Journal (Volume 14) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 44 NOTES ON NORWICH CATHEDRAL. nY H. H. nURN ELL, ESQ. The council of the British Archaeological Association having done me the honour to request that I would undertake the examination1 of Norwich cathedral, which forms one of the principal objects selected to engage our attention during the Norfolk Congress, I propose, in the few introductory remarks with which it is essential to precede the inspection, to advert to its history, commencing on the 9th April 1094, when bishop Herbert de Losinga translated the see of Thetford to Norwich. His consecration, by Thomas archbishop of York, took place on the same day, and is reported to have been celebrated in the church of St. Michael, Tombland,?a church belonging to Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk. Herbert de Losinga, or Losing, is asserted by Pitts, Weever, and others, to have been a native of Orford, in Suffolk; but Dugdale, Antony a Wood, and Tanner, assign his birth to Pat/us Oxunensi or Oxinensi, in Normandy. His monument represents him as a native of Heims or Hiemes, in Normandy; and though Mr. Harrod1 and Mr. Spur- dens,2 who have given the subject much attention, are desirous of making him English, I yet think that when we consider how general was the custom of the Norman kings to confer position and wealth upon their followers, the probabilities are in favour of his being Norman. He is said to have come from Normandy with William Rufus, and to have purchased the see of Thetford for 1,900, and the abbacy of Winchester for 1,000, which he gave to his father, Robert de Losinga; and for which acts he was cited before the pope at Rome (1093), sentenced to lose his staff and ring, and ordered to build certain churches and monasteries as a penance. Bale3 says: "First he was here in England, by frynde- shyp made abbot of ...