BATH AND WELLS.
��i HIS diocese until lately contained all Somersetshire, except Holy Cross, St. Mary Redcliff, and St. Thomas with Leigh chapels to Bedminster*, which are in the diocese of Bristol.
The monastery of Bath was dissolved in 1543-4, and an act of parliament passed (stat. 34 and 35 Hen. VIII. c. 15) for making the dean and chapter of Wells to be one sole chapter for the bishop of Bath and Wells.
The members of the chapter are the dean, precentor, chancellor, treasurer, subdean, archdeacon of Wells, archdeacon of Bath, archdeacon of Taunton, and fifty prebendaries with stalls.
��BISHOPS OF WELLS.
The origin of this bishopric is involved in much ob- scurity \ which is not easy to remove. The received opinion is, that in the council called at king Edward's command by Plegemund archbishop of Canterbury in the year 905'^, it was decreed that three bishoprics should be created in the province of the Gevisi, in addition to those of Winchester and Sherborne, then existing, though at that time vacant ; and Wells,
��* The parish of Bedminster in council 19th July 1837. was to be dissevered from the 1 See Wharton's note {^) An-
diocese of Bath and Wells, and glia Sacra, pars ii. p. 554, 555. to form part of the diocese of 2 Concil. Angl. torn. i. p. 200. Bristol and Gloucester, by order
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