Richard Fleming

Richard Fleming

Denomination	Catholic
Senior posting
See	Lincoln
Title	Bishop of Lincoln
Period in office	1419–1431
Predecessor	Philip Repyngdon
Successor	William Gray
Personal
Date of birth	about 1385
Place of birth	Crofton, Wakefield, Yorkshire
Date of death	25 January 1431
Place of death	Sleaford Castle

Richard Fleming (born around 1385; died 25 January or 26 January 1431, in Sleaford Castle), Bishop of Lincoln and founder of Lincoln College, Oxford, was born at Crofton in Yorkshire.

He was descended from a good family, and was educated at University College, Oxford. Having taken his degrees, he was made prebendary of York in 1406, and the next year was junior proctor of the university. In 1409 he was appointed to the committee of twelve censors who were commissioned to examine the writings of John Wycliffe and determine the heretical ideas they contained. Later that year he was accused of supporting some of Wycliffe's errors in a public disputation, for which he incurred the censure of Archbishop Arundel. Fleming must have either been exonerated or renounced his supposed heresy because he was still a member of the committee of censors when its list of Wycliffe's errors was published in 1411.

Before 1415 he was instituted to the rectory of Boston in Lincolnshire. He attending the Council of Constance from late 1416 to early 1418 where he delivered a number of sermons which survive. He was nominated to the see of Lincoln by papal provision on 20 November 1419 and on 28 April 1420 he was consecrated as bishop of Lincoln^[1] by Martin V in Florence. In 1428–1429 he attended the Council of Pavia/Siena and, in the presence of the pope, reportedly made an eloquent speech in vindication of the rights of the English "nation" and in support of papal authority against the more radical proponents of conciliarism; this sermon apparently does not survive. It was probably on this occasion that he was named chamberlain to the pope.

In February of 1424, the see of York being vacant, the pope conferred it on Fleming; but the regency council of the young king Henry VI refused to confirm the appointment, and Fleming resigned the appointment in July of 1425.^[2] In 1427, Fleming obtained a royal licence empowering him to found a college at Oxford for the special purpose of training theologians to combat Wycliffe's heresy. To Bishop Fleming was entrusted the execution of the decree of the Council of Constance for the exhumation and burning of Wycliffe's remains, though Fleming delayed fulfilling this duty for over a decade. He died at Sleaford, Lincolnshire, in January 1431. Although his foundation of Lincoln College, Oxford was incomplete at the time of his death, the college's future was eventually secured and Fleming's manuscript books became the core collection of the collegiate library.^[3]

Notes

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• Fryde, E. B.; Greenway, D. E.; Porter, S.; Roy, I. (1996). Handbook of British Chronology (Third Edition, revised ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56350-X.