The later Middle Ages in England were indeed to prove such an age of contemplative saints, and ‘the medieval English mystics’ are often now grouped together. Viewed with one kind of hindsight, something new stirs with the writings of Richard Rolle (d. 1349), broadens and gathers in the later fourteenth century – with Walter Hilton, Julian of Norwich, and the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing – and also includes a corpus of translations into English of other mystical writings that point to contemporary interest in contemplation. Like most retrospects on ‘movements’ or ‘schools’ of writers, such a view simplifies both the continuities with earlier traditions and between the writers themselves.