Lutterworth

Lutterworth, a market town in the Harborough parliamentary division of Leicestershire, England; 90 m. N.N.W. from London by the Great Central railway. Pop. (1901) 1734. It lies in a pleasant undulating country on the small river Swift, an affluent of the Avon. The church of St Mary is a fine building, mainly Decorated and Perpendicular, wherein are preserved relics of John Wycliffe, who was rector here from 1374 until his death in 1384. The exhumation and burning of his body in 1428, when the ashes were cast into the Swift, gave rise to the saying that their distribution by the river to the ocean resembled that of Wycliffe’s doctrines over the world. Wycliffe is further commemorated by a modern obelisk in the town. Trade is principally agricultural.