Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, and Margery Kempe were three prominent figures associated with the development of Christian mysticism in England.

Richard Rolle, born in 1290, was an English hermit about whose early life we know little. Although he grew up in a poor farming family, he was sponsored for education at Oxford by the Archdeacon of Durham. At the age of 18, however, he dropped out of Oxford to live as a hermit, out of which grew a minis…