Page:VCH Norfolk 2.djvu/260

 A HISTORY OF NORFOLK the bishop of Norwich, in association with his friend Hubert Walter, exhibited extraordinary energy in raising money for the king's ransom, and when Richard died he took, part in the coronation of King John at West- minster. He himself died 2 June, 1200, and was buried in his own cathedral on the north side of the presbytery.^ All that we read of his doings in his bishopric amount to very little. He is said to have restored the ravages of the fire in the cathedral, and to have rebuilt the church of the Holy Trinity at Ipswich. The diocese must have been left to the arch- deacons to administer as they would. No one of these appears to have been a man of mark. The bishop is credited with being the patron of Daniel of Morley (near Wymondham) a man of genius and enthusiasm for mathematical studies, in the pursuit of which he passed his life. The episcopate of John of Oxford is chiefly memorable as marking the beginning of that period of conflict between the monastic order and the bishops which brought about an almost absolute collapse of ecclesiastical order and discipline in England.^ The mischievous appeals to Rome on every frivolous pretext put the bishops to expense wholly disproportionate to that incurred by the appellants, who in most cases had little to lose and everything to gain by vexatious litigation. Hence the hands of the bishops were tied, and their authority in their several dioceses could but tend to diminish. The old Benedictine houses, with their traditions always aiming at exemption from episcopal visitation and their documents to bring into court, sometimes genuine but just as often spurious, were the chief offenders ; while the parochial clergy, as they always have been, were quite incapable of combining for mutual support and co-operation; and the wholesale spoliation of the country benefices by the abominable process of appropriating the tithes of the parishes for the enrichment of the monasteries, went on steadily until the general feeling of the community when it was too late revolted from what had become robbery on a large scale. At starting the new monastic orders, and especially the Cistercians, would have nothing to do with the impropriations, but they soon yielded to the tempters, and the lust of self- aggrandizement was not to be resisted. Scarcely three weeks elapsed after the death of John of Oxford when another John, sometimes designated as John II, was appointed to succeed. This was John de Grey, a scion of an ancient and illustrious house, who was himself a Norfolk man, and had been associated with Hubert Walter in many an active service done to the king his master. The new bishop was a ' mere creature of King John,'' but he was true to the king through all his career. He was consecrated at Westminster Abbey 22 June, 1200. For some reason of his own he seems to have had no desire to take up his residence in close proximity to the Norwich priory, and he built for himself a great house at Gaywood, near Lynn, then a flourishing port which the bishop spent large sums in raising to importance. Lynn became a free borough with more than one royal charter to ensure its prosperity, but very little to boast of in the shape of any ecclesiastical foundation or endowment. Whatever Bishop John II may have intended during the first two or three years of his episcopate, it is certain that he was hardly in his diocese at ' Anthony Bek's Book (MS.) in the Archives of Lincoln Cathedral. 226
 * The writings of John of Oxford named by Pits appear to have perished. ' Norgate, John Lackland, 130.