Richard of Gravesend (Bishop of London)

Richard of Gravesend († December 9, 1303 in Fulham Palace ) was an English clergyman. From 1280 he was Bishop of London .

origin

Richard of Gravesend came from a family of gentry of Kent , who after the city of Gravesend named and the nearby estate of Parrocks in Milton possessed. His year of birth and the names of his parents are unknown, only the name of his brother Stephen is known. Richard was certainly related to the named Richard of Gravesend , who was Bishop of Lincoln from 1258 to 1279.

Advancement as a clergyman

The younger Richard of Gravesend had studied at an unnamed college and graduated with a master's degree when his alleged relative Richard of Gravesend of the same name procured him a benefice at Lincoln Cathedral in 1262 or 1263 . He was also rector of Ecclesborough in Buckinghamshire in 1263 or 1264 . After that he is mentioned again only at the beginning of the 1270s, after he had received offices in the Diocese of London through the sponsorship of Henry of Sandwich , Bishop of London . Sandwich had been in the Diocese of Lincoln before his election as Bishop Archdeacon of Oxford , where he appeared to have met Gravesend. Gravesend was Archdeacon of Essex in January 1271 or January 1272 , but before November 5, 1273 he exchanged office with Archdeacon of Northampton . In addition, he became a canon at London's St Paul's Cathedral . He kept on good relations in the Diocese of Lincoln, in which he received a benefice in Sutton-cum-Buckingham before November 1276 . When the clergyman Amaury de Montfort , a younger son of the former rebel Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, was captured by King Edward I in 1275 , Gravesend campaigned in vain for his release.

Bishop of London

After the resignation of Fulk Lovel , who was elected by the cathedral chapter , Gravesend was elected Bishop of London on May 7, 1280. The royal confirmation of the election took place on May 9th, and on May 17th the temporalities of the diocese were handed over to him. He was ordained bishop on August 11, 1280 by Archbishop John Pecham in Coventry Cathedral.

From 1289 to 1290 Gravesend accompanied Edward I to Gascony, which belonged to the English kings . During the conflict with France , he served as envoy to France in 1293 and to the Netherlands in 1294 and 1296. When the king undertook a campaign to Flanders in 1297, Gravesend was one of the councilors of the minor heir to the throne Edward, who remained in England . Little is known about the activities of Gravesend in his diocese, because the register of documents of his term of office has been lost. Presumably before 1290 he confirmed and expanded the Synodal Statutes issued by Bishop Fulk Basset . Gravesend took part in several councils of the Canterbury ecclesiastical province and apparently took care of the formation of the higher clergy. He insisted that the chancellor of the diocese had a university degree as a doctorate or at least a bachelor's degree in theology and that he was giving lectures in theology. To this end, he created the office of Sub-Dean of St Paul's Cathedral. He himself owned an extensive library that contained over 80 books when he died. He left a handsome fortune of £ 3,000, parts of which he donated to the upkeep of the cathedral, but also to the poor in London. He was buried on December 12, 1303 near the grave of his former patron Henry of Sandwich in St Paul's Cathedral.

Web links

• Philippa Hoskin: Gravesend, Richard of (d. 1303). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004

predecessor	Office	successor
John of Chishall	Bishop of London 1280–1303	Ralph Baldock