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Leofwin (or Leofwine; died after 1071) was a medieval Bishop of Lichfield.

Appointed to the see by King Edward the Confessor of England, Leofwin was a monk before becoming a bishop. For a time, he was abbot of the abbey of Coventry as well as bishop, but he was no longer abbot at the time of the Norman Conquest of England. He may have owed his promotion to Lichfield to Leofric, Earl of Mercia and Leofric's family. He was consecrated in 1053, but he went overseas to be consecrated because of the irregular election of Archbishop Stigand of Canterbury. Around 1068, he was the recipient of a writ from King William I of England, which shows that he had accommodated himself to the Conquest. According to the Handbook of British Chronology, he died in 1067, but he continues to appear in documentary evidence, and most historians, such as Frank Barlow, believe that he was deprived of his see in 1070 and died sometime after that. He was a married bishop, and it appears that he was aware that he was unlikely to be allowed to retain his bishopric because of his marital status. He refused to appear at the council held in London on 7 April 1070, despite being summoned to answer charges for his marriage. He was condemned as contumacious in his absence, and a year later he officially resigned his see and retired to Coventry Abbey. The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc, had already denounced Leofwin's marriage. Leofwin was a nephew of Leofric, Earl of Mercia. The see of Lichfield remained vacant until 1072, when a successor was appointed.

Citations

1. Knowles Monastic Order p. 71 footnote 2
2. Knowles Monastic Order p. 111 footnote 4
3. Barlow English Church p. 109 footnote 3
4. Powell and Wallis House of Lords p. 13 footnote 8
5. Powell and Wallis House of Lords p. 14
6. Fryde, et al. Handbook of British Chronology p. 219
7. Barlow Feudal Kingdom of England p. 93
8. Huscroft Ruling England p. 45
9. Powell and Wallis House of Lords p. 34
10. ^ Douglas William the Conqueror p. 324
11. ^ Williams English and the Norman Conquest p. 45 footnote 3
12. Whitelock, D. (1986). Councils and Synods, with other documents relating to The English Church (vol. 1 ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 565.
13. Knowles Monastic Order p. 103

References

• Barlow, Frank (1979). The English Church 1000–1066: A History of the Later Anglo-Saxon Church (Second ed.). New York: Longman. ISBN 0-582-49049-9.
• Barlow, Frank (1988). The Feudal Kingdom of England 1042–1216 (Fourth ed.). New York: Longman. ISBN 0-582-49504-0.
• Douglas, David C. (1964). William the Conqueror: The Norman Impact Upon England. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
• Fryde, E. B.; Greenway, D. E.; Porter, S.; Roy, I. (1996). Handbook of British Chronology (Third revised ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56350-X.
• Huscroft, Richard (2005). Ruling England 1042–1217. London: Pearson/Longman. ISBN 0-582-84882-2.
• Knowles, David (1976). The Monastic Order in England: A History of its Development from the Times of St. Dunstan to the Fourth Lateran Council, 940–1216 (Second reprint ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-05479-6.
• Powell, J. Enoch; Wallis, Keith (1968). The House of Lords in the Middle Ages: A History of the English House of Lords to 1540. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. OCLC 463626.
• Williams, Ann (2000). The English and the Norman Conquest. Ipswich, UK: Boydell Press. ISBN 0-85115-708-4.

Further reading

• Franklin, M. J. (May 2009). "Leofwine (d. in or before 1095)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/95149. Retrieved 17 March 2011. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
• Lancaster, J. C. (1954). "The Coventry Forged Charters: A Reconsideration". Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research. 27: 113–140. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2281.1954.tb01130.x.

External links

• Leofwine 72 at Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England

• Bishops of Lichfield
• 11th-century deaths
• 11th-century English Roman Catholic bishops