Thomas Goodrich (1533-1554) was a "zealous forwarder of the Reformation." He was one of the revisers of the translation of the New Testament, and assisted in the compilation of the Prayer-book. He was also Lord Chancellor. In his time, in 1539, the monastery was surrendered to the king. All the inmates were pensioned or otherwise provided for. Dugdale gives the revenues of the monastery at its dissolution as £1084 6s. 9d.; Speed says £1301 8s. 2d. Bishop Goodrich's monumental brass in the cathedral is a very important example of such memorials. He died at Somersham in 1554.
Thomas Thirlby (1554-1559) was Bishop of Norwich, having been previously the first and only Bishop of Westminster. "He is said to have been a discreet moderate man"; but he lived in troublous times, and had the distasteful task of committing some so-called heretics to the flames. He was dispossessed of his bishopric soon after the accession of Queen Elizabeth, and sent to the Tower. He was, however, soon released, and permitted to live in retirement with Archbishop Parker at Lambeth, where he died and was buried in 1570.
Richard Cox (1559-1581) was Dean of Westminster and of Christ Church, Oxford. He was much troubled at the series of alienations of the property of the see insisted upon by the Government, and used every effort to secure what he could for his successors; and for this opposition, and also for his being married, he fell under the queen's disfavour, and many times solicited permission to resign his see, but he remained bishop till his death in 1581.
For eighteen years the see was vacant, all the revenues being absorbed by the Crown. At last Martin Heaton (1600-1609) was made bishop. He was Dean of Winchester. He has the reputation of having been a pious, hospitable man, and a good preacher. He died at Mildenhall, in Suffolk, in 1609.
His successor was the famous Lancelot Andrewes (1609-1619), Bishop of Chichester. He was a man "of extraordinary endowments, very pious and charitable, of a most blameless life, an eminent Preacher, of universal learning, and one of those principally concerned in the new Translation of the Bible." He became Bishop of Winchester in 1619, and died in 1626, being buried at S. Saviour's, Southwark. Milton has a Latin elegy upon his death, written when the poet was in his seventeenth year. Dean Duport[4] has also a short poem in the form of an epitaph on him, in which occur these lines:
| "Hoc sub nomine quippe continentur Virtus, ingenium, eruditioque, Fides, et pietas, amorque veri, Doctrinæ jubar, Orthodoxiæque Ingens destina, schismatis flagellum, Tortor tortilis illius Draconis, Scutum Ecclesiæ et ensis Anglicanæ Contra bella, minas, et arma Romæ." |
Nicolas Felton (1619-1626) was Bishop of Bristol. He died in 1626, and was buried at S. Antholin's, London, where he had been rector.
John Buckridge (1628-1631) succeeded after an interval of eighteen months. He was Bishop of Rochester. "A Person of great Learning and Worth, and a true Son of the Church of England." He died in 1631, and was buried at Bromley in Kent, near the palace of the Bishops of Rochester.
Francis White (1631-1638) was Bishop of Norwich, previously of Carlisle. Dying in 1638, he was buried in S. Paul's Cathedral.