Nicholas of Lynn

Nicholas of Lynn or Lynne, also known in Latin as Nicolas de Linna, was an English astronomer of the 14th century.

Life

Nicholas was born in the port of Bishop's Lynn (now called King's Lynn) in the English county of Norfolk. He was possibly born in 1330, although the confirmed details of his career suggest that a date closer to 1360 is more likely. According to the early 16th-century literary historian John Bale, Nicholas became a Carmelite friar and moved to the university town of Oxford, where he developed a reputation for his astronomical work. It survives in 16 manuscripts and one printed edition. Nicholas, however, was a Carmelite, not a Minorite, and if Hakluyt and Dee had read Bale (rather than apparently basing their identification on Chaucer's praise for Nicholas' work with astrolabes), they would have discovered an entry about a Franciscan friar named Hugh of Ireland, who wrote "a certain journey in one volume".