There was no contention over the election of the next bishop, Roger de Molend or Meyland (1256-1295). He was a natural son of the Earl of Salisbury, William Longespée, and so nephew to King Henry III. His was not an admirable role, the most remarkable event being his attempt, vi et armis, to obtain admittance to the Royal Free Chapel of St. Mary at Stafford. Both sides refused to plead at the Assizes, but it was finally decided that the bishop should be allowed the use of the free chapels in Derby and Stafford, but should have no disciplinary powers over their clergy. Afterwards he seems to have neglected his diocese, and the scandalous and avaricious conduct of the clergy, which the last two bishops had controlled, now became so intense that in 1282 Archbishop Peckham had to interfere, and Roger was forced to come into residence. Soon after it was found necessary to find him a coadjutor, who was to advise him in all official acts. Incompetent as he was as a bishop, the diocese obtained several remarkable benefits during his rule. The king gave Cannock Chase to the see, and the west front of the cathedral was begun. It may well be that in his travels he had acquired a love of beauty he would not have acquired at home, and that we owe to him the conception of this beautiful feature of the cathedral. The money it must have cost, too, could only have been found by one whose princely rank enabled him to obtain money with some ease. In London also he left his mark, unhappily now entirely obliterated. Where Somerset House now stands he erected his palace, next to the palace of his brother Bishop of Worcester. It was a beautiful mansion, but the site was too valuable to permit of it belonging to any one but the king when Henry VIII. graced the throne.
About this time the archdeaconry of Stafford was occupied by Thomas de Cantilupe, afterwards Bishop of Hereford. The story of his life belongs to the account of that diocese, but such a man must have had great influence on his archdeaconry.
The next bishop was Walter de Langton (1296-1321), Treasurer of England, and friend to King Edward I. He was chosen unanimously by both parties. At first his political duties claimed him, and brought him into collision with the Prince of Wales, who, as soon as he had ascended the throne as Edward II., threw him into prison. There he does not seem to have remained long, and when Piers Gaveston, the king's favourite, was beheaded in 1312, he was restored to his former treasurership. Langton is principally remembered in connection with the see as having founded the Lady Chapel and built the Bishop's Palace, for so long a splendid monument to his memory in the north-east corner of the close. He rebuilt also Eccleshall and Haywood Manor houses, and walled the close for "the honour of God, the dignity of the cathedral, and the bodies of the saints there reposing, and also for security and quiet of the canons." This last a mistaken work, as we who live after the event are well able to judge. He also bridged the cathedral pool, and made a magnificent shrine for St. Chad's bones. Langton died in 1321 in London, and was carried to Lichfield, where he was buried with much ceremony. His bones were removed into the Lady Chapel when it was finished during the rule of the next bishop, and a sumptuous monument placed over them. The mutilated remains of this monument can be seen in the south choir aisle to this day.
His successor, Roger de Norbury or Northbury (1322-1359), was appointed by the Pope, as the two chapters had not agreed once more. His was a long rule, nearly forty years, and filled with good for the see. The registers of both Langton and Norbury are both still in existence among the muniments of the cathedral, and from them we know much of the life of a bishop of this time. Every kind of evil seems to have come under the notice of the bishop—whose power of inducing those who had done wrong to repent and do right was the direct outcome of the terrible threat of excommunication which he was able to wield. Lichfield had constantly during the later reigns been the scene of royal festivities, and after the battle of Crecy Edward III. held his Court here, and there were tournaments and banquets at which the flower of English chivalry assisted. It is said by some that here occurred the famous incident of the garter which led to the institution of the order of that name. At any rate, Uttoxeter was appropriated to the chapel of the garter.
About this time, too, the cathedral must have been finished; now, too, was the terrible visitation of the black death, that most deadly of all plagues, which is said to have cut off one half of the whole population of the realm. Whether the fear of it, or the occasion of the completion of the cathedral, caused the chapter to set their house in order, certain it is that we have, in the discovery of the sacrist's roll of 1346, a kind of inventory of the valuables of the cathedral at this time; these are set out in the part devoted to the cathedral. Thomas of Chesterfield, the early historian of the diocese, whose work is printed in Wharton's Anglia Sacra, and on whom all later writers on the subject have had largely to rely, lived at this time, and brought down his "chronicle" to 1348, one of the years of the black death.
Roger de Stretton (1360-1386), an absolutely uneducated man, succeeded Langton; then came Walter Skirlaw (1386) and Richard Scrope (1386-1396), but the former, between his consecration and his enthronement, was translated to Bath and Wells, from whence he went to Durham, and the latter, though distinguished in English history, is more noted as Archbishop of York. Next came Bishop John Burghill (1398-1414), a barefooted Black Friar, who gained a reputation for asceticism, and left his worldly goods to the church. Richard II. was present at the enthronement of these two last bishops. They were followed by John Catterick (1415-1419).
In 1419, William Heyworth (1419-1447), the abbot of St. Albans, became bishop. An important question was settled in his time—viz. the bishop's position in the cathedral. At his suggestion, it was arranged that he should give notice to the dean when he intended a visitation: the chapter should be summoned, and they should conduct him to the high altar and there leave him to stand or kneel alone in prayer. Afterwards they were to conduct him to the chapter-house, where he might inquire into the title and conduct of the canons; the other cathedral clergy were to be entirely subject to the dean and chapter. His rule saw also the beginnings of the collegiate church of Manchester, which so long after was to become the cathedral of the new diocese to be carved out of our see.
It is unnecessary to more than mention the names of bishops who succeeded about this time: they are—William Booth (1447-1450), Nicholas Cloose (1452), Reginald Bolars (1453-1459). John Halse (1459-1492) was called on to give shelter to Queen Margaret after the battle of Bloreheath.
At the end of the fifteenth century there is another political bishop. This was William Smyth (1492-1496). He, like several of his successors, was President of Wales, and he was also the founder of Brasenose College, Oxford. Next comes John Arundel (1496-1503), and then comes Geoffry Blythe, whose rule, commencing in 1503, lasts until 1531, the year when Henry required the clergy to acknowledge him as supreme head of the Church. This period of the dark days before the Reformation must have been one of great difficulty for the bishops, but Blythe seems to have been very popular at Lichfield; he made several attempts to stamp out Lollardism, and has earned for himself an unenviable niche in the house of fame by his inclusion in Fox's "Book of Martyrs" for his holding of the "Court of Heresy." One martyr (a woman) was burned at Coventry, and others were tried and acquitted or condemned to less horrible punishments. On the whole, Blythe seems to have been as gentle as the times would allow him to be. He died in 1531, and escaped the storm which was now to burst. When it had cleared away, many of the old religious landmarks had disappeared; Lichfield Cathedral had lost her sister minster, and had been shorn of much that it valued and was beautiful.
After an interval, Rowland Lee (1534-1543) was appointed. He had been chaplain to the king, and it was he who officiated at the private marriage of Henry and Anne Boleyn; he was rewarded with the bishopric of Lichfield and Coventry, and was made President of Wales, in which latter appointment he was said to have ruled so wisely that we owe to him the kindly feelings which have ever since existed between the two countries. This work must have kept him much away from the diocese, and it was superintended by two suffragans; but we have it on record that he did his best to save something for the diocese from the wreck of the Reformation; how little he was able to do we shall now see. He also issued to the clergy a set of injunctions, in which the new teaching and ideas are set forth, "that the King's Majesty is only Supreme Head under Chryst in Erthe of this his Churche of England"; that every parish priest shall provide for his church a "Boke of the hole Byble both in Latin and alsoe in Englishe, and lay the same in the Quiere for every man that will loke and read therein"; and other injunctions on prayers and preaching and behaviour, which are not, like the first two, new and startling, but are reminiscences of the ordinances and manners of the past.