A HISTORY OF NORFOLK adopted was so certain to displease in some direction. His letters, many of which are preserved in the Public Library at Cambridge, describe his difficulties in dealing with papistical incumbents, show him to have treated them with great leniency and patience, and make it clear that he was assailed with criticism from all sides. In December, i 572, he writes : ' 'The Queen's Majesty is much offisnded with me that R. Willoughbie is deprived of certain livings within my diocese, and her Majesty is moved thereunto, as well that he was a physician to her Highness' mother, as for the respect of his age ; but he was not deprived by me, but by the Act of the last parlia- ment, for not subscribing to the Acts of Religion.' In the Acts of the Privy Council, in an information as to papists and recusants in Norfolk, this Richard Willoughbie, M.A., sometime fellow of Benet College, Cambridge, is described as having ' seemed a favourer of true religion, but by travelling to Paris in France is become a verie Papist, and supposed now to be a seminary priest.' * A letter to the archbishop, of 30 September, i 573,* on behalf of Francis Morley, describes one Morley, who had been greatly complained of by his parishioners, as right honest, faithful, and of upright judgement ; and writes of the malice of many of the parish (St. Gregory's), who speak of the Geneva psalms as Gehenna psalms, and bewray what they be by maintaining the rood loft in a fashion contrary to the rest of the rood lofts in Norwich, that is to say, ' as being in a manner whole, with the vault or soller and the forepart, with the door and stairs to go up, so as little is wanting of that it was in the time of popery.' Another letter of 3 February, 1573,* shows that the parishioners of St. Simon's church, of whom he writes, ' I could never understand of any good order or conformity in the same parish,' have also decided to take matters into their own hands, and have promised to seek reformation with the High Commis- sioners, being weary as they say, of complaining and receiving no redress, the matter they complain of being the bell ringing in the time of sermon. In October, 1 573, a new proclamation ordered the better enforcement of the Act of Uniformity, and though the results of the proceedings in Norwich show that few when brought to the point refused subscription, even in this instance Parkhurst's administration and that of his subordinates was exceedingly lax. Ministers who were suspended were yet allowed to catechize in the parish churches, and to use the exercise of prophesying in the open congregation. On the intervention of one of the commissioners to point out the scandal, Parkhurst wrote to his chancellor' to put a stop to it ; but at the same time he excused his action to another of the commis- sioners, of puritan leanings, by saying that he did not dare do otherwise in face of the opposition his lenity had evoked.' Another direction in which the bishop would have preferred to inter- fere as little as possible was in the disputes of the Dutch and Walloon congregations, which since 1565 had been established in Norwich. By the Book of Orders for the Strangers, dated 20 April, 1571, it was enacted that religious questions were to be referred to the bishop on appeal from the consistories ot the Dutch and Walloon congregations.' The bishop, writing ' Public Library, Cambridge, EE. 2, 34, fol. 95. ' Masters, Hist, of Corpus Christi College, 322. ' Public Library, Cambridge, EE. 2, 34, fol. 138. * Ibid. fol. 104 r. ' Gorham, Reformation Gleanings, 484. ' Stephens, Hist, of the Eng. Ck. v, 186. ' Bloraefield, op. cit. iii, 285. 268
