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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY removed him out of that diocese in that he would not permit him to con- tinue as a lecturer in Bury, after he had taken the parsonage of Rochford in Essex. Mr. William Green, curate of Bromholm, was suspended for many defects, and among the rest for want of a clerical habit ; but upon his submission he was presently absolved, and his licence to preach was only taken from him, he being very illiterate, having been of late by trade a tailor : of which sort of men many others must come into the reckoning to make up the number fifty that was under censure.^ As to putting down of lectures, no answer can be expected unless a particular case be specified ; but at Lynn there was a lecture, and at Norwich another, which the chancellor caused to be intermitted, and the defendant sent him word not to intermit the same. Two other lectures at Norwich had, the defendant now finds, been raised up the year before, whereof Mr. Bridge carried away one into Holland, and the other ceased by the lecturer returning home to his cure at Stalham, whereof he was vicar ; and never did any of the city so much as crave an allowance from the defendant for others in their places. At North Walsham also he confirmed a lecture, one at Wymondham, and another at East Harling. As for rural deans he never used that name, nor did consti- tute any such. The bishop also refutes charges as to extortionate fees, and other un- worthy money transactions ; and as to the accusation that he caused the exodus back to Holland of the strangers, says that it had begun before his installation, and was the result of lowered wages. His successor, Richard Mountague, bishop of Chichester, who was translated to Norwich May, 1638, in the next year wrote of the diocese that it was ' as quiet, uniform, and conformable as any in the kingdom, if not more.' ' He had distinguished himself as a brilliant controversialist, at first against against the Romanists, but later, his pamphlets against Calvinism, called A New Gag for an Old Goose in reply to A Gag for the New Gospel brought upon him the wrath of the House of Commons. It can well be imagined how his record would militate against him in Norwich. But he was there for less than three years, and died 13 April, 1641, after having been again attacked in the House of Commons 23 February, 1 641, on a petition from the inhabitants of St. Peter Mancroft concerning an inhibition directed by him against Mr. Carter, parson of that parish, after which a commission was appointed to consider his offences. The saintly Bishop Hall followed, being translated from Exeter in December, 1641. Laud had suspected him of being favourable to Calvin- istic and puritanical notions, and in his history of his troubles mentions his appointment in refutation of the charge that he offered preferment only ' to such men as were for ceremonies, popery and Arminianism ;' but it was perhaps unfortunate that Norwich had in him at this juncture another bishop who had gained prominence not only for uprightness of purpose and character, but for intellectual force,' and who was one of the most powerful defenders of episcopacy and the liturgy. He had fallen ' Several such cases are given in Suffolk and Cambridge, and include a weaver and stage-player, vicars non- resident for seventeen and twenty years, and not priests, some of debauched and scandalous life, and a Mr. Ash who intruded himself into a church where the minister had not been suspended. ' Laud, IVorks, v, 364. ' Fuller {(Vortiiei, 441) describes him as our ' English Seneca for his pure, plain, and full style.' 2 289 37