ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



leave to preach in his church was forwarded by the rector to Bishop Home, 

 and elicited the answer : ' Mr. Wesley is a regularly ordained minister of the 

 Church of England, and if Mr. Manning has no objection to Mr. Wesley's 

 preaching in his church, I can have none.' It seems as if the great work of 

 religious revival for which he had been doing so much for half a century had 

 already produced fruit for him to see with his own eyes, in this instance nor 

 only of toleration, but of appreciation and religious enthusiasm in Norfolk, 



But recoveries are uphill work, and this was a period when the prevail- 

 ing reUgious apathy, the reaction against which eventually found its most 

 marked expression as far as the church itself was concerned, in the Oxford 

 movement of the next century, in Norfolk as elsewhere took long to dispel. 



There is very little to record of Bishop Yonge, who was translated from 

 Bristol to Norwich in November, 1761 ; or of Dr. Lewis Bagot, who in 

 1783 also was translated from Bristol to Norwich. When Dr. Bagot was 

 removed to St. Asaph in 1790, Dr. George Home, dean of Canterbury, was 

 consecrated in his place, but died at Bath 17 January, 1792. Though a 

 high churchman, and though he protested publicly against those who took 

 their theology from the Tabernacle and the Foundry, he nevertheless showed 

 courtesy to the Methodists, as has been before recorded. He was very little 

 in his diocese, and the charge he had prepared for his primary visitation was 

 never delivered. His successor. Bishop Manners-Sutton, became primate in 

 I 805, and took an important part in the revival of church life characteristic 

 of his time. He was a staunch supporter of the small but very active band of 

 high churchmen of whom Joshua and J. J. Watson, H. H. Norris, and 

 Charles Daubeny were the leading spirits. At Norwich his liberality and 

 the expenses of a large family seem to have involved him in pecuniary 

 embarrassments, which he cleared off when he became archbishop. He was 

 a great favourite with the royal family. 



Mention must not be omitted of the Taylors of Norwich, a family 

 which has left its mark on the religious life of the time. Its best known 

 member was John Taylor, the hymn-writer (1750— 1826), a prominent 

 member of the Octagon Presbyterian Unitarian chapel, of which he was a 

 deacon. His mother was a granddaughter of John Meadows, an ejected 

 divine, and her sister was the grandmother of Harriet Martineau. His 

 father was the son of Dr. John Taylor, the dissenting divine and Hebraist, 

 who came to Norwich in 1733, and in 1734 laid the first stone of the existing 

 Octagon chapel at Norwich, and who, at its opening in May, 1735, 

 disclaimed all party names, Presbyterian and the like, claiming that of 

 Christian only. 



Bishop Bathurst, part of whose career had already been spent in 

 Norfolk, as rector of Witchingham, was consecrated 28 April, 1805, and 

 died in 1837, at the great age of ninety-three. He was distinguished for 

 the liberality of his principles, and for many years was considered to be ' the 

 only Liberal bishop in the House of Lords.' He warmly supported the 

 Roman Catholic emancipation, both by his speeches in the House of Lords, 

 and by his presentation of a petition in favour of that movement from the 

 Roman Catholics of Tuam. He stood almost alone among his episcopal 

 brethren as an advocate of the Reform Bill, and this gave him great 

 popularity. In 1835, being then over ninety, he went to the House of 

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