He was born of humble parents in Suffolk (according to the early 14th-century chronicler Nicholas Trevet), but the association with the village of Stradbroke is a post-medieval tradition.

There is no evidence that Grosseteste held any position in the households of William's successors, but it is possible that he was supported by Hugh Foliot, Archdeacon of Shropshire in the north of Hereford diocese.

Grosseteste's movements are not clear in the next two decades or so, but he seems to have spent some time in France during the years of the interdict over England (1208–14), and acted as a papal judge-delegate, in company with Hugh Foliot, in or around 1216.

However, the evidence for this comes from a late thirteenth century anecdote whose main claim is that Grosseteste was in fact entitled the master of students (magister scholarium).

His reasons were due to changing attitudes about the plurality of benefices (holding more than one ecclesiastical position simultaneously), and after seeking advice from the papal court, he tendered his resignations.

The scheme brought him into conflict with more than one privileged corporation, in particular with his own chapter, who disputed his claim to exercise the right of visitation over their community.

Dean William de Thornaco is recorded as being suspended by Bishop Grosseteste in 1239, together with precentor and subdean in relation to the aforementioned matter.

Of royal exactions he was more impatient; and, after the retirement of Archbishop (Saint) Edmund, constituted himself the spokesman of the clerical estate in the Great Council.

In 1251 he protested against a papal mandate enjoining the English clergy to pay Henry III one-tenth of their revenues for a crusade; and called attention to the fact that, under the system of provisions, a sum of 70,000 marks was annually drawn from England by the alien nominees of Rome.

In 1253, upon being commanded to provide in his own diocese for a papal nephew, he wrote a letter of expostulation and refusal, not to the pope himself but to the commissioner, Master Innocent, through whom he received the mandate.

There is much more reason for suspecting the letter addressed "to the nobles of England, the citizens of London, and the community of the whole realm", in which Grosseteste is represented as denouncing in unmeasured terms papal finance in all its branches.

From the Franciscan's letters it appears that the earl had studied a political tract by Grosseteste on the difference between a monarchy and a tyranny and that he embraced with enthusiasm the bishop's projects of ecclesiastical reform.

Grosseteste realised that the misrule of Henry III and his unprincipled compact with the papacy largely accounted for the degeneracy of the English hierarchy and the laxity of ecclesiastical discipline.

[21] In his analysis of Galatians and De cessatione legalium, citing Jerome he sets out his understanding of the status of the Old Law, and concludes that it had been "made void" by the resurrection of Christ, and that the Jewish faith was therefore heretical and blasphemous.

Matthew Paris for instance made this interpretation explicit, saying Grosseteste had exposed the deceit of the Jews to their "great confusion".

[25] Grosseteste began to study Hebrew as well as Greek, and although he may have lacked proficiency, spent considerable effort attempting to better understand the Psalms in their original language.

Grosseteste did introduce to the Latin West the notion of controlled experiment and related it to demonstrative science, as one among many ways of arriving at such knowledge.

[29] Drawing on these sources, Grosseteste produced important work in optics, which would be continued by Roger Bacon, who often mentioned his indebtedness to him although there is no proof that the two ever met.

In De Iride Grosseteste writes: This part of optics, when well understood, shows us how we may make things a very long distance off appear as if placed very close, and large near things appear very small, and how we may make small things placed at a distance appear any size we want, so that it may be possible for us to read the smallest letters at incredible distances, or to count sand, or seed, or any sort of minute objects.Editions of the original Latin text may be found in: Die Philosophischen Werke des Robert Grosseteste, Bischofs von Lincoln (Münster i. W., Aschendorff, 1912.

He argued that light is an infinitely small particle which was the first form of everything within the universe that multiplied itself indefinitely that resulted in a finite magnitude which was physical matter.

Grosseteste described the birth of the Universe in an explosion and the crystallisation of light into matter to form stars and planets in a set of nested spheres around Earth.

Supposed errors in his account have been found to be based on corrupt late copies of his essay on the nature of light, written in about 1225 (De Luce).

In 2014 Grosseteste's 1225 treatise De Luce was translated from Latin and interpreted by an interdisciplinary project led by Durham University, that included Latinists, philologists, medieval historians, physicists and cosmologists.

He was also a highly regarded author of manuals on pastoral care and produced treatises that dealt with a variety of penitential contexts, including monasteries, the parish and a bishop's household.

In 1242, having been introduced to the Greek work by John of Basingstoke, Grosseteste had the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs brought from Greece and translated it with help of a clerk of St Albans: for the strengthening of the christian [sic] faith and the confusion of the Jews [who were said to have deliberately hidden the book away] ... on account of the manifest prophecies of Christ contained therein.

Moreover, he did a lot of very interesting work on Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite's Celestial Hierarchy: he translated both the text and the scholia from Greek into Latin and wrote a commentary.

Its dedicatory plaque reads as follows: In this place lies the body of ROBERT GROSSETESTE who was born at Stradbroke in Suffolk, studied in the University of Paris – and in 1224 became the Chancellor of Oxford University where he befriended and taught the newly founded orders of Friars : In 1229 he became Archdeacon of Leicester and a Canon of this Cathedral – reigning as Bishop of Lincoln from 17th.

June 1235 until his death.He was a man of learning and an inspiration to scholars a wise administrator whilst a true shepherd of his flock, ever concerned to lead them to Christ in whose service he strove to temper justice with mercy, hating the sin while loving the sinner, not sparing the rod though cherishing the weak – He died on 8 October 1253.

[36] Upon his death, he was almost universally revered as a saint in England, with miracles reported at his shrine and pilgrims to it granted an indulgence by the bishop of Lincoln.

[36] But they see in him the pioneer of a literary and scientific movement; not merely a great ecclesiastic who patronised learning in his leisure hours, but the first mathematician and physicist of his age.