Page:VCH Norfolk 2.djvu/264

 A HISTORY OF NORFOLK themselves, they did as they pleased. One incidental proof of this is afforded by the numerous instances which occur of the marriage of the beneficed clergy in Norfolk during the twelfth and late into the thirteenth century.^ Bishop William de Raleigh, as has been said, was admitted to the bishopric of Winchester in April, 1244.' His successor received the royal consent to his election as bishop of Norwich on 9 July, and was consecrated at the church of the nunnery of Carrow near Norwich on 19 February foUowino-.* The new bishop was a Norfolk man, Walter of Suffield, or Walter Calthorp, for he is called indifferently by either surname. A man of unblemished character, a scion of an old Norfolk house, whose ancestors had enjoyed large possessions in East Anglia, he had spent some time at the University of Paris, probably too at Oxford, where he appears to have come under the influence of Grossetete and the Franciscans. A man of large private resources, he was one of the most munificent prelates of his genera- tion, and the city of Norwich to this day enjoys the benefit of at least one of his splendid foundations with its ample endowments. In 1254 we find the bishop commissioned by Pope Innocent IV to draw up an assessment of all the ecclesiastical property in England, for adjusting the taxation levied by the pope. The Norwich Taxation, as it was called, con- tinued in force as the accepted rating, both for the clergy and reUgious houses, until a new assessment was made under the orders of Pope Nicholas IV, which came into operation in 1291. Bishop Walter's activity in his diocese was exhibited during the last three or four years of his episcopate in many other ways. He seems to have revived or thrown a new life into the diocesan synod, and to have drawn up a new body of statutes, to which his successor made some additions.* Bishop Walter's will has come down to us. It is a noble and suggestive document. The bulk of his large Ubrary he bequeathed to his nephew Walter de Calthorp ; but to four of his close friends he leaves each a bible, and to another his psalter. Little was left to the Norwich priory. To the friars, on the other hand, he was graciously liberal, the number of bequests of all kinds to friends, dependants, and servants was very large, and among them was the cup out of which the poor children drank (meaning thereby the poor scholars of the grammar school), which he left to the hospital of St. Giles. The bishop died at Colchester on 19 May, 1257, and was buried in the Lady Chapel, which he built as an appendix to the cathedral. Shortly after ' See a paper in the 'Norf. Arch, ix, 187. To instances there given may be added the curious case of Seaming, where, according to Blomefield, op. cit. x, 44, five generations of married rectors of the benefice succeeded one another far into the thirteenth century. Blyth in his Hut. of Fincham gives an instance of Hugh (rural) dean of Fincham, who had a son Samson, p. 69, N. 3. In the Hundred R. (Rec. Com.), I, 481, we find that in 1273 ' Radulfus Rector Ecclesie de Topcroft' was thrown into prison with his three sons, and had to pay heavily for the release of two of them, though the third had actually died oi duritiam fruonis. In Farmer's notes under Tatterset St. Andrews, William de Hales (rector there in the episcopate of William Middleton, 1278-88), ' habuit sororem. . . Rogeri de Tateshall cleric in uxorem.' In a letter of Gregory IX addressed to Bp. William de Raleigh the pope seems to be aware that in the Norwich diocese there would be married clergy, but that they must be checked in their attempts to hand down their benefices from father to son. Cal. of Papal Letters, i, 1 90 ; Opera, ' Radulfus de Diceto ' (Rolls Ser.), Pref. p. xiii. ' On his relations with Bp. Grossetete, see Letters of Grossetete (Rolls Ser.), 63, 67, and F. S. Stevenson, Life of Grosseteste. ' Le Neve, Fasti and Reg. Sacr. Angl. ' Wilkins in his Concilia printed some portion of these statutes (i, 731-6) from a MS. now in the Bodleian Library, Digby MSS. No. 99, p. 113. 230