Page:VCH Norfolk 2.djvu/287

 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY on bad terms with him and with another official, John Curat, and ordered certain persons to pay their dues to himself and not to Wolsey.' In 1529 he wrote to Wolsey of his distress at his displeasure and asked for an opportunity of answering ' any grudge you may have conceived against me.'^ He seems to have been always against innovators in his diocese ; according to Foxe, Thomas Norrice was burnt at Norwich 31 March, 1501 ;* Thomas Ayers, a priest of Norwich, at Eccles, in 15 10, and Thomas Bingey at Norwich in 151 1. Writing in 1530, the bishop said that the gentlemen and commonalty in his diocese were not greatly infected, but only the merchants and those who lived near the sea, and he referred with much bitterness to ' a college at Cambridge called " Gunwell Haule," founded by a bishop of Norwich,' saying that he heard of ' no clerk, who had lately come out of it, but savoureth of the frying pan, although he speak never so holily.' * It was probably owing to the proximity of Cambridge to the sea-coast towns of Norfolk ' whither the writings of Luther were conveyed in the vessels of the merchants of the Hanse towns, that this university became familiarized with the Lutheran doctrines much sooner than Oxford, and it was again probably owing to the close connexion between Norfolk and the colleges of Trinity, Gonvile, and Corpus Christi, that these doctrines quickly gained so firm a hold in Norfolk. Erasmus was professor of divinity at Cambridge, and Tyndal's removal there from Oxford contributed largely to the reform movement, which may be said to have begun with the little band of scholars who used to meet together at an inn called the ' White Horse,' later on to be known as Germany. It included many Norfolk men : Thomas Arthur, John Lambert, Robert Barnes, Matthew Parker (afterwards archbishop of Canterbury), Nicholas Shaxton (afterwards bishop of Salisbury), and Thomas Bilney. When Shaxton in 1531 applied for a licence to preach in the diocese of Norwich, the bishop would not grant it without a formal abjuration, because he had been accused of preaching heretical doctrines, and had conveyed heretical books into the diocese ; ' but he obtained a living in the parish church of Fuggleston in Wiltshire through the influence of Anne Boleyn. The leading spirit of the little band was the martyr, Thomas Bilney, whom Latimer affectionately called ' Little Bilney.' His life was a rare example of abstinence and self-denial, and he was of a sensitive and shrinking disposition, and seems to have held no extreme views, remaining orthodox to the last on the power of the pope, the sacrifice of the mass, the doctrine of transubstantiation and the powers of the church. He preached frequently in Norfolk and Suffolk, and in 1526 was before Wolsey, but was dismissed. In 1527 he was confined in the Tower, and was afterwards convicted of heresy. He was persuaded to recant by his friends Farmer and Doncaster, did penance, and was released, but ' Ca/. L. and P. Hen. rill, iv. pt. iii, 5491, 5492 and 6139. ' Ibid. 5589, anno 1529. ' ^cts and Monuments, iv, 126. ' Cal. L. and. P. Hen. VIII, iv, pt. iii. No. 6385. ' It was from these ports also that the reformers generally made their escape to the continent, and especially to Germany ; that this was facilitated by many sympathizers appears evident from the letters to Wolsey of the Observant Friars, John West and John Lawrence, who describe their fruitless search for William Roye, a friar associated with Tyndal in the production of the New Testament, in the Grey Friars and town of Yarmouth, on the road between Lowestoft and Yarmouth, and lastly on the way to Lynn (ibid. pt. ii, 3960, and pt. iii, 5667). ■= Cal. L. and P. Hen. VIll, v, 297, 16 June, 153 1. 253