A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



outstanding capacity, he held the office of chancellor for sixteen years from 

 1226, and steadfastly upheld the rights of the English Church alike against 

 the king, who endeavoured to remove him from office, and the pope, who in 

 1231 quashed Jiis election to the primacy, and in 1238 similarly annulled his 

 election to the see of Winchester. Beyond caring for his cathedral church 

 and increasing its endowment and privileges it is probable that his public 

 duties left him little time for the management of his diocese. Bishop Ralph 

 dying in February, 1244, in his London house which has given its name to 

 Chancery Lane, the subservient chapter, wishing to secure the king's favour, 

 elected the archdeacon of Lewes, 84 Robert de Passelewe. He was a member 

 of an East Sussex family and a courtier of the worst type, possessing all the 

 worldliness of Ralph de Neville with little of his ability, and less of his 

 honesty. The archbishop of Canterbury, in council with his suffragans, 

 refused to accept Robert de Passelewe, and appointed in his stead the saintly 

 Richard de Wych. 



Bishop Richard 86 was a native of Droitwich, whose learning and devotion 

 had early attracted the attention of St. Edmund, archbishop of Canterbury, 

 by whom he was made chancellor of Canterbury. When the archbishop 

 sought rest in the seclusion of the monastery of Pontigny, Richard accompanied 

 him and remained with him, on terms of loving intimacy, till his death. 

 Being thus elected to the see of Chichester, Richard vainly endeavoured to 

 appease the anger of the king, who refused to give up the temporalities. Pope 

 Innocent IV supported the bishop's cause and consecrated him, but Henry 

 still remained unappeased, and for two years Richard went up and down 

 throughout his diocese discharging the spiritual duties of his office though 

 deprived of its temporal advantages. During this period he made his home 

 principally with Simon, rector of West Tarring, in whose garden he is 

 recorded to have spent much of his leisure, planting, grafting, and caring for 

 the fig-trees and other plants there growing. When at last the king, menaced 

 by the pope with excommunication, released the temporalities of the see, 

 Richard, unspoilt by prosperity as by poverty, made use of this accession of 

 wealth only to increase his alms to the poor. Ascetic and unflinchingly 

 severe to himself, he was lenient to others, and if when he rose with the 

 earliest dawn for prayer he found his clerks still sleeping he would not rouse 

 them, but perform the office by himself. Yet where the honour of the Church 

 was concerned he could be terribly severe ; thus at Lewes a certain knight 

 who had arrested and put into the stocks one of the parochial clergy was made 

 to go to the church in the garb of a penitent and wearing the same stocks 

 about his neck ; while the burgesses of that town, who had broken sanctuary 

 by dragging a thief out of a church and hanging him, were compelled to 

 exhume his body and carry it on their shoulders to the church. The 

 married clergy were the object of his sternest decrees, they being deprived of 

 their benefices, and their ' concubines ' denied the privileges of the Church. 

 Plurality and non-residence were forbidden by Bishop Richard, and directions 

 issued to ensure the decent performance of divine service, special injunctions 

 being issued against the clipping and slurring of words, and the use of 

 improper dress. 



84 He obtained the archdeaconry in this year by the king's gift during the vacancy of the see : Pat. 

 28 Hen. Ill, m. 7. "See a paper by Canon Cooper in Sius. jirch. Coll. xliv, 184-202. 



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