ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



Peckham on Mid-Lent Sunday, 20 March, 1288, at Canterbury.^ The 

 monks were publicly commended on his election for their good manage- 

 ment, and honest, regular course of life, but though their choice found 

 favour in high quarters, it was most unpopular with the county, where ' all 

 with one consent cursed the whole convent and especially the electors.'^ It is 

 not easy to understand his unpopularity, especially in view of his subsequent 

 manly defence of his order against the excessive taxation of the king ; but his 

 disinterestedness in relinquishing (at the persuasion of the assiduous reformer, 

 Peckham) the firstfruits, of which Bishop Pandulf had obtained a grant from 

 the pope, must have done something to mitigate the feeling against him ; he 

 gave further proofs of generosity by his endowments to ' the scholars established 

 in Cambridge,' in 1290.' 



He showed great activity in his diocese, where he conducted a visitation 

 in his first year,* and when in 1291, a synod of clergy was called to discuss 

 the new crusade proclaimed by Pope Nicholas IV, and the bishops were asked 

 to deliberate concerning the measures to be taken for recovering the Holy 

 Land, he was able to state that there were no powerful discords in his diocese, 

 at the same time that he asked consideration for Norfolk on the ground of 

 its finding the payment of tenths for six years an extremely heavy burden.* 



This grant for defraying the expenses of a crusade had been made in 

 1288, but the taxation begun then was not finished until 1291. It is known as 

 Pope Nicholas's Taxation," and is a most important record, as all taxes, both 

 to the king and the pope, were regulated by it until the survey made in 26 

 Hen. VIII. But Norfolk is particularly rich in records of church property 

 at this period, as the taxation of Bishop Walter de Suffield of 1253-4 ^ gives 

 a very valuable list of the benefices in each deanery of the diocese, with their 

 values, and a much more complete account of the city of Norwich than the 

 taxation of 1291. There is also in the bishop's registry at Norwich a large 

 folio volume called the Norwich Domesday Book,* containing about a thousand 

 pages exquisitely illustrated on vellum, which gives a survey of all the parishes 

 of the diocese, with their temporalities and spiritualities, and those of the 

 religious houses as well. Some recent authorities consider it to have been 

 written as early as 1300, but from internal evidence it would seem to have 

 been written as late as the fifteenth century. 



The taxation of Bishop Walter gives the very large total of 782 churches 

 in Norfolk. The taxation of Pope Nicholas gives the combined assessed value of 

 temporalities and spiritualities in both archdeaconries as ^Ti 3,255 5J. 4J^., and 

 the value of temporalities as _^8,78i 12s. jd. The bishop's property is taxed 

 at 1,000 marks. The list of benefices is less complete than that in the previous 

 taxation, the numbers being 317 in the archdeaconry of Norwich, and 406 

 in the archdeaconry of Norfolk. One of the most interesting points in this 

 taxation is the large amount of property held in the county by religious 

 houses, worth in all ^(^4,439 6j. \\d. 



A very large number of churches were appropriated to religious houses, 

 in which case they were sometimes served by members of the houses to which 



' Oxenedes, op. cit. (Rolls Ser.), 272. ' Earth, de Cotton, De Rege Edtuardo I (Rolls Ser.), 169. 



' Pat. 18 Edw. I, m. 20. * Earth, de Cotton, De Rege Edtoardo I (Rolls Ser.), 172. 



' Ibid. ' Pope Nkh. Tax. (Rec. Com.). 



' Harl. MS. 1005. ' Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. I. App. i, 87. 



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