Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lyndwood, William
LYNDWOOD, WILLIAM (1375?–1446), civilian, canonist, and bishop of Hereford, son of John Lyndwood of Lyndwood (now Linwood), near Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, by Alice his wife, was born at Lyndwood probably about 1375. His name is variously spelt Lyndewode, Lindewood, Lyndwood, and Lindwood. He was educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and was a fellow of Pembroke Hall, but removed to Oxford, where he graduated LL.D. Having taken holy orders he was preferred to the rectory of Walton-on-the-Wolds, Leicestershire, which he resigned in 1409. On 23 Feb. 1411-12 he was collated to the prebend of Ruscomb in the church of Salisbury; on 1 Aug. 1414 he was appointed Archbishop Chichele's official of the court of Canterbury, and in 1417 he was licensed to preach in Latin and English. On 9 Oct. 1418 he was collated to the rectory of Allhallows, Bread Street, London, and in the following year to the prebend of Taunton, to that of Hunderton in the church of Hereford on 13 Nov. 1422, and on 3 May 1424 to that of Bishopstone in the church of Salisbury. As official of Canterbury he took an active part in the persecution of William Claydon and William Taylor [q. v.] the lollards [see Chichele, Henry]. He was the chosen representative of the clergy in the synods held at London to discuss the relations of the clergy with the crown in 1419, 1421, 1424, and 1425, all of which exhibited an extremely niggardly spirit in the matter of tenths. In 1425 he visited Oxford with a commission from Chichele to discover and correct 'heretical pravity' of opinion and practice. In the following year he was made dean of the arches, in 1433 rector of Wimbledon and archdeacon of Oxford, and in 1434 archdeacon of Stow in the church of Lincoln.
As the associate of Henry Ware, keeper of the privy seal, afterwards bishop of Chichester, in the negotiation at Calais of a prolongation of the truce with John, duke of Burgundy, Lyndwood began in July 1417 what proved a distinguished career in the public service. In 1422 he was sent with Thomas, baron of Carreu, to Portugal, to negotiate a subsidiary treaty with that country. In the following year he accompanied Bishop Kemp, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, on his mission to France [see Kemp or Kempe, John]. He had already begun the composition of his great compendium of canon law, called the 'Provinciale' or 'Provincial Constitutions,' but its progress was much retarded by his multifarious official duties. He was one of the negotiators of the truce with Spain, signed 8 Nov. 1430, and was appointed secondary in the office of privy seal the same year; he supplied the place of the chancellor John Kemp, then archbishop of York and in ill-health, at the opening of parliament on 12 Jan. 1430-1, when he preached a many-headed sermon on the blessings of unity from 1 Chron. xxii. 10. He was also one of the councillors in attendance on the young king (Henry VI) in France in the following summer. On the assembling of the council of Basel (1433) he published as king's proctor a formal protest against aught that might be done in derogation of the rights of the king of England, and a little later another protest against the change in the method of voting recently made at the council. In March 1432-3 he presided over a commission for adjusting certain differences with the Duke of Brittany, and the same year was sworn of the privy council and appointed keeper of the privy seal. In June 1435 he was employed on a mission to the dauphin. He was one of the plenipotentiaries at the congress of Arras, July-September following, and was one of the negotiators of a treaty of amity and commerce with the Teutonic knights and the Hanseatic league, dated 22 March 1436-7; of a treaty providing for a truce of nine years with the Scots, dated 20 March 1437-8, and of two subsidiary treaties concluded on 12 Dec. 1439 with the Bishop of Münster and the Count of Mark respectively. He was also one of the commissioners, appointed 4 Feb. 1438-9, to negotiate a treaty of amity with the Archbishop of Cologne, and his name appears in two other commissions of a diplomatic nature, one of 24 Dec. 1439 for prolonging the truce with Flanders, the other, dated 14 July 1441, for negotiating a commercial treaty with Holland, Zealand, and Friesland. He stood high in favour with Henry VI, who in a letter to Pope Eugenius IV, dated 2 July 1438, commended him as a paragon of virtue for the see of Hereford when it should be vacant.
Henry borrowed money from Lyndwood, and suffered his official salary to fall into arrear; but on the death in 1442 of Thomas Rodburn, bishop of St. Davids, Lyndwood was nominated by the pope to the vacant see, received the temporalities on 14 Aug., and was consecrated in St. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster, on 21 Oct. In the debate in the council of 6 Feb. 1442–3, on the question whether Guienne, to which it was proposed to send the Earl of Somerset as captain-general, should be relieved before Normandy, where the Duke of York was in command, Lyndwood gave the cautious advice that ‘both should be relieved, if that it might, and else that that had the greatest need.’ The decision of the council to relieve Guienne at once, and meanwhile leave York to shift for himself, was one of the causes of the subsequent civil strife.
In concert with Beckington Lyndwood took an active part in promoting the foundation of Eton College, and on 9 June 1443 he was placed on the commission for framing statutes for the king's new foundation at Cambridge (King's College). He retained the office of keeper of the privy seal until shortly before his death, which took place on 21 Oct. 1446.
By his will, printed in ‘Archæologia,’ xxxiv. 418–20, Lyndwood directed his body to be buried in St. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster, and his book on the provincial constitutions to be chained there. As a chantry was founded in 1455 in the crypt of St. Stephen's Chapel for the benefit of Lyndwood's soul, it is extremely probable that his body was buried there, though the precise spot has not been determined. In the course of some operations in the crypt in January 1852 the body of a man about seventy years old, in good preservation, having a crozier of fifteenth-century workmanship laid diagonally across it from shoulder to foot, was discovered in a cavity under the seat in the easternmost window on the north side of the building, and, after inspection by a committee of the Society of Antiquaries (cf. their report in Archæologia, vol. xxxiv. art. xxxii.), was with great probability identified with that of Lyndwood, though the place where it was found cannot have been his original resting-place. The body was afterwards (6 March) reinterred in the north cloister of Westminster Abbey. To the Cambridge University Library he bequeathed a commentary on Justinian's code and a copy of Bartoli's gloss on the ‘New Digest,’ i.e. Justinian's ‘Digest,’ lib. xxxix–l. Both works appear in a catalogue of the University Library, compiled about 1470 (cf. Bradshaw, Collected Papers, Cambr. Univ. Press, 1889, p. 44, Nos. 172 and 183). The Bartoli has since disappeared, but the Codex is identified as Dd. vii. 17 (private information from the librarian).
The ‘Provinciale’ is a digest in five books of the synodal constitutions of the province of Canterbury from the time of Stephen Langton to that of Henry Chichele, accompanied by an explanatory gloss in unusually good Latin, and is the principal authority for English canon law. It was completed, with an elaborate ‘Tabula compendiosa,’ or index, bearing the quaint signature ‘Wilhelmus de Tylia nemore,’ in 1433, and was printed at Oxford, without title-page, date, or name of place or printer, about 1470–80. An edition without the gloss, entitled ‘Constitutiones Provinciales Ecclesie Anglicane per d. Wilhelmum Lyndewode utriusque iuris doctorem edite,’ appeared, with Caxton's cipher and Wynkyn de Worde's colophon, at Westminster in 1496, 8vo, and was reprinted with slight variations in 1499, 8vo, 1508, 16mo, 1517, 16mo, and 1529, 16mo. Other editions, similarly abridged, but with supplements containing the constitutions of Cardinals Otho, legate to Pope Gregory IX, and Othobonus (Ottoboni, afterwards Pope Adrian V), and the gloss of John Acton [q.v.] , have Pynson's cipher, but neither title-page nor date, and are assigned to the first decade of the sixteenth century, London, 8vo. Another is by Redman, London, 1534, 8vo; and yet another by Marshe, London, 1557, 8vo, with the title ‘Constitutiones Angliæ Provinciales ex diversis Cantuariensium Archiepiscoporum Synodalibus decretis per Guilielmum [sic] Lyndewode Anglum iam olim collectæ,’ &c. A folio edition of the entire work, text, gloss, and supplement, appeared at Paris (A. Bocard) in 1501, under the title ‘Provinciale, seu Constitutiones Anglie. Cum summariis atque iustis annotationibus, honestis characteribus, summaque accuratione rursum expresse,’ and was reprinted with slight variations at Paris in 1502, 1505, and 1506, and at Antwerp in 1520 and 1525, the last edition being published at London by Bryckman. A later edition, abridged by Dr. Sharrock of New College, Oxford, ‘cum selectioribus Linwodi annotationibus,’ appeared at Oxford in 1664, 8vo, and was followed in 1679 by a complete edition, entitled ‘Provinciale (seu Constitutiones Angliæ), continens Constitutiones Provinciales quatuordecim Archiepiscoporum Cantuariensium, viz.: a Stephano Langtono ad Henricum Chicheleium: cum summariis atque eruditis annotationibus summa accuratione denuo revisum atque impressum. Cui adjiciuntur Constitutiones Legatinæ D. Othonis et D. Othoboni Cardinalium et Sedis Apostolicæ in Anglia Legatorum. Cum Profundissimis Annotationibus Johannis de Athona Canonici Lincolniensis,’ Oxford, fol. An English translation, with the title ‘Constitutions Provincialles, and of Otho and Octhobone,’ appeared at London (Redman), 1534, 12mo. For manuscripts of the ‘Provinciale’ see Coxe's ‘Cat. MSS. Bibl. Bodl.’ pt. ii. 608, pt. iv. 337, pt. v. A 380, C 664; Hist. MSS. Comm. 2nd Rep. App. p. 146, 3rd Rep. App. p. 181; Harl. MS. 224; Gonville and Caius MSS. 157, 222, 262; Cambr. Univ. Libr. MS. Dd. vii. 14. Some other works, now apparently lost, are ascribed to Lyndwood by Bale and Pits.
[Leland's Comm. de Scriptt. Brit. cap. dxxxv.; Gough's Sepulchral Mon. vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 52; Bale's Script. Brit. cent. vii. cap. lxxii.; Pits, De Illustr. Angl. Script.; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib.; Cooper's Mem. Cambr. i. 56, 90; Godwin, De Præsul. p. 583; Nichols's Leicestershire, vol. iii. pt. i. p. 499; Wood's Hist. and Antiq. Oxford, ed. Gutch, i. 569; Newcourt's Repertorium, i. 245, 443; Le Neve's Fasti Eccl. Angl. i. 297, ii. 66; Manning and Bray's Surrey, iii. 283; Wilkins's Concilia, iii. 389, 395, 404 et seq., 439, 442; Rymer's Fœdera, ed. Holmes, ix. x. xi. passim; Rot. Parl. iv. 367, v. 420, 434; Nicolas's Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, iii. 66, 82 et seq. passim, iv. 163; Wars of the English in France, Henry VI (Rolls Ser.), vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 431; Official Corresp. of Thomas Bekynton (Rolls Ser.); Duck's Life of Archbishop Chicheley (1699); Archæologia, xxxiv. 406 et seq.; Chester's Reg. Westm. Abbey (Harl. Soc.), p. 514; Chron. Angl. ed. Giles, pt. iv. p. 34; Wyrcester's Ann. Rer. Angl. ed. Leland, anno 1446; Cat. MSS. Bibl. Bodl. pt. ix. p. 66; Cott. MS. Faustina, B. 8, f. 6 b; Add. MS. 32490, S. 25; Hist. MSS. Comm. 9th Rep. pt. i. App. p. 56; Stanley's Mem. Westm. Abbey; Ramsay's Lancaster and York, i. 468–70; Ames's Typ. Antiq. ii. 52, 539, iii. 225, iv. 497; Blades's Caxton, p. 22; Fuller's Worthies, ‘Lincolnshire;’ Brit. Mus. Cat.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.187
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| 340 | i | 19-20 | Lyndwood, William: for Hereford read St. Davids |
| 26 | for Gonville and Caius College read Gonville Hall |