St Peter's Church, Gunby

Gunby in Lincolnshire is better known for its historic hall; St Peter's Church sits in its grounds while independent of its grander neighbour. Although subject to the usual disadvantages of Victorian ‘restoration', some of its original features managed to survive, including some early fifteenth-century brasses. One depicts a knight, a denizen of the hall, while the other, unusually, is dressed as a lawyer, and commemorates ‘Judqe William Lodynton’, who died in 1420. This places him in the early years of the Lancastrian kings, Henrys IV and V. As the former had effectively usurped the throne from his cousin, Richard II, his grip on the crown was always less than he would have liked; his heir’s near-conquest of France kept him safely in power, but his grandson, Henry VI, was weak and the Wars of the Roses consequently began on his watch.

One of the Lancastrians’ strategies to keep hold of power involved wooing the Church, for whose benefit was passed The Suppression of Heresy Act (1414), which was an extension of the of De Heretico Comburendo of 1401, which allowed the burning of heretics. In the England of the early 1400s, this meant evangelical Lollards. The Lancastrians gained (or retained) support of the Church and managed to rule for the best part of the century before the house of York removed them. It is therefore possible that our ‘Judqe William Lodynton’, sitting in the Court of King's Bench, was involved in the prosecution of evangelical Christians, who, with John Wycliffe’s help, had read the scriptures in their own English tongue and found the Church of Rome wanting. How would such a one fare when he stood before the Great Judge, from whom no secrets are hidden, and whose people the courts of England condemned to roasting and frying?

God knows.

And now, ye kings, understand; ye that deem the earth, be ye learned. Serve ye the Lord with dread; and make ye full out joy to him with trembling. Take ye lore of chastising; lest the Lord be wroth sometime, and ye perish from the just way. When his wrath shall burn out in short time; blessed be all they, that trust in him.

Psalm 2:1-12, Wycliffe’s translation

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