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INTRODUCTION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2004

Abstract

The Lollard community of the Midlands city of Coventry, active between at least the 1480s and the early 1520s, is among the most well-documented of English heretical communities of the late Middle Ages. This is especially owing to the survival of the Lichfield Court Book, a detailed record of the examinations, depositions, abjurations, and sentences in a series of proceedings against the city's heretical community in 1511–1512. The present volume offers both the Latin original and an English translation of this fascinating document, together with all other known evidence for heretical activities in Coventry in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. These documents (including the Lichfield Court Book itself) derive mostly from the administrative records of the bishops of the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield, but we have also included accounts of heresy prosecutions from the Protestant martyrologist, John Foxe, and from Coventry's civic annals. The largest part of this material has hitherto been available only in manuscript and, in the case of the Lichfield Court Book, a manuscript difficult to read. Easy access to the original Latin texts, along with an English translation, will help bring these intriguing materials to a wider audience of scholars and students.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2003 Royal Historical Society

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