During the 1620s, John Yates's integrity came to be tested by the same episcopal authority he had striven so assiduously to defend. Bishop Samuel Harsnett's elevation to the see of Norwich in September 1619, a promotion that reflected the diocese's puritan reputation in the eyes of the crown, held deeper implications for the fortunes of the city's godly community. Harsnett, a noted anti-Calvinist, arrived in his new see determined to exert greater control over Norwich's pulpits. Under his government – which lasted for a decade until 1629 – the Jegon administration's measured evangelical programme was overturned in favour of a disciplinarian agenda, which strove to impose a tighter definition of religious conformity across Norfolk and Suffolk. Within Norwich city alone, a campaign against preaching was conducted in tandem with moves to elevate the cathedral's status at the heart of civic religious spectacle. To some citizens, episcopal moves to scale down the level of religious instruction offered within the town stood to undermine the alliance of magistrates and ministers, which had hitherto ordered the moral fabric of urban life. As a further affront to godly sensibilities, Norwich's parishes became the setting for a more decorous style of worship, seen as a direct obverse to promoting the Gospel.

As traced in the next chapter, such development's rebounded in a litany of complaint against Harsnett in the 1624 parliament; although for now let us turn to examine the immediate circumstances surrounding the prelate's coming to East Anglia.