Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Leicester, Robert of
LEICESTER, ROBERT of (fl. 1320), Franciscan, was a protege of Richard Swinfeld, bishop of Hereford, to whom he dedicated some treatises on Jewish chronology in 1294. He was D.D. and in residence at Oxford in 1325; he was forty-eighth lecturer or regent master of the Franciscan schools about the same time or shortly before. In 1325 he was one of the two magistri extranet of Balliol College. The two masters, or visitors, were called upon to decide whether the statutes of the college allowed the members to attend lectures in any faculty except that of arts, and ordained, 'in the presence of the whole community, that it was not permissible. According to Bale, Robert died at Lichfield in 1348, but the statement lacks authority.
Digby MS. 212 (sec. xiv.) contains his three works on Hebrew chronology, written in 1294 and 1295. At Pembroke College, Cambridge (MS. 220), is 'Enchiridion pœnitentiale ... distinctionibus . . . Roberti de Leycester,' and others. Leland ascribes several other works to him which do not seem to be extant; among them is a treatise, 'De Paupertate Christi.'
[Digby MS. ut supra; Mon. Franciscana, i. 654; Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Hep. p. 443; Bale, v. 74.]