ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY Peckham on Mid-Lent Sunday, 20 March, 1288, at Canterbury.^ The monks were publicly commended on his election for their good manage- ment, and honest, regular course of life, but though their choice found favour in high quarters, it was most unpopular with the county, where ' all with one consent cursed the whole convent and especially the electors.'^ It is not easy to understand his unpopularity, especially in view of his subsequent manly defence of his order against the excessive taxation of the king ; but his disinterestedness in relinquishing (at the persuasion of the assiduous reformer, Peckham) the firstfruits, of which Bishop Pandulf had obtained a grant from the pope, must have done something to mitigate the feeling against him ; he gave further proofs of generosity by his endowments to ' the scholars established in Cambridge,' in 1290.' He showed great activity in his diocese, where he conducted a visitation in his first year,* and when in 1291, a synod of clergy was called to discuss the new crusade proclaimed by Pope Nicholas IV, and the bishops were asked to deliberate concerning the measures to be taken for recovering the Holy Land, he was able to state that there were no powerful discords in his diocese, at the same time that he asked consideration for Norfolk on the ground of its finding the payment of tenths for six years an extremely heavy burden.* This grant for defraying the expenses of a crusade had been made in 1288, but the taxation begun then was not finished until 1291. It is known as Pope Nicholas's Taxation," and is a most important record, as all taxes, both to the king and the pope, were regulated by it until the survey made in 26 Hen. VIII. But Norfolk is particularly rich in records of church property at this period, as the taxation of Bishop Walter de Suffield of 1253-4 ^ gives a very valuable list of the benefices in each deanery of the diocese, with their values, and a much more complete account of the city of Norwich than the taxation of 1291. There is also in the bishop's registry at Norwich a large folio volume called the Norwich Domesday Book,* containing about a thousand pages exquisitely illustrated on vellum, which gives a survey of all the parishes of the diocese, with their temporalities and spiritualities, and those of the religious houses as well. Some recent authorities consider it to have been written as early as 1300, but from internal evidence it would seem to have been written as late as the fifteenth century. The taxation of Bishop Walter gives the very large total of 782 churches in Norfolk. The taxation of Pope Nicholas gives the combined assessed value of temporalities and spiritualities in both archdeaconries as ^Ti 3,255 5J. 4J^., and the value of temporalities as _^8,78i 12s. jd. The bishop's property is taxed at 1,000 marks. The list of benefices is less complete than that in the previous taxation, the numbers being 317 in the archdeaconry of Norwich, and 406 in the archdeaconry of Norfolk. One of the most interesting points in this taxation is the large amount of property held in the county by religious houses, worth in all ^(^4,439 6j. d. A very large number of churches were appropriated to religious houses, in which case they were sometimes served by members of the houses to which ' Oxenedes, op. cit. (Rolls Ser.), 272. ' Earth, de Cotton, De Rege Edtuardo I (Rolls Ser.), 169. ' Pat. 18 Edw. I, m. 20. * Earth, de Cotton, De Rege Edtoardo I (Rolls Ser.), 172. ' Ibid. ' Pope Nkh. Tax. (Rec. Com.). ' Harl. MS. 1005. ' Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. I. App. i, 87. 2.35
