Page:VCH Norfolk 2.djvu/253

 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY Herfast was by no means inclined to submit quietly to either pope or primate, and the letters of Lanfranc exhibit an intemperance of language and tone which betray some personal dislike of Herfast and a readiness to believe the worst of him. Later on a fresh ground of quarrel arose when Herfast threw the weight of his influence in favour of the married clergy, and ordained one man as deacon and another as priest, though each had a wife from whom he refused to separate. Lanfranc interfered warmly in the case {u. s. Letters, 21 and 22) and ordered peremptorily that both men should be degraded. How it ended we are not told. In the year 1075 an important council assembled in London under the presidency of Lanfranc at which it was enacted that henceforth the English bishops should transfer their residences from villages to cities,' and in obedience to this decree Herfast ceased to reside at Elmham and transferred the seat of the bishopric to Thetford, then a town of importance, with a church dedicated to the Holy Trinity, apparently the most stately church in the diocese. Up to this time St. Mary's had been a mere parish church, but on Herfast's removal of the see from Elmham, St. Mary's became in effect the cathedral church of the diocese.' Thetford had a history which reminded men of the prowess of their martyred King Edmund, and its position was eminently central on the border between the counties of Suffolk, and Norfolk. But Thetford had seen its best days, and twenty years later the seat of the bishopric was once more, and finally, removed to Norwich, which was at that time beyond compare the most important city in East Anglia.' A successor to Herfast, who died in 1086, was appointed in the person of William de Bellafago, of whom we know little more than that he was one of the king's chaplains, as were the other two prelates who were appointed with him. He was consecrated bishop of Thetford, i September, 1086, by Lanfranc* Bishop William was a scion of an extremely wealthy Norman family whom the Conqueror had enriched with wide possessions ; like his two immediate predecessors, he was a married man.' Celibacy continued to be more and more enforced upon the English clergy during the next two centuries, but instances of married priests are to be met with in Norfolk as late as the middle of the thirteenth century, and the frequent occurrence of such examples indicates that in East Anglia the general feeling was rather in favour of the married men than the reverse. Bishop William's tenure of the bishopric was brief. A successor to the see was found who was prepared to pay heavily for the preferment, in the person of Herbert Losinga, consecrated some time in 1091, apparently a few months after the death of his predecessor. Herbert Losinga was undoubtedly one of the most cultured and accom- plished prelates of his time. Of the family from which he sprang nothing is ' Will, of Malmes. Gesta Ponlif. (Rolls Ser.), 66. On this subject see Freeman, Norm. Conq. iv, 414. ' Blomefield, Hist, of Norf. ii, 48 and 60. ' In changing his episcopal residence to Thetford, Herfast availed himself of the opportunity to despoil his bishopric by handing over half of the great lordship of Elmham to his foster brother Richard of St. Denis, as has been already noticed. It was an instance of the way in which in those times men could, by some cunning device or another, alienate lands from the old endowments, by giving a perpetual lease of them at a nominal rent to their relatives or dependants ; a practice of which we have some shameful instances in the after time. ' Reg. Sacr. Jnglic. Freeman, Norm. Conq. iv, 690 ; M.itth. Paris, Chron. Majora (Rolls. Sen), ii, 22. 'Planche, The Conqueror and his Companions, ii, 283 ; Munford, Analysis of the Dom. Bk. of Norf 31. 219