II - His Birth, Grammar and Philosophic Studies and Works.

Summary

This illustrious personage was born according to Bardney, at Stow in Lindsey, whether Stow in Hoyland, or Stow in Lindsey [sic] where St Hugh Bishop of Lincoln had a country seat, as we learn from Geraldus Cambrensis. Nevertheless Trivet, and Matthew of Westminster and after them, the curious and indefatigable Leland, bring him into the world at Stradbrook in Suffolk. The time of his birth is more uncertain than the place; but he being a man fit for business and who had completed his study of Arts, Physicks and Law before the year 1200, we may venture to place the epoch of his nativity about the year 1170, towards the end of the reign of King Henry II. All the authors just cited agree, as doth also Doctor Thomas Gascoigne, that Grossetete was of mean extraction according to the world, and we shall see presently that Grossetete himself was not ashamed to confess it. So that there seems but little grounds for Thoresby's opinion who makes him son of Ralph Copley one of the King's officers, by his wife Mary daughter and heiress of Sir Richard Walsingham of Suffolk. I would not however deny but his family name might be Copley for Grossetete's seems an accidental name. But whatever his family name might be it's clear his extraction was low. Nevertheless this lowness of his origin was abundantly compensated by the most exalted gifts of nature, and grace. Gifts ushered in with a peculiar favour of heaven and with one of those prophetick presages, which frequently attend the entrance of Great and Holy men into this lower world. Sometime before his birth his mother, if we believe Bardney, dreamt that she bore in her womb only a great head from which circumstance, verified in the greatness of his soul, and perhaps by that of the organ in which it was lodged, he seems to have derived his name of Grossetete, or Greathead. His pious mother dying while he was but a youth, gave him for last instruction, to seek God and true wisdom even above meat and drink. The docil Robert imbibed the lesson with an eagerness and fidelity equal to its excellence and as long as he lived he made it the rule of his actions and conduct. He had very soon an occasion to try his dispositions that way.