 Grosseteste was born into a humble Anglo-Norman family in the county of Suffolk in England.  He first appears in the historical record as a witness to a charter of the Bishop of Lincoln, written between 1189 and 1192.  His title of master of arts indicates that he had acquired sufficient learning to be entitled to teach.  Assuming that Grosseteste would therefore have been in his early twenties, Callus 1955 has suggested a birth date around 1168.  Around 1195, in a letter of recommendation to the Bishop of Hereford, William de Vere, Gerald of Wales commends Grosseteste for his wide reading and skill in business and legal affairs, medicine, and the liberal arts, and remarks on his exceptional standards of conduct.  Grosseteste appears as a witness to several of de Vere’s charters over the next few years, but disappears from the historical record after de Vere’s death in 1198. He reappears as a papal judge-delegate in Litchfield diocese before 1216 and in Hereford diocese between 1213 and 1216, acting with Hugh Foliot, Archdeacon of Shropshire. Grosseteste’s name reappears twice more in legal documents connected with Shropshire before 1227. For at least part of the years 1208 to 1213, when England was under papal interdict, Grosseteste was in France, for in a death-bed conversation reported by the chronicler Matthew Paris he recalls having seen and heard preaching in France Eustace of Flay, James of Vitry, Robert of Courson and the exiled Archbishop Steven Langton.  In 1225, while still a deacon, Grosseteste was presented by the Bishop of Lincoln, Hugh of Wells, to the living of Abbotsley; in 1229 he was made Archdeacon of Leicester and presented with a prebend in Lincoln Cathedral. In 1229/1230 Grosseteste accepted an invitation to become the first lecturer to the Oxford Franciscans.  In 1235 he was elected Bishop of Lincoln, a position he occupied until his death in 1253.