ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY • His brilliant intellectual attainments, and the liturgical knowledge which caused him to be selected as one of the revisers of the New Common Prayer Book for Scotland, would not be the least of his iniquities in puritan eyes. In 1637-8 ' the ministers of Norwich again petitioned for the regulation of their wage. They complained that most of them had no certainty or competency for means of living, but by the voluntary courtesy of the people. It was ordered that the citizens and ministers should set down how much of certainty each minister had belonging to him, and what was allowed him by the voluntary contribution of the inhabitants, and also the contents of each parish, in regard of houses, rates, and number of communicants. The bishop and the petitioners undertook to present an authentic act of submission to the judgement of His Majesty from all the ministers of the city. It will be seen that proposals for assessments in these parishes were rendered necessary by the petition of these ministers, and were made on their behalf. But the action of the bishop in making them was also used as the ground of one of the articles of impeachment against him. On his translation to Ely, the king asked Wren to furnish an account of his diocese of Norwich ; and this is preserved among the Tanner Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library. He advised the king* to divide that over-great diocese (having in it above 1,200 titles), and to make two competent ones of it ; suggested that a cathedral for Suffolk might be had in Sudbury or St. Edmundsbury, with two archdeaconries, a dean, and four prebends in that county. And for supply of maintenance [says he] there is a lease of the Greatest Part of the Bishopric of Norwich, containing about 80 parcels, granted at very low rents to Queen Elizabeth by Dr. Scambler (a chaplain of Archbishop Parker, who so desperately pill'd the bishopric of Peterboro' before, that he was by means of Secretary Heneage, translated to Norwich, to pleasure him the like there) which would very well bear a treble reserved rent. Though he was translated on 5 May, 1638, his impeachment, on 19 December, 1640,' the day after the impeachment of Archbishop Laud, was based mainly upon accusations made concerning his administration of Nor- wich. No more powerful argument in his favour could be provided than the spirit of invective in which the impeachment was drawn up ; or its many imputations of motives, to which in his dignified answers he replied only by a categorical recitation of facts. The best account of ecclesiastical affairs in Norfolk during those two years is found in his defence, and in a certificate concerning the diocese furnished by Archbishop Laud to Charles in 1636; and is extremely valuable as typifying the course taken by an energetic bishop at this critical time in what was truly a hot-bed of nonconformity. His own 'Most Humble Answer' fully justifies Laud's assertion that he
- hath carried it with Temper.'*
Laud's certificate ' says : — His lordship found a general defect of catechising quite through his diocese, but hath settled it ; and in Norwich, where there are 34 churches, there was no sermon in the Sunday morning, save only in four, but all put off to the afternoon, and so no catechising. • Cal. S.P. Dom. 1637, pp. 167, 177. ' Wren, Parentalia, 51. ' Ibid 45. He was severely handled by the Long Parliament, and imprisoned in the Tower almost twenty years, without ever being brought to trial for his pretended misdemeanours. In 1660 he was restored to his episcopal functions.
- i.e. moderation. ' Wren, Parentalia, 47.
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