The year of the great flood was the frequent talk, of course, of all your forefathers who overlived it, and here in this neighbourhood it must have acquired an additional interest from the fact that Bishop Middleton died the year after it, and his brothers then parted with their Rougham property. Nor was this all, for Bishop Middleton's successor in the see of Norwich came from this immediate neighbourhood also. This was Ralph Walpole, son of the lord of the manor of Houghton, in which parish the bishop himself had inherited a few acres of land. In less than forty years no less than three bishops had been born within five miles of where we are this evening: Roger de Wesenham, [Footnote: The names of several members of the bishop's family occur in the Rougham Charters as attesting witnesses, and a Roger de Wesenham is found among them more than once.] who became Bishop of Lichfield in 1245; William Middleton, who had just died; and Ralph Walpole, who succeeded him. There must have been much stir in these parts when the news was known. The old people would tell how they had seen "young master Ralph" many a time when he was a boy scampering over Massingham Heath, or coming to pay his respects to the Archdeacon at the Lyng House, or talking of foreign parts with old James de Ferentino or Peter Romayn. Now he had grown to be a very big man indeed, and there were many eyes watching him on both sides of the water. He had a very difficult game to play during the eleven years he was Bishop of Norwich, for the king was dreadfully in need of money, and, being desperate, he resorted to outrageous methods of squeezing it from those whom he could frighten and force, and the time came at last when the bishops and the clergy had to put a bold face on and to resist the tyranny and lawless rapacity of the sovereign.