Page:The Dioceses of England.djvu/15

9 Humber, it took in ten shires—Lincoln, Leicester, Rutland, Northampton, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Bedford, Buckingham, Hertford, and Oxford. Of these Cambridge under Henry I. became the diocese of Ely; under Henry VIII. those of Oxford and of Northampton and Rutland became the diocese of Oxford and Peterborough. By later changes the shires of Bedford and Huntingdon have been added to Ely, which has also thrust itself into the East Anglian land. There the two bishoprics of North and South Folk had got united into the unwieldy diocese, called at different times after Elmham, Thetford, and Norwich. To promote confusion, instead of a separate bishopric of Suffolk, part of Suffolk has been joined to Ely. Of the other shires which belonged to Lincoln, Leicester is joined to Peterborough, Buckingham to Oxford, to which has more strangely been added the West Saxon land of Berkshire. Hertfordshire, too, has first gone wandering after Rochester, and then come back to its own St. Albans. The head shire of Lincoln now remains the whole diocese of its Bishop.

Among the small shires of Eastern Mercia one might somewhat relax the rule of a Bishop to each diocese. Huntingdon and Bedford might go together. But a separate bishopric for Leicester is as much needed as one for Suffolk. As we draw near to south-eastern England, the minds of "provincials" (not in the ecclesiastical sense) begin to be troubled: "metropolitan" (not in the ecclesiastical sense) vastness is too much for them. One can remember the old see of London and its momentary fellow of Westminster; one can remember the mother of all at Canterbury and the home of her faithful crossbearer at Rochester. But geography is baffled by the ecclesiastical adventures of the county of Essex, and even with those of western Kent. Within these bounds it is a grievously practical question; outside them we are tempted to say only:— "Quantulâ sapientiâ dividuntur dioeceses." From this troublesome region it is relief to escape into a plain, straightforward land, whose name and boundaries seem hardly to admit of change, the diocese of the South-Saxons, with its bishopstool, first at Selsey, then at Chichester, the diocese which longer than any other in England kept on its territorial name. Sussex is the true fellow to Somerset; both ask simply to be left