Adam Easton

Who was Adam Easton?

Adam Easton was an English Cardinal, born at Easton in Norfolk.

He joined the Benedictines at Norwich moving on to the Benedictine Gloucester College, Oxford where he became one of the most outstanding students of his generation, being especially proficient in Hebrew. He is known to have accompanied Simon Langham to Rome, then Montefiascone and Avignon and he held the post of socius in Langham's household. Being a man of learning and ability, he obtained a post in the Curia.

He was instrumental in the attack and subsequent condemnation of John Wycliff and supporting Catholic orthodoxy in England. He was made a Cardinal by Urban VI, on 21 September 1381. On 7 March 1381 or 1382, he was nominated Dean of York. He arranged Richard II and Anne of Bohemia's wedding coronation in the Abbey and probably composed the Liber Regalis. A document in the Abbey concerning the coronation offerings gives him as Cardinal of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. In 1385 he was imprisoned at Nocera in Campania by Urban on a charge of conspiring with five other cardinals against the pope and was deprived of his cardinalate and deanery. With his fellow captives he was dragged across Italy arriving at Genoa in autumn 1385. Here the others were put to death but Adam was spared through the personal intervention of Richard II.