Richard de Wych, a militant in protecting…

Richard de Wych, a militant in protecting the clergy from abuse, had been elected as Bishop of Chichester in 1244.

His episcopate has been marked by the favor which he has showed to the Dominicans, a house of this order at Orléans having sheltered him during his stay in France, and by his earnestness in preaching a crusade.

Richard has furnished the chronicler, Matthew Paris, with material for the life of St. Edmund Rich, the Archbishop of Canterbury under whom he had served, and has instituted the offerings for the cathedral at Chichester which would later be known as "St. Richard's pence."

After dedicating St. Edmund's Chapel at Dover, he dies at the Maison Dieu here at midnight on April 3, 1253, where he had been ordered by the Pope to preach a crusade. (He will be canonized as a saint in 1263; he is best known for authoring the prayer later adapted into the song Day by Day in the musical Godspell.)