The difficulty of distinguishing between hermits proper and recluses becomes very perplexing in this part of our subject. There is abundant proof, which we shall have occasion to give later, that recluses, both male and female, usually lived in towns and villages, and these recluses are sometimes called hermits, as well as by their more usual and peculiar name of anchorites and anchoresses. But we are inclined to the opinion, that not all the male solitaries who lived in towns were recluses. The author of "Piers Ploughman's Vision" speaks of the eremites who inhabited in boroughs as if they were of the same class as those who lived by the highways, and who ought to have lived in the wildernesses, like St. Anthony. The theory under which it was made possible for a solitary, an eremite, a man of the desert, to live in a town, was, that a churchyard formed a solitary place--a desert--within the town. The curious history which we are going to relate, seems to refer to hermits, not to recluses. The Mayor of Sudbury, under date January 28, 1433, petitioned the Bishop of Norwich, setting forth that the bishop had refused to admit "Richard Appleby, of Sudbury, conversant with John Levynton, of the same town, heremyte, to the order of Hermits, unless he was sure to be inhabited in a solitary place where virtues might be increased, and vice exiled;" and that therefore "we have granted hym, be the assent of all the sayd parish and cherch reves, to be inhabited with the sayd John Levynton in his solitary place and hermytage, whych y{t} is made at the cost of the parysh, in the cherchyard of St. Gregory Cherche, to dwellen togedyr as (long as) yey liven, or whiche of them longest liveth;" and thereupon the mayor prays the bishop to admit Richard Appleby to the order.