A letter from Bishop John Moore of Norwich to the archbishop of Canterbury about the 1701 convocation

May it please your grace, on Monday morning I received the instrument from my lord of London for calling a convocation, and have this morning sent instruments to have clerks for the diocese chosen on Tuesday the 28th of this instant. I could with humble submission wish there might be no licence for business this first session, for if there should be, it will be thought the effect of Mr A[tterbury]’ s book, and they will not greatly regard the strength of any answer while they carry their chief point; it is also to be suspected they will vote it their right and privilege to sit and do business as often as the houses of parliament do. But if a good answer to that book shall precede the sitting of the convocation, persons will probably meet with more settled and easy minds and fall more kindly to business, and also suppose there was more than ordinary reason for their meeting. It grieves me to hear of the illness of my worthy old friend Mrs Gipping; he case seems to have great danger in it. I pray God to support and comfort her. Her friends would lose much by the death of so good a woman, but I believe her well prepared to die. My wife begs your grace's blessing. We both present our humble service to my good lady. I am your grace's most obliged, humble servant, J. Norwich.

Complaint of the upper house about the behaviour of the lower

1. That if the lower house does not reflect with exceeding grief, yet they ought to be very sensible apprehensive that a principal cause of preventing the dispatch of business has been their not conforming to those rules of convocation by which their predecessors in all times governed themselves, that the filling papers with censures and reflexions on the bishops, for which there will not appear any just ground, as it is a practice very unsuitable to the order and duty of presbyters, so it must tend to the weakening and abating the authority episcopal, and rendering the bishops less able to preside over the church and discharge their pastoral care.