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Bateman his visitatorial authority over the great abbey of St. Edmundsbury. The claim was as strenuously resisted by the abbot. It was an old quarrel, inherited by both parties from their predecessors. It embittered the first three years of Bishop Bateman's episcopate, and brought him into direct collision with the judicial power. He excommunicated the abbot's attorney, who served a process on him. The attorney brought an action against the bishop, who was cast in this as well as in the more important suit with the abbot. A writ of error sued for by the bishop only resulted in the confirmation of the judgment. Bateman, however, stoutly repudiated the authority of a temporal court over spiritual persons, and refused either to pay the fine imposed or to absolve the attorney. His cattle and goods were consequently distrained, his temporalities seized, and his person was threatened with arrest ( Fœd. iii. pt. i. 118; Bury Registers, apud Blomefield; Hist. Norf. ii. 360). Unwearied in the assertion of his episcopal immunities he appealed to the council called by Archbishop Stratford at St. Paul's, 25 Sept. 1347, against this scandalous invasion of the privileges of the spirituality by the temporal power. How the matter ended appears not to be recorded.

The same undaunted assertion of his rights was shown in his excommunication of Robert, Lord Morley, the lord-lieutenant of the county, for the crime of poaching on the episcopal manors. Equally unmoved by the entreaties and the threats of the king and the nobles, he compelled the offender to do public penance, by walking with bare head and feet through the streets of Norwich to the cathedral, carrying a huge wax taper, which, after openly confessing his crime and humbly asking absolution, he offered on the high altar (, De Præsul. (ed. Richardson), ii. 14;, Anglia Sacra, i. 415). A dispute with the commonalty of Lynn as to certain municipal rights ended in a compromise, the substantial victory remaining with the bishop (, ii. 364).

In 1349 England was visited by ‘the black death.’ No part of the country suffered more severely than Norfolk and Suffolk, comprising the diocese of Norwich. The mortality among the clergy was frightful. The annual average of institutions to benefices for the five years from the Lady-days of 1344 and 1349 had been 81. During the year ending Lady-day 1350 the number amounted to 831. The number of clergy swept away in the diocese of Norwich alone cannot be set at less than 2,000. The bishop's brother, Sir Bartholomew Bateman, died in this year, and presumably of the plague. During the whole of this time of pestilence Bishop Bateman remained unflinchingly at his post, never leaving his diocese for a single day, often instituting as many as twenty clergy at once. Till the plague was stayed he travelled through his diocese, never staying long in one place, and ‘followed by the troops of clergy who came to be instituted to the benefices vacated by death. So many parishes being left without incumbents, there was a fear lest the supply of clergy should be inadequate to the draught upon it. Bishop Bateman applied to Pope Clement VI for direction, who issued a bull authorising him to ordain sixty young men two years under the canonical age, a permission of which he availed himself to a very small extent’ (, Diocesan Hist. Norwich, pp. 118–21).

One important outcome of this appalling calamity was the foundation in the following year, 1350, by Bishop Bateman of the college at Cambridge, to which, as a mark of his special devotion to the blessed Trinity, he gave the name of Trinity Hall. The bishop's object in this foundation, which was designed solely for students of canon and civil law, was to recruit the thinned ranks of the clergy of his diocese with men trained in those studies. For this purpose he became possessor of a hostel which had been purchased by John of Crawden, prior of Ely, as a place to which the monks of his house might retire for study, giving them in exchange six rectories in his diocese. His intention had been to found a master and twenty fellows, besides scholars, who were each to say a prescribed office, ‘De Trinitate,’ on rising and going to bed, always to speak Latin, to dispute three times a week on some point of canon or civil law, and have the Holy Scripture read aloud during meals. The royal charter of foundation bears date 20 Nov. 1350. Bateman's death in 1355 prevented the full accomplishment of his scheme. At that time the body consisted only of the master, three fellows, and two scholars. A license for building a chapel was given by the bishop of Ely on 30 May 1352, to which the founder bequeathed vestments, jewels, and plate. In the list of books given by the bishop to his new college theology is represented only by a small Bible, together with a Compendium and a Recapitulation of the Bible, all the rest being books of canon or civil law. His own private library, however, reverting to the college after his death, was more adequately furnished with theological works. Two years previously, 1348, a clergy-