A HISTORY OF NORFOLK 



Bishop Percy's successor, Henry Despenser, is said to have stood alone 

 among the bishops in taking active steps to suppress Lollardy,^ which was 

 making rapid strides in the diocese of Norwich. He was the fourth son of 

 Hugh le Despenser the younger, and by his mother was descended from 

 Edward I ; he was by taste and education a soldier, and was promoted to the 

 see with small regard for spiritual fitness, but as a reward for military services, 

 for it was to his generalship as well as that of Sir John Hawkwood that 

 Pope Urban V owed his return to Rome in 1367. He was provided to the 

 see at Rome 3 April, 1370, being described in the bull as canon of Salisbury,' 

 and was consecrated in Rome on 20 April. With the monks of Norwich 

 Priory he was exceedingly unpopular. At Lynn, in 1377, an attempt to 

 have the mace carried before him, an honour reserved for the mayor, brought 

 him into collision with the townspeople, and his procession was set upon, and 

 wounded with arrows and missiles ; the quarrel went on until the sheriffs of 

 Norfolk and Cambridge intervened to settle it.* When, in 1381, the pea- 

 sants' rebellion spread to Norfolk, and the men of Thetford, Lynn, and 

 Yarmouth assembled before Norwich, and were joined by John Lister, the 

 captain of the Norwich men, the bishop was in Rutland. He hastened 

 back, however, with sword and helmet and coat of mail, at the head of eight 

 lances and a few other men, and made short work of the rioters. He 

 attended at the gallows at the execution of Lister, and his vigorous measures 

 in putting down the rebellion* made him generally hated in Norfolk. In 

 1382 a plot was organized to murder him, but the scheme was betrayed by 

 one of the conspirators, and the plotters were taken and beheaded.'' Next 

 year he was chosen by Urban V to lead a crusade against the followers of the 

 anti-pope Clement VII in Flanders, and the king ordered the crusade to be 

 published in England.* The campaign began with brilliant successes, but 

 ended in inglorious collapse, and the bishop was called to account in Parlia- 

 ment, his temporalities being seized into the king's hands. It was decided, 

 however, that his failure was due to the mutinous conduct of his officers, and 

 his temporalities were restored.'' He was one of the few who stood loyally 

 by Richard in 1399 ; in July of that year he was at Berkeley with the duke 

 of York, and when the duke came to terms he remained firm and suffered 

 imprisonment,* not being reconciled with the new king until the Parliament 

 of 1 40 1.' He died 23 August, 1406. 



One of his accusers in Parliament, 1384, had been Sir Thomas Erping- 

 ham, a Norfolk man of Lollard proclivities, and the bishop's hatred for 

 Lollards was notorious. Walsingham writes of him : — 



Be his name for ever blessed : he swore an oath and never regretted it that if any of that perverse 

 sect of Lollards should presume to preach in his diocese, he should be given to the fire or lose his 

 head. However great the number of that faction, never a one of them, knowing their man, was 

 willing to hurry into martyrdom, whence it came to pass that in his diocese faith and religion 

 remained inviolate. 



' Walsingham, Hist. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 189 ; Tfodigma Nrustriae (Rolls Ser.), 360. 



" Wharton, Jngl. Sacr. i, 415. ' Rymer, Foedera, iv, 4. 



* Chron. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), 306-8; Walsingham, Hut. An^. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 6-8 ; Knyghton (Rolls Ser.), 

 263-8. 



' Chron. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), 354 ; Walsingham, Hist. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 70. 



' Walsingham, Hist. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 76-8 ; Vpodigma Neustriae (Rolls Ser.), 336 &c. ; Rymer, 

 Foedera, iv, 157. 



■ Froissart, Chron. xii, 259. ' Chron. de Evesham (Rolls Ser.), 152. ' Stubbs, Const. Hist, of Engl iii, 306. 



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