Page:VCH Norfolk 2.djvu/339

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY leave to preach in his church was forwarded by the rector to Bishop Home, and elicited the answer : ' Mr. Wesley is a regularly ordained minister of the Church of England, and if Mr. Manning has no objection to Mr. Wesley's preaching in his church, I can have none.' It seems as if the great work of religious revival for which he had been doing so much for half a century had already produced fruit for him to see with his own eyes, in this instance nor only of toleration, but of appreciation and religious enthusiasm in Norfolk, But recoveries are uphill work, and this was a period when the prevail- ing reUgious apathy, the reaction against which eventually found its most marked expression as far as the church itself was concerned, in the Oxford movement of the next century, in Norfolk as elsewhere took long to dispel. There is very little to record of Bishop Yonge, who was translated from Bristol to Norwich in November, 1761 ; or of Dr. Lewis Bagot, who in 1783 also was translated from Bristol to Norwich. When Dr. Bagot was removed to St. Asaph in 1790, Dr. George Home, dean of Canterbury, was consecrated in his place, but died at Bath 17 January, 1792. Though a high churchman, and though he protested publicly against those who took their theology from the Tabernacle and the Foundry, he nevertheless showed courtesy to the Methodists, as has been before recorded. He was very little in his diocese, and the charge he had prepared for his primary visitation was never delivered. His successor. Bishop Manners-Sutton, became primate in I 805, and took an important part in the revival of church life characteristic of his time. He was a staunch supporter of the small but very active band of high churchmen of whom Joshua and J. J. Watson, H. H. Norris, and Charles Daubeny were the leading spirits. At Norwich his liberality and the expenses of a large family seem to have involved him in pecuniary embarrassments, which he cleared off when he became archbishop. He was a great favourite with the royal family. Mention must not be omitted of the Taylors of Norwich, a family which has left its mark on the religious life of the time. Its best known member was John Taylor, the hymn-writer (1750— 1826), a prominent member of the Octagon Presbyterian Unitarian chapel, of which he was a deacon. His mother was a granddaughter of John Meadows, an ejected divine, and her sister was the grandmother of Harriet Martineau. His father was the son of Dr. John Taylor, the dissenting divine and Hebraist, who came to Norwich in 1733, and in 1734 laid the first stone of the existing Octagon chapel at Norwich, and who, at its opening in May, 1735, disclaimed all party names, Presbyterian and the like, claiming that of Christian only. Bishop Bathurst, part of whose career had already been spent in Norfolk, as rector of Witchingham, was consecrated 28 April, 1805, and died in 1837, at the great age of ninety-three. He was distinguished for the liberality of his principles, and for many years was considered to be ' the only Liberal bishop in the House of Lords.' He warmly supported the Roman Catholic emancipation, both by his speeches in the House of Lords, and by his presentation of a petition in favour of that movement from the Roman Catholics of Tuam. He stood almost alone among his episcopal brethren as an advocate of the Reform Bill, and this gave him great popularity. In 1835, being then over ninety, he went to the House of 2 305 39