Clive Burgess obituary

My friend Clive Burgess, who has died aged 71, was an authority on late medieval religious practices and beliefs in England.

Over the years he had a number of lecturing and research posts in a range of organisations, mainly at Royal Holloway, University of London, where in 2005 he was appointed as a permanent lecturer in medieval history. He remained there until his retirement as a reader in 2019, and was subsequently made professor emeritus.

He was also a regular participant at the Harlaxton Medieval Symposium, an international multidisciplinary conference on the middle ages at which, in 2019, he was presented with a volume of essays in his honour. In retirement he continued his research and writing, most recently studying the religious patronage of Dick Whittington, lord mayor of London in the late 14th and early 15th centuries.

Clive was born in Chatham, Kent, the second son of Frank, a mechanical engineer, and Kathleen (nee Henshall), a secretary. Growing up in nearby Strood with his elder brother, Keith, he attended Sir Joseph Williamson’s Mathematical school in Rochester, after which he gained a history degree at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1974.

He remained at Corpus to undertake postgraduate research on the records of the parish of All Saints in Bristol – a rich archive that helped him to build up an extraordinarily detailed picture of religious life there in the last century before the Reformation. That work formed the basis not only of his 1982 doctorate, but of a long period of research and writing that culminated in his 2018 book The Right Ordering of Souls.

Clive’s academic achievements were matched by his steadfastness as a colleague, teacher and friend. He was warm-hearted, wise and kind, a wordsmith with a keen mind and a ready wit, never happier than when leading friends on one of his famous “church crawls” or putting the world to rights over dinner. He had an eclectic taste in music that ranged from Mozart to Dusty Springfield and the Rolling Stones.

He is survived by his sister-in-law, Barbara, and his niece, Alex.