The Lollard community of the Midlands city of Coventry, active between
at least the 1480s and the early 1520s, is among the most well-documented of
English heretical communities of the late Middle Ages. This is especially owing
to the survival of the Lichfield Court Book, a detailed record of the examinations,
depositions, abjurations, and sentences in a series of proceedings against the
city's heretical community in 1511–1512. The present volume offers both the
Latin original and an English translation of this fascinating document, together with
all other known evidence for heretical activities in Coventry in the late fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries. These documents (including the Lichfield Court Book itself)
derive mostly from the administrative records of the bishops of the diocese of
Coventry and Lichfield, but we have also included accounts of heresy prosecutions from
the Protestant martyrologist, John Foxe, and from Coventry's civic annals. The
largest part of this material has hitherto been available only in manuscript and, in
the case of the Lichfield Court Book, a manuscript difficult to read. Easy access to
the original Latin texts, along with an English translation, will help bring these
intriguing materials to a wider audience of scholars and students.