Robert Glover, Lollard martyr

Summary   The martyrdom of Robert Glover was shocking, but Bishop Baine had a mission to eradicate heretics.

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.[1] Latimer argued at his trial the doctrines of 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 Robert Glover from Foxes Book of Martyrs.. The Manor House, south-west of Mancetter church, was a timber-framed building dating from about 1330 and preserved 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.

 

          In September 1555, Bishop Ralph Baine, a Catholic bishop[2] appointed in 1554, examined Robert Glover at Coventry who had been imprisoned for heresy. [3]  He ordered Glover and other heretics to be taken to Lichfield.[4] 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.[5] The ‘church prison’ could have been the current duckit, or possibly the chamber under the Consistory Court or under the chambers on the south side of the Lady Chapel. 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.

AI gen. A ‘heretic’ being inquisitioned.

Robert was then interrogated by Draycott and a prebendary. When Bishop Baine returned to Lichfield, he was called into the 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.

 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.[6] Were these the rooms used for imprisonment?

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”. Robert Glover was one of twelve Lollard Martyrs burnt at the stake in Coventry on 19[7] September 1555. He was burned alongside Cornelius Bungey, a hatmaker from Coventry, who had been interrogated with Glover.

Marginalia in Foxes’ Book of Martyrs showing Robert Glover and Cornelius Bungey.

An inscription on a monument in Mancetter Church has:

TO THE SACRED MEMORY
OF
ROBERT GLOVER.
Martyr:

Laurence Saunders, a prominent cleric, was also martyred in 1555 at Coventry. All three martyrs were educated gentry and steadfast in their beliefs. Glover, Bungey, Saunders and the nine other Coventry Martyrs are remembered by a granite monument, 6 m high, in the form of a Celtic wheel-head cross which stands on the island above the Coventry Ring Road, at the junction of New Union Street and Quinton Road.

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[1] 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 

[2] See the post, ‘Bishops, Reformation to Commonwealth’.

[3] T. Harwood, The history and antiquities of the church and city of Lichfield. (London:1806), 285–6.

[4] The account is summarised from J. Foxe (1563), 1555–6.

[5] 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.

[6] N. J. Tringham, ‘An early eighteenth-century description of Lichfield Cathedral’, South Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society Transactions 1986–87. (1988), 28, 62.

[7] 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.