasury and the Consistory Court originally the Prebendaries Vestry. Above was built later St Chad’s Head Chapel. The vault is entered by a stair in the south-east turret of the Duckit. The rooms were occupied by squatters during the Commonwealth Period.[7] Were these the rooms used for imprisonment? |
[1]
Some accounts state the next day. Martyrologist John Foxe gives the date of Robert’s
burnings as "about the 20th day" in his 1563 Acts and
Monuments, but fellow martyrologist the Reverend Thomas Brice gives the
date as the 19th in his A Compendious Regester of 1559.
[2]
Robert Glover's life was written by John Foxe, The acts and monuments of
these latter and perilous days, touching matters of the church. (1563), online
at http://www.exclassics.com/foxe/foxe314.htm
[3] T. Harwood, The history
and antiquities of the church and city of Lichfield. (London:1806), 285–6.
[4] See the post, ‘Bishops, Reformation to Commonwealth’.
[5]
The account is summarised from J. Foxe (1563), 1555–6.
[6]
He came from Draycott in the Moors, between Stoke and Uttoxeter. At Elizabeth
I’s accession he refused to take the Oath of Supremacy and was stripped of
all his preferments, except the rectory in Draycot. In 1560 he was in Fleet
Prison and then taken home to die.
[7]
N. J. Tringham, ‘An early eighteenth-century description of Lichfield
Cathedral’, South Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society
Transactions 1986–87. (1988), 28, 62.
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