Bishop’s Lynn (as it was known, only becoming King’s Lynn in the reign of Henry VIII in 1537) was one of the most prosperous towns and ports in medieval England. The town was home to these important characters.

Margery Kempe

Margery Kempe was a mystic, visionary and pilgrim. She was born about 1373, the daughter of a successful and influential Lynn merchant. Following her marriage and the birth of her first child (the first of 14), she had frequent visions of Christ and conversations with Our Lady and other saints. She was extraordinary in many ways, and travelled widely, including making pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago di Compostela. So concerned was she for her parish church that when fire was destroying the nearby Hall of the Trinity Guild (1421) and threatened to burn down St Margaret’s, she encouraged the parish priest to raise the Holy Sacrament (consecrated Host) before the fire, as she prayed with loud weeping; soon after, she gave praise to God when snow came down, miraculously dousing the conflagration.

She was accused of heresy, but defended herself from this charge, was granted the ‘gift of tears’, and finally had her life story written down in her own words, the first autobiography in English. One of the most intriguing aspects is her ordinariness. She was a middle-class woman from a prosperous town. The experiences of people like this rarely survive from the Middle Ages, and it is the unashamed honesty and earthiness of Margery’s Book that has captivated readers since the discovery of the only surviving manuscript of her work in 1934. Had it not been for this chance discovery, we would have little sense of this woman and her astonishing life nor the insights into the domestic life of the time that she reveals. There is a bench in her name on the Saturday Market Place which was commissioned by the Civic Society.

William Sawtre

William Sawtre was a priest at St Margaret’s who endorsed Lollard beliefs. He rejected the prayers of the saints, the need for priests and disputed Christ’s presence in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. This was considered to be undermining the teaching of the Church and the faith of ordinary people, and as adherents grew, Church authorities felt strong action had to be taken. Interrogation and encouragement to recant was pursued, but the national unrest caused by Lollard views led to Parliament passing a bill whereby the unrepentant could be executed. William Sawtre was held to be in error and on the order of the Bishop of Norwich, induced to recant and to publicly renounce his erroneous teaching, which he did in the church of the Hospital of St John the Baptist here in Lynn. However, on leaving Lynn and moving to London, he again expounded Lollard views, and in consequence was burnt to death at Smithfield in February 1401; the first so punished in England.

Friar Nicholas de Lenne

Born in Lynn and member of the Carmelite community, he moved to Oxford and developed a great reputation for his scientific work, notably in publication of a Kalendarium of astronomical tables. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote very approvingly of this work and made much use of it and refers to the friar as ‘that reverend clerk, frere Nicholas de Lenn.’ Later claims that Nicholas was the Franciscan who voyaged to Iceland and reputedly discovered the Americas are now questioned. He died in 1369.

Prior John Capgrave

He was born in Lynn about 1393 and lived in the town for most of his life, although he studied theology in London and Cambridge, and lectured at Oxford University. John joined the Augustinian Order in c.1410 and was ordained 1416/17. By 1446, he had become Prior of the Friary in Lynn, and as subsequent Provincial of his Order had responsibility for 41 friaries throughout England. He was author of 45 works, including assembling the first comprehensive collection of the lives of English saints. In addition, he wrote Biblical commentaries, historical works, including The Chronicles of England and the Illustrious Henries; as well as The Solace of Pilgrims, a pilgrim’s guide to Rome completed shortly after his own pilgrimage there in 1450. He is reckoned to have been one of medieval England’s most prolific authors. John died in Lynn in 1464.

Master Allan

Master Allan of Lynn (?1348–1421 or 1428) was described by Margery Kempe as ‘a worshipful doctor of divinity, named Master Aleyn, a White Friar’. Master Allan is said to have been born in Lynn and obtained his doctorate at Cambridge. He is believed to be the prodigious contemporary compiler of indexes to religious works, and, if that is so, Anthony Goodman in Margery Kempe and her World says ‘Margery had as one of her mentors one of the most diligent and learned scholars among the religious of England of his day’. He is almost certainly the ‘Master Aleyn’ who was associated with the leper Hospital of St Mary Magdalene in Gaywood. Margery says he ‘informed her in questions of scripture when she would ask him’. For a while he was forbidden by his superiors to associate with her, but when he fell ill during this time, she ‘ran into the choir’ at St Margaret’s and knelt before the Sacrament to pray for his recovery. He did recover and in time they were allowed to resume their friendship.

Prior Spynke

William Spynke was appointed Prior at St Margaret’s Priory in 1480 after some years as Prior at Great Yarmouth. Like all his fellows at St Margaret’s Priory, he was a monk of Norwich Cathedral Priory and when he left in 1490, it was to become Prior at the Cathedral Priory itself. During his time in Lynn, St Margaret’s chancel clerestory was rebuilt in its present form, but his major innovative project was the foundation of the pilgrim Chapel of St Mary on the Mount, known today as Red Mount Chapel and still a major feature of The Walks, built as the official start of the overland pilgrimage to Walsingham. Although the precise character of what visiting pilgrims would see there is still imperfectly known, an early 16th-century Norwich will gave funding for a pilgrimage to it and certainly its offertory box provided a much needed source of income for St Margaret’s Priory for a number of years until the Reformation.

Geoffrey Chaucer

We learn from a 16th-century manuscript in Norwich library that Lyn had the honour to present the world With GEOFFREY CHAUCER, Capgrave and the Curled Pate Allanus de Lenna, John Berstone, John Thompson, Thomas Lambe and did afford The court a jester, Hugh of Lyn was he All famous in thyre time, Lyn, nursed by thee.
A tradition that still lingers in King’s Lynn is that it was the birthplace of Geoffrey Chaucer. In Chaucer for Schools (1881), Mrs H R Haweis writes that ‘Chaucer lived in London. Whether he was born there or at Lynn in Norfolk, with which city and county his family were connected is not known.’ Alfred Allan Kern, The Ancestry of Chaucer (1906), writes ‘The poet may well have been born in Lynn while his father, who came from a family of Collectors and Customs Officers at Ipswich, London and elsewhere was temporarily stationed there.’