I suppose that this is rather a nice place to have a tomb, right by the main pulpit so you’re not missing out on much. I don’t know, but I imagine that there was an iron cage around this, possibly stone, to make it feel a little more private.
It’s the chantry tomb of Bishop Richard Nykke (1447-1535), also known as Bishop Nix, and there would have been a fund for a priest to offer prayer and masses on their behalf, just to speed up the whole process of getting to heaven. This was inevitably just a little ridiculous, people paid a lot of money for positions such as this and the Catholic Church accepted a lot of abuses here for far too long because it was in their financial interests to do so. The Reformation came along and all this chantry tomb stuff came to an end with the Abolition of Chantries Acts.
Bishop Nykke lived through some of the Reformation and he was one of the last Catholic bishops here, although it was Bishop John Hopton (?-1558) that can claim to be the last one. Hopton, a Catholic Bishop, ordered the burning to death in Norwich of tens of Protestants because they disagreed with him. Some of the people Hopton murdered were burned at Lollards Pit, just outside the city walls, where they were walked from the Cathedral.
Back to Bishop Nykke who was present at the murder of Thomas Bilney (1495-1531) who was also executed at Lollards Pit. Nykke was found guilty by Parliament of an abuse of his powers and had property confiscated, but it’s fair to say that politics had rather taken over by then.
This whole situation is a bit unfortunate for Bishop Nykke, forced to remain in a tomb next to generations of those preaching messages which he strongly opposed. This is the slight problem when you get yourself a prime spot in a religious institution, the risk of seeing it handed over to a different denomination. But, maybe over time he’s recanted, like he tried to make the Protestants do.
Of course, I’ve used AI to try and recreate the scene of what it might have looked liked and I’d suggest this feels a very realistic mock-up.
There’s a lot of graffiti here at the side of the tomb…..
And quite a lot at the other end.