ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



on bad terms with him and with another official, John Curat, and 

 ordered certain persons to pay their dues to himself and not to Wolsey.' 

 In 1529 he wrote to Wolsey of his distress at his displeasure and asked 

 for an opportunity of answering ' any grudge you may have conceived 

 against me.'^ 



He seems to have been always against innovators in his diocese ; 

 according to Foxe, Thomas Norrice was burnt at Norwich 31 March, 1501 ;* 

 Thomas Ayers, a priest of Norwich, at Eccles, in 15 10, and Thomas Bingey 

 at Norwich in 151 1. Writing in 1530, the bishop said that the gentlemen 

 and commonalty in his diocese were not greatly infected, but only the 

 merchants and those who lived near the sea, and he referred with much 

 bitterness to ' a college at Cambridge called " Gunwell Haule," founded by 

 a bishop of Norwich,' saying that he heard of ' no clerk, who had lately 

 come out of it, but savoureth of the frying pan, although he speak never 

 so holily.' * It was probably owing to the proximity of Cambridge to the 

 sea-coast towns of Norfolk ' whither the writings of Luther were conveyed 

 in the vessels of the merchants of the Hanse towns, that this university 

 became familiarized with the Lutheran doctrines much sooner than Oxford, and 

 it was again probably owing to the close connexion between Norfolk and the 

 colleges of Trinity, Gonvile, and Corpus Christi, that these doctrines quickly 

 gained so firm a hold in Norfolk. Erasmus was professor of divinity at 

 Cambridge, and Tyndal's removal there from Oxford contributed largely 

 to the reform movement, which may be said to have begun with the little 

 band of scholars who used to meet together at an inn called the ' White 

 Horse,' later on to be known as Germany. It included many Norfolk 

 men : Thomas Arthur, John Lambert, Robert Barnes, Matthew Parker 

 (afterwards archbishop of Canterbury), Nicholas Shaxton (afterwards bishop 

 of Salisbury), and Thomas Bilney. When Shaxton in 1531 applied for a 

 licence to preach in the diocese of Norwich, the bishop would not grant 

 it without a formal abjuration, because he had been accused of preaching 

 heretical doctrines, and had conveyed heretical books into the diocese ; ' but 

 he obtained a living in the parish church of Fuggleston in Wiltshire through 

 the influence of Anne Boleyn. The leading spirit of the little band was 

 the martyr, Thomas Bilney, whom Latimer affectionately called ' Little 

 Bilney.' His life was a rare example of abstinence and self-denial, and he 

 was of a sensitive and shrinking disposition, and seems to have held no 

 extreme views, remaining orthodox to the last on the power of the pope, 

 the sacrifice of the mass, the doctrine of transubstantiation and the powers of 

 the church. He preached frequently in Norfolk and Suffolk, and in 1526 

 was before Wolsey, but was dismissed. In 1527 he was confined in the 

 Tower, and was afterwards convicted of heresy. He was persuaded to recant 

 by his friends Farmer and Doncaster, did penance, and was released, but 



' Ca/. L. and P. Hen. rill, iv. pt. iii, 5491, 5492 and 6139. ' Ibid. 5589, anno 1529. 



' ^cts and Monuments, iv, 126. ' Cal. L. and. P. Hen. VIII, iv, pt. iii. No. 6385. 



' It was from these ports also that the reformers generally made their escape to the continent, and 

 especially to Germany ; that this was facilitated by many sympathizers appears evident from the letters to 

 Wolsey of the Observant Friars, John West and John Lawrence, who describe their fruitless search for 

 William Roye, a friar associated with Tyndal in the production of the New Testament, in the Grey Friars 

 and town of Yarmouth, on the road between Lowestoft and Yarmouth, and lastly on the way to Lynn 

 (ibid. pt. ii, 3960, and pt. iii, 5667). 



■= Cal. L. and P. Hen. VIll, v, 297, 16 June, 153 1. 



253 



