This church was builded of Timber, Stone and Bricks, In the year of our Lord XV hundred and six, And lately translated from extreme Idolatry A thousand five hundred and seven and forty. And in the first year of our noble King Edward The Gospel in parliament was mightily set forward. Thanks be to God. Anno Dom. 1547, December. Over the north aisle door— As the good king Josiah, being tender of age, Purged the realm from all idolatry, Even so our noble Queen, and counsel sage, Set up the Gospel and banished Popery. At twenty-four years she began her reign, And about forty four did it maintain. Glory be given to God. There were formerly brass effigies of John Gilbert and his wife, with _seventeen_ of their children. St. Peter’s Hungate, or Hounds’ Gate, owes its name to the fact of the hounds belonging to the bishop being formerly kept close by. The old church was demolished in 1458, and the new one, commenced the same year, was finished in 1460, as appears by the date in a stone on the buttress of the north door, where there is an old trunk of an oak, represented without any leaves, to signify the decayed church; and from the root springs a fresh branch with acorns on it, to denote the new one raised where the old one stood. St. Michael at Plea takes its name from the Archdeacon of Norwich holding his pleas or courts in the parish; it has some curious panel paintings of the Crucifixion, Resurrection, the Lady of Pity, Judas, John and the Virgin, St. Margaret and the Dragon, St. Benedict and St. Austin. In the church of St. Simon and St. Jude, is a curious monument of a knight in armour, with a number of other figures grouped around the altar on which he lies. In this parish is the bridge where the “cucking stool” was wont to be kept, an instrument of punishment for “scolding and unquiet women,” of as ancient origin as the time of the Anglo Saxons; the offender was seated in a kind of chair, fixed at the end of a plank, and then _ducked_ in the water; a cheating brewer or baker subjected himself to a similar degradation. St. George’s Tombland, so called from the burial ground upon which it stood, has also some curious monuments; near it is a house, commonly called Sampson and Hercules Court, from two figures that formerly supported the portico, but which now stand in the court. The house was formerly owned by Sir John Fastolf, afterwards by the Countess of Lincoln, and in the time of Henry VII., by the Duchess of Suffolk.