Samuel Harsnett's elevation to York in January 1629, prompted renewed agitation by the godly of Norwich's elite, ever anxious to restore Sunday morning sermons as well as the corporate lectureships axed in 1622. A key campaigner for Reform was the outgoing mayor Thomas Cory. Allied to the activists Thomas Atkin and Robert Craske – Craske would call upon Cory to supervise his will in 1638 – during the final month of his mayoralty in May 1629, Cory moved the Assembly to petition the new bishop, Francis White, for further preaching. The mayor's request was doubly urgent. Thus in the same session, an ordinance was passed to prohibit trading and public gatherings ‘under pretence of cudgell play’ on the Sabbath, which had become occasions for much ‘idleness, drinking and disorder’. Would the new diocesan back such efforts to sanctify the Lord's Day, by allowing worship to continue beyond 9.30 a.m.?

The godly had much to hope for in Francis White, a figure who immediately strikes the student of the early Stuart church as an unlikely champion of civic-sponsored preaching, largely on the grounds of his association with Richard Neile and the Arminian Durham House Group in the 1620s. Neile had consecrated White bishop of Carlisle in a controversial ceremony in 1626. Certainly, White came from a similar anti-Calvinist stable to that of Bishop Harsnett, although – from the perspective of Norwich corporation – he was potentially a less combative personality than his predecessor.