A HISTORY OF NORFOLK 



was consecrated on the same day at Gloucester. He died 28 April, 141 3, but 

 of his own acts during the time he held the bishopric (less than six years) 

 there is little recorded but that he made a composition with the town of 

 Lynn, 20 May, 141 2,' that he spent considerable sums in repairing manors, 

 &c., belonging to the bishops, and that during his administration several 

 churches and moieties of churches were united on the plea of the poverty of 

 the parishioners. There is, however, abundant evidence of the trend of 

 events in his diocese during his time. In July, 141 !,■ the bishop of Ely 

 received a mandate to deal with William Denys, a friar preacher, S.T.M., of 

 whom the bishop of Norwich had complained that he had not scrupled 

 falsely to assert that the bishop was ignorant and unworthy to rule his church, 

 and that very many heresies and errors had multiplied in the city and diocese 

 with the authorization of the bishop ; also that he had, evilly blaspheming 

 the bishop, affirmed him to be a betrayer of Catholic truth, and contemner 

 of the mandates of the apostolic see, a violator of ecclesiastical immunity, and 

 of the laws of the church. In March, 141 2,* the bishop himself received a 

 mandate from the pope, setting forth that he had heard that in almost all the 

 churches of England, and especially in the diocese of Norwich, it had hitherto 

 been the lawful and immemorial custom of the parishioners on Sundays and 

 other holidays to offer to their rectors and perpetual vicars a penny, with a 

 request to the same to pray for their own souls and the souls of their friends 

 and benefactors deceased, and to celebrate mass, &c. ; and that now, a number of 

 persons, pining with envy, strove to draw back the parishioners, to the injury 

 of the rectors, &c., asserting that the latter are bound to pray and celebrate 

 such masses for nothing, so that they received their pence unjustly, and thereby 

 committed mortal sin ; and he was commanded to admonish these backsliders to 

 desist from their perverse dogmas, compelling by ecclesiastical censure without 

 appeal. Protest also at last grew loud against the continued appropriation of 

 parish churches by religious houses, and in April, 141 2,* a mandate to the 

 bishop of Norwich records the petition of a number of parishioners of parish 

 churches in his diocese, setting forth that religious, exempt and non-exempt, 

 and others to whom the said churches had by papal and ordinary authority 

 been united and appropriated, had obtained from the apostolic see privileges 

 enabling them without consulting the diocesans to let to farm the said 

 churches to any persons, even laymen, to their own advantage or rather their 

 rapacity ; and that they had thus let very many of such churches to laymen 

 who ruled and held possession, took the oblations from the altar, lorded it 

 over the clerks and persons deputed to sacred functions, dilapidated the 

 churches' goods, and committed many excesses, whereby the devotion of the 

 parishioners grew feeble. The bishop was commanded to take what measures 

 appeared to him expedient. Shortly after he received more explicit orders in 

 another mandate ^ which stated that since in very many parish churches in 

 his diocese appropriated to religious houses, which had assigned portions to 

 perpetual vicars, the fruits of the vicarages had so much diminished that 

 no priests or clerks were to be found willing to be instituted, whereby the 

 cure of souls was not duly exercised, hospitality was not kept, and divine 



' Hist. MSS. Com. Ref>. xi, App. iii, 194. This was revoked 2 June 4 Hen. V, by an instrument for the 

 re-establishment of the ancient constitutions and customs for the election of officers in Lynn. 



' Cal. Papal Letters, vi, 199. ' Ibid. 207. * Ibid. 310. ' Ibid, vi', 311, April, 1412. 



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