ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY Protestant succession. He also was a Norwich man, who had gone from Norwich School to Corpus Christi College, where he ultimately became master of the college ; and he had married a sister of the last bishop. Dr. Trimnell. He was removed to the richer see of Ely in less than two years after his consecration. Several bishops in succession after him held the see for only a short period. Bishop Leng, who was consecrated 3 November, 1723, and who was chaplain in ordinary to George I, died 26 October, 1727, of smallpox caught at the coronation of George II. WilHam Baker, bishop of Bangor, translated in December, 1727, died 4 December, 1732, and no record survives of his ever having resided in his diocese. Dr. Robert Butts, dean of Norwich, who succeeded to the bishopric 20 January, 1733, is said by Cole^ to have been universally hated by the time he was translated to Ely in 1738, though he seems to have shown zeal and earnestness in the management of his diocese. Blomefield writes affectionately of Sir Thomas Gooch, who was bishop from 17 October, 1738, to January, 1747, when he also was translated to Ely. He repaired and beautified the palace, and was in many ways a typical bishop of the eighteenth century ; as kind and charitable as he was witty and vivacious.^ He founded the valuable society for the support of the widows and orphans of the clergy of his diocese. Although a High Churchman,' he was favourable to the plans then under discussion for the comprehension of moderate dissenters.* Earlier in his career he had been rector of St. Etheldred's in the city of Norwich, which he then described in Notitia Parochialis^ as a 'rectory without endowment, worth, communibus annis, to him that ofKciates about 12 fi per annum with contributions,' and as containing about 150 souls. His successor. Bishop Lisle, was promoted from the see of St. Asaph 17 March, 1747-8, and died 3 October, 1749; he was followed by Bishop Haytor, then archdeacon of York, in whom Norwich again had a bishop both honest and zealous, and at the same time liberal and broad-minded in his views. In 175 1, on the re-arrangement of the house- hold of Frederick prince of Wales after his death, he was appointed tutor to the young princes. In 1753 he supported the Jews' Naturalisation Bill, which procured him much odium in his diocese. He published anonymously an account of the persecutions of the Quakers, and an essay on the liberty of the press, works which show him to have been somewhat in advance of his times. Horace Walpole describes him as ' a well bred, sensible man.* In 1751 ^ James Wheatley, who had been a Methodist preacher since 1742, and exceedingly popular, but who had been suspended and finally expelled from the society upon conviction of a serious offence, came to Norwich, where he was unknown, and began to preach out of doors. Before long a temporary building was erected for him called the Tabernacle, and though for some months the city was disturbed and alarmed by the behaviour of the mobs who collected to disturb his meetings,* he had an immense success, and for a time supplied one of the largest chapels in the city. But in 1754 the judge of the ecclesiastical court of Norwich had to deal with ' Cole, MSS. xviii, 140, 233. ' Bentham, Ely, ziz. ' Walpole, Memoirs, 148.
- C. J. Abbey, Engl. Ch. and its Bishops, ii, 68. ' Lambeth Lib.
° Memoirs, 87. ' Tyerman, Life of Wesley, ii, 122. ' An account of these disturbances and their instigators is to be found in letters in Gent. Mag. for 1752, 19 Feb. and 22 March, and in a True and Particular Narrative (B.M. 10 1, K. 18).
