Robert Londe

Robert Londe (d. 1462), master of Newgate School, Bristol, and one of the town’s later medieval Irish population, from his tomb in St Peter’s Church.

Robert first appears in the records as a chaplain in St Peter’s parish in 1419. The following year he became warden of St Michael’s, or Bradeston’s, Chantry in Winterbourne. He left in 1425, and was employed at Newgate by September 1426, when the Bristol merchant Thomas Bewflour left him a small bequest in his will.

In 1430 Robert Londe had to buy a licence to remain in England when his fellow Irish were expelled by order of the king, Henry VI, and ten years later he was taxed as an alien, because of his Irish birth. He had lived in Bristol since at least 1419, and had attained the position of schoolmaster at Newgate by 1426; despite this, as far as royal officialdom was concerned, Robert was not a full subject of the king of England. By 1449 he may have taken the degree of Master of Grammar at Oxford or Cambridge.

In addition to Latin grammar, Robert may have had a particular interest in canon (church) law, since a book on this subject was listed in an inventory of the possessions of St John the Baptist Church (Broad St) in 1469, described as ‘given by Master Robert, sometime schoolmaster of this town’. Among his students may have been William Worcestre, the famous antiquarian, who was born in Bristol in 1415 and who wrote a detailed description of the town in 1480.

Robert’s brass gives his date of death as 23 February 1462.