ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY and the prior of the cathedral monastery, that, as many persons belonging to the parish churches appropriated to the cathedral were buried daily in the church and cemetery of the Carmelites, to the considerable loss of the monks, the friars should yield for the future one quarter of the offerings and profits arising from these burials to the monastery ' in the same manner as the Friars Preachers and Minors did.' But the papal sanction to them, repeatedly con- firmed by Peckham, to hear confessions, with or without the leave of the parish priest, was also a cause of great heartburning, and Bartholomew Cotton describes its exercise by the Friars Minors of Yarmouth with much bitterness in 1291.^ The part that Bishop Ralph de Walpole took in supporting Archbishop Winchelsey's resistance to Edward I's excessive taxation of the clergy is the most memorable of his public acts while he was connected with the diocese. He granted the king a moiety of his benefices and goods in i 294,^ but when in I 297 the demand for a fresh subsidy was laid before convocation just after the bull known as Clericis laicos, forbidding the clergy to give a grant of aid to the secular authorities, had been published by Boniface VIII, he, with the archdeacon of Norfolk, was one of the deputation appointed to lay before the king the position of the clergy.^ The king's reply was ' As you have not kept faith with me, I am not bound to you in any wise.' Although there can be no question as to the justifiability of the king's objection to bulls which infringed civil rights, or of his assertion of the duty incumbent on the clergy of contributing towards the defence of the realm, and that for some time they had hardly borne their fair share in this, yet Edward had now gone beyond what was possible in his demands, and his next step, the outlawry of the clergy, was an altogether unwarrantable one. Ralph de Walpole was one of the three bishops who persisted in refusing the king's demands after Winchelsey had allowed individual clerks to make a personal submission to the king's will,* and when the king despatched agents to Norwich to summon the clergy to redeem their lands and obtain the king's protection by payment of one-fifth, few accepted the protection, and many neglected altogether to obey the mandate.^ The translation of Bishop Ralph to the bishopric of Ely was the occasion of a direct affront to the king by Pope Boniface VIII. A dispute having arisen over the election of the bishop of Ely, through the choice of the monks having fallen on their prior, John Salmon, when the king desired that his chancellor, John de Langton, should be elected,^ appeal was made to the pope, who translated Bishop Ralph to Ely, and appointed John Salmon bishop of Norwich, 29 June, 1299. Bishop Salmon's temporalities were only restored to him 1 9 October, 1299, after he had made the most ample apology to the king, in which he renounced the papal letters and those of the archbishop conveying his appointment, as containing clauses prejudicial to the king and his dignity, and declared that these had not been inserted by his procurement.^ The affair was a costly one for Norwich. Bishop John had to borrow 1 2,000 florins from the Florentine firm of Spini ' to meet his ' De rege Edwardo (Rolls Ser.), App. 429. ' Pat. 22 Edw. I, m. 8. ' Wilkins, Condi ii, 220.
- Rishanger, Chnn. (Rolls Ser.), 475. ' Bart, de Cotton, De Rege Eduiardo (Rolls Ser.), t,z.
^ Ann. U'igorn. (Rolls Ser.), iv, 542-3 ; Flores Hist. (Rolls Ser.), iii, 105-6. ' Pat. 27 Edw. I, m. 8. 237
