A HISTORY OF NORFOLK 



the bishop of Norwich, in association with his friend Hubert Walter, 

 exhibited extraordinary energy in raising money for the king's ransom, and 

 when Richard died he took, part in the coronation of King John at West- 

 minster. He himself died 2 June, 1200, and was buried in his own cathedral 

 on the north side of the presbytery.^ All that we read of his doings 

 in his bishopric amount to very little. He is said to have restored the 

 ravages of the fire in the cathedral, and to have rebuilt the church of the 

 Holy Trinity at Ipswich. The diocese must have been left to the arch- 

 deacons to administer as they would. No one of these appears to have been 

 a man of mark. The bishop is credited with being the patron of Daniel of 

 Morley (near Wymondham) a man of genius and enthusiasm for mathematical 

 studies, in the pursuit of which he passed his life. 



The episcopate of John of Oxford is chiefly memorable as marking the 

 beginning of that period of conflict between the monastic order and the 

 bishops which brought about an almost absolute collapse of ecclesiastical 

 order and discipline in England.^ The mischievous appeals to Rome on 

 every frivolous pretext put the bishops to expense wholly disproportionate to 

 that incurred by the appellants, who in most cases had little to lose and 

 everything to gain by vexatious litigation. Hence the hands of the bishops 

 were tied, and their authority in their several dioceses could but tend to 

 diminish. The old Benedictine houses, with their traditions always aiming 

 at exemption from episcopal visitation and their documents to bring into 

 court, sometimes genuine but just as often spurious, were the chief offenders ; 

 while the parochial clergy, as they always have been, were quite incapable of 

 combining for mutual support and co-operation; and the wholesale spoliation 

 of the country benefices by the abominable process of appropriating the tithes 

 of the parishes for the enrichment of the monasteries, went on steadily until 

 the general feeling of the community when it was too late revolted from 

 what had become robbery on a large scale. At starting the new monastic 

 orders, and especially the Cistercians, would have nothing to do with the 

 impropriations, but they soon yielded to the tempters, and the lust of self- 

 aggrandizement was not to be resisted. 



Scarcely three weeks elapsed after the death of John of Oxford when 

 another John, sometimes designated as John II, was appointed to succeed. 

 This was John de Grey, a scion of an ancient and illustrious house, who was 

 himself a Norfolk man, and had been associated with Hubert Walter in 

 many an active service done to the king his master. The new bishop was 

 a ' mere creature of King John,'' but he was true to the king through all his 

 career. He was consecrated at Westminster Abbey 22 June, 1200. For 

 some reason of his own he seems to have had no desire to take up his 

 residence in close proximity to the Norwich priory, and he built for himself 

 a great house at Gaywood, near Lynn, then a flourishing port which the 

 bishop spent large sums in raising to importance. Lynn became a free 

 borough with more than one royal charter to ensure its prosperity, but very 

 little to boast of in the shape of any ecclesiastical foundation or endowment. 

 Whatever Bishop John II may have intended during the first two or three 

 years of his episcopate, it is certain that he was hardly in his diocese at 



' Anthony Bek's Book (MS.) in the Archives of Lincoln Cathedral. 



* The writings of John of Oxford named by Pits appear to have perished. ' Norgate, John Lackland, 130. 



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