Richard Rolle has been called ‘The Father of English Mysticism and it is to him we turn for the first introduction to mysticism in its strict sense among English writers. He was born some hundred years after the Ancren Riwle was written, and yet he is historically the first of the group of English mystics who experienced and wrote about the higher degrees of mystical prayer. Perhaps the greatest era of English sanctity had already passed when he was born in the last decade of the 13th century. There had been a succession of men and women from the time of Venerable Bede who had been led by the Spirit of God to transports of divine love and wisdom. But they had not been reflective in the way that the men of the 14th century were reflective so that the description of their lives does not enlighten later generations as to the nature of their prayer or their manner of reaching high degrees of contemplation. Rolle, amidst a profusion of Latin and English writings, did proclaim these hidden experiences, and his message was received with enthusiasm.