Attempts were not wanting on the part of some of the Bishops to maintain ecclesiastical discipline. There are papers amongst the _Tanner MSS._ which indicate what went on amidst the throes of the Revolution, in the diocese of Norwich, before the ejectment of Bishop Lloyd. John Gibbs, Rector of Gissing, had been a convert to the Church of Rome; but on the 14th of November, nine days after the landing of the Prince of Orange, when Protestant East Anglicans would be exulting at the advent of the Deliverer, this recusant is referred to as wishing to be reconciled with the Church of his fathers; and a report is given of the sermon which he preached on the occasion.[405] A little while afterwards an instance occurs of clerical immorality, and of that kind of trouble which has often disturbed episcopal peace: a Norwich rector was accused of “lewdness,” amounting to a capital crime. The case was undoubted. It came to the Bishop’s knowledge. To conceal the fact would have been to connive at the sin, to make it known to endanger the culprit’s life. Indeed, to conceal it was no longer possible, and to stifle the charge was felt to be a scandal to religion. Under these circumstances, Lloyd, Bishop of Norwich, asked the Archbishop whether, by a judicial monition, he might not require the offender to abstain from clerical functions till he could purge himself from the terrible accusation brought against him. The Canon law, he said, did not deal with the offence in question, and he felt himself in much difficulty as to the course of proceeding. As capital punishment might follow conviction, the Bishop feared lest it should prove a _causa sanguinis_--an affair with which he wished to have nothing to do. The common tactics of defence were adopted by the accused. He appealed to the Archdeacon, with the view of gaining time, and by such means he cunningly slipped entirely out of the hands of the Consistory at Norwich; but the Bishop comforted himself by hoping that the criminal would meet with justice at Doctors’ Commons. On the 30th of August, 1689, when Lloyd had been himself suspended, he wrote to Sancroft, saying, “It is too late for me now to meddle further in the matter.”[406]