ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



and the prior of the cathedral monastery, that, as many persons belonging to 

 the parish churches appropriated to the cathedral were buried daily in the 

 church and cemetery of the Carmelites, to the considerable loss of the monks, 

 the friars should yield for the future one quarter of the offerings and profits 

 arising from these burials to the monastery ' in the same manner as the Friars 

 Preachers and Minors did.' But the papal sanction to them, repeatedly con- 

 firmed by Peckham, to hear confessions, with or without the leave of the parish 

 priest, was also a cause of great heartburning, and Bartholomew Cotton 

 describes its exercise by the Friars Minors of Yarmouth with much bitterness 

 in 1291.^ 



The part that Bishop Ralph de Walpole took in supporting Archbishop 

 Winchelsey's resistance to Edward I's excessive taxation of the clergy is the 

 most memorable of his public acts while he was connected with the diocese. 

 He granted the king a moiety of his benefices and goods in i 294,^ but when 

 in I 297 the demand for a fresh subsidy was laid before convocation just after 

 the bull known as Clericis laicos, forbidding the clergy to give a grant of aid 

 to the secular authorities, had been published by Boniface VIII, he, with the 

 archdeacon of Norfolk, was one of the deputation appointed to lay before 

 the king the position of the clergy.^ The king's reply was ' As you 

 have not kept faith with me, I am not bound to you in any wise.' 

 Although there can be no question as to the justifiability of the king's 

 objection to bulls which infringed civil rights, or of his assertion of the 

 duty incumbent on the clergy of contributing towards the defence of 

 the realm, and that for some time they had hardly borne their fair share 

 in this, yet Edward had now gone beyond what was possible in his 

 demands, and his next step, the outlawry of the clergy, was an altogether 

 unwarrantable one. Ralph de Walpole was one of the three bishops who 

 persisted in refusing the king's demands after Winchelsey had allowed 

 individual clerks to make a personal submission to the king's will,* and when 

 the king despatched agents to Norwich to summon the clergy to redeem 

 their lands and obtain the king's protection by payment of one-fifth, few 

 accepted the protection, and many neglected altogether to obey the mandate.^ 



The translation of Bishop Ralph to the bishopric of Ely was the 

 occasion of a direct affront to the king by Pope Boniface VIII. A dispute 

 having arisen over the election of the bishop of Ely, through the choice 

 of the monks having fallen on their prior, John Salmon, when the king 

 desired that his chancellor, John de Langton, should be elected,^ appeal was 

 made to the pope, who translated Bishop Ralph to Ely, and appointed John 

 Salmon bishop of Norwich, 29 June, 1299. Bishop Salmon's temporalities 

 were only restored to him 1 9 October, 1299, after he had made the most ample 

 apology to the king, in which he renounced the papal letters and those of the 

 archbishop conveying his appointment, as containing clauses prejudicial to 

 the king and his dignity, and declared that these had not been inserted by his 

 procurement.^ The affair was a costly one for Norwich. Bishop John had 

 to borrow 1 2,000 florins from the Florentine firm of Spini ' to meet his 



' De rege Edwardo (Rolls Ser.), App. 429. ' Pat. 22 Edw. I, m. 8. ' Wilkins, Condi ii, 220. 



* Rishanger, Chnn. (Rolls Ser.), 475. ' Bart, de Cotton, De Rege Eduiardo (Rolls Ser.), t,z\. 



^ Ann. U'igorn. (Rolls Ser.), iv, 542-3 ; Flores Hist. (Rolls Ser.), iii, 105-6. 

 ' Pat. 27 Edw. I, m. 8. 



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