The story of Robert Grosseteste’s bishophood is the record of eighteen years’ unflinching battle with abuses in Church and State. From his enthronement as Bishop of Lincoln in 1235 till his death in 1253 Grosseteste is conspicuous as a reformer. Now it is the slackness of the clergy he is combatting, enforcing discipline on men and women who, vowed to religion, preferred an easier way of life. At another time he is maintaining the laws and liberties of the nation against Henry III., who with all his piety knew neither honesty nor truth in his sovereignty. Right on till the last year of his life Grosseteste is as vigorous in resisting papal encroachments on the English Church as he is in dealing with his clergy or with the king. As a reformer his work is threefold:--(1) The correction of current abuses in the Church. (2) Maintenance of justice under the misrule of Henry III. (3) Resistance to the aggressive claims of the papacy. With all this work, fighting enemies of England at home and abroad, Grosseteste is busy administering his enormous diocese of Lincoln--then the largest in the country, including as it did the counties of Lincoln, Leicester, Buckingham, Huntingdon, Northampton, Oxford and Bedford (Oxford and Peterborough were afterwards carved out of Lincoln)--and is found writing to and advising all manner of men, kings, nobles and peasants. Here is the character of Bishop Grosseteste as his contemporary, Matthew Paris, saw it, and Matthew was a monk, and the champion of the monks, and hated Grosseteste’s stern interference with monastic life:-- “He was an open confuter of both pope and king, the corrector of monks, the director of priests, the instructor of clerks, the support of scholars, a preacher to the people, a persecutor of the incontinent, the tireless student of the Scriptures, the hammer and despiser of the Romans. At the table of bodily refreshment he was hospitable, eloquent, courteous, pleasant and affable. At the spiritual table devout, tearful and contrite. In his episcopal office he was sedulous, venerable and indefatigable.” Six hundred years later the whirligig of time leaves this verdict of old Matthew Paris unreversed, and finds Grosseteste’s reputation enhanced.