Robert Mannyng - Upbringing

Upbringing

His name, Robert de Brunne, indicates that he came from the place then known as Brunne (Bourne, Lincolnshire), thirteen kilometres south of Sempringham, the site of the mother house of the Gilbertine Order. Both places lie on the western edge of the Lincolnshire fens. He entered the house in 1288, was trained there and moved to Cambridge, probably as part of his training. He was moved on to Sixhills1 priory at (TF1787) in the Lincolnshire Wolds near Market Rasen. He will have spent most of his life at Sempringham, despite the frequent modern assertion that he was a monk of Bourne Abbey. The latter was an Arrouasian house, later regarded as Augustinian.

This interpretation is supported by Mannyng's introduction to Handlyng Synne, in which he says that he had been at the abbey fifteen years: ten in the time of John Camelton (Hamilton) (the prior at Sempringham from c1298 to 1312), and five winters with Hamilton's successor, John Clyntone. However, he clearly retained an interest in the people of Bourne, as he addressed Handlyng Synne "to all Christian men under the sun and to good men of Bourne and specially ... the fellowship of Sempringham".