ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



• 



His brilliant intellectual attainments, and the liturgical knowledge which 

 caused him to be selected as one of the revisers of the New Common Prayer 

 Book for Scotland, would not be the least of his iniquities in puritan eyes. 



In 1637-8 ' the ministers of Norwich again petitioned for the regulation 

 of their wage. They complained that most of them had no certainty or 

 competency for means of living, but by the voluntary courtesy of the people. 

 It was ordered that the citizens and ministers should set down how much of 

 certainty each minister had belonging to him, and what was allowed him by 

 the voluntary contribution of the inhabitants, and also the contents of each 

 parish, in regard of houses, rates, and number of communicants. The bishop 

 and the petitioners undertook to present an authentic act of submission to the 

 judgement of His Majesty from all the ministers of the city. It will be seen 

 that proposals for assessments in these parishes were rendered necessary by 

 the petition of these ministers, and were made on their behalf. But the 

 action of the bishop in making them was also used as the ground of one of 

 the articles of impeachment against him. 



On his translation to Ely, the king asked Wren to furnish an account of 

 his diocese of Norwich ; and this is preserved among the Tanner Manuscripts 

 in the Bodleian Library. He advised the king* to divide that over-great 

 diocese (having in it above 1,200 titles), and to make two competent ones of 

 it ; suggested that a cathedral for Suffolk might be had in Sudbury or 

 St. Edmundsbury, with two archdeaconries, a dean, and four prebends in that 

 county. 



And for supply of maintenance [says he] there is a lease of the Greatest Part of the 

 Bishopric of Norwich, containing about 80 parcels, granted at very low rents to Queen 

 Elizabeth by Dr. Scambler (a chaplain of Archbishop Parker, who so desperately pill'd the 

 bishopric of Peterboro' before, that he was by means of Secretary Heneage, translated to 

 Norwich, to pleasure him the like there) which would very well bear a treble reserved rent. 



Though he was translated on 5 May, 1638, his impeachment, on 

 19 December, 1640,' the day after the impeachment of Archbishop Laud, 

 was based mainly upon accusations made concerning his administration of Nor- 

 wich. No more powerful argument in his favour could be provided than the 

 spirit of invective in which the impeachment was drawn up ; or its many 

 imputations of motives, to which in his dignified answers he replied only by a 

 categorical recitation of facts. The best account of ecclesiastical affairs in 

 Norfolk during those two years is found in his defence, and in a certificate 

 concerning the diocese furnished by Archbishop Laud to Charles in 1636; 

 and is extremely valuable as typifying the course taken by an energetic 

 bishop at this critical time in what was truly a hot-bed of nonconformity. 

 His own 'Most Humble Answer' fully justifies Laud's assertion that he 

 * hath carried it with Temper.'* 



Laud's certificate ' says : — 



His lordship found a general defect of catechising quite through his diocese, but hath 

 settled it ; and in Norwich, where there are 34 churches, there was no sermon in the 

 Sunday morning, save only in four, but all put off to the afternoon, and so no catechising. 



• Cal. S.P. Dom. 1637, pp. 167, 177. ' Wren, Parentalia, 51. 



' Ibid 45. He was severely handled by the Long Parliament, and imprisoned in the Tower almost 

 twenty years, without ever being brought to trial for his pretended misdemeanours. In 1660 he was 

 restored to his episcopal functions. 



* i.e. moderation. ' Wren, Parentalia, 47. 



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