A HISTORY OF NORFOLK was consecrated on the same day at Gloucester. He died 28 April, 141 3, but of his own acts during the time he held the bishopric (less than six years) there is little recorded but that he made a composition with the town of Lynn, 20 May, 141 2,' that he spent considerable sums in repairing manors, &c., belonging to the bishops, and that during his administration several churches and moieties of churches were united on the plea of the poverty of the parishioners. There is, however, abundant evidence of the trend of events in his diocese during his time. In July, 141 !,■ the bishop of Ely received a mandate to deal with William Denys, a friar preacher, S.T.M., of whom the bishop of Norwich had complained that he had not scrupled falsely to assert that the bishop was ignorant and unworthy to rule his church, and that very many heresies and errors had multiplied in the city and diocese with the authorization of the bishop ; also that he had, evilly blaspheming the bishop, affirmed him to be a betrayer of Catholic truth, and contemner of the mandates of the apostolic see, a violator of ecclesiastical immunity, and of the laws of the church. In March, 141 2,* the bishop himself received a mandate from the pope, setting forth that he had heard that in almost all the churches of England, and especially in the diocese of Norwich, it had hitherto been the lawful and immemorial custom of the parishioners on Sundays and other holidays to offer to their rectors and perpetual vicars a penny, with a request to the same to pray for their own souls and the souls of their friends and benefactors deceased, and to celebrate mass, &c. ; and that now, a number of persons, pining with envy, strove to draw back the parishioners, to the injury of the rectors, &c., asserting that the latter are bound to pray and celebrate such masses for nothing, so that they received their pence unjustly, and thereby committed mortal sin ; and he was commanded to admonish these backsliders to desist from their perverse dogmas, compelling by ecclesiastical censure without appeal. Protest also at last grew loud against the continued appropriation of parish churches by religious houses, and in April, 141 2,* a mandate to the bishop of Norwich records the petition of a number of parishioners of parish churches in his diocese, setting forth that religious, exempt and non-exempt, and others to whom the said churches had by papal and ordinary authority been united and appropriated, had obtained from the apostolic see privileges enabling them without consulting the diocesans to let to farm the said churches to any persons, even laymen, to their own advantage or rather their rapacity ; and that they had thus let very many of such churches to laymen who ruled and held possession, took the oblations from the altar, lorded it over the clerks and persons deputed to sacred functions, dilapidated the churches' goods, and committed many excesses, whereby the devotion of the parishioners grew feeble. The bishop was commanded to take what measures appeared to him expedient. Shortly after he received more explicit orders in another mandate ^ which stated that since in very many parish churches in his diocese appropriated to religious houses, which had assigned portions to perpetual vicars, the fruits of the vicarages had so much diminished that no priests or clerks were to be found willing to be instituted, whereby the cure of souls was not duly exercised, hospitality was not kept, and divine ' Hist. MSS. Com. Ref>. xi, App. iii, 194. This was revoked 2 June 4 Hen. V, by an instrument for the re-establishment of the ancient constitutions and customs for the election of officers in Lynn. ' Cal. Papal Letters, vi, 199. ' Ibid. 207. * Ibid. 310. ' Ibid, vi', 311, April, 1412. 246
