Part 2

We are able to get a very much clearer notion of the Palatinate in Pudsey’s days, when the hitherto scanty materials of Durham history begin to swell. We have some of his buildings before us yet--St. Cuthbert’s, Darlington, the Galilee of the cathedral, the rich doorway in the castle; we have seal and charters and writs of his episcopate; and, in short, are able to trace in outline the way in which Pudsey developed the Bishopric on the analogy of a little kingdom, with institutions and officers of its own. Moreover, some notion is gained in the famous Boldon Book[4] of the episcopal lands and how they were held. There we get a Domesday, as it were, of the Bishop’s holdings, to which those who desire to study the intricate methods of medieval land tenure on the Bishop’s property must be referred. A little later on we find somewhat similar information about the lands of the monastery, so that, as the centuries wear on, a fairly detailed picture is gained of the conditions of life in the medieval Bishopric. Thus we see the lands divided up into a large number of manors, which vary largely in character, for some are pastoral, others agricultural, others moor-land, or forest, and others still are connected with townships like Gateshead or Sunderland. The Bishop’s or Prior’s steward makes a circuit at different times, visiting all the units in some special locality, and looking to his lettings or his rents. The holdings vary very much in size and in tenure, and the tenants likewise differ in status and in service. There are villeins who are not free, and are bound to render certain dues of personal service, mowing, or reaping, or ploughing, or sowing, for so many days, and receiving perhaps doles of food, a cottage, and some land, but no money wage. There are farmers who take a manor or farm on condition of rendering so much agricultural produce to the lord. There are cottiers who work so many days in the week, and have to give so many eggs, or so many fowls for the table, in return for the little home that they occupy. In Durham itself certain houses were let to tenants, who had to defend the North Gate, or help act as garrison, or render herbs and other necessaries for the Bishop’s kitchen. The conditions of service among the villeins were often onerous, and a tone of deep discontent is marked in the medieval villages of Durham. In time of war external service might be demanded of the men, and a rally to join the Bishopric troops was no unfamiliar incident of life in those days. If it extended beyond the bounds proper of the territory of St. Cuthbert, pay was claimed, though it was not always given. Small quarrels and differences were probably adjusted by steward or bailiff, but more serious cases came before justices of the peace specially appointed, whilst murder and other grave offences were reserved for judges whom the Bishop appointed to sit at various centres, of which Durham was the chief. And this power of appointing judges to try criminals and to convict or acquit them is what is meant by the popular and inexact phrase, "the power of life and death." The Bishop’s revenue was managed by special officers of his own appointment, who got returns from the local bailiffs, and then recorded them at Durham, where a special audit was held. A special set of buildings were erected near Durham Castle, with various adjacent offices, for the management and arrangement of all the mass of business--financial, judicial, and administrative--which was entailed by the Bishopric.

In this way the conditions of life, and the administration of the Palatinate, followed roughly the general order of the kingdom outside, and the Bishopric was, as has already been said, virtually a little kingdom ruled by a Bishop instead of a King. The Bishops who followed Pudsey maintained and developed his organization, but not without strife. The thirteenth century, in particular, presents a long record of obstinate struggle between the Bishop and those who tried to limit his power or to gain concessions which he was unwilling to make. Indeed, the struggle between the King and the people, which is the great feature of English history in that century, finds a close parallel on a small scale in Durham. At one time it is a long feud between the Bishop and the Monastery over their respective lands, a feud which was at last ended by an agreement between the contending parties. At another time the Bishop is trying to curb the independence of the Barons of the Bishopric, who held large estates for which they were supposed to yield homage, or to perform some kind of service. In this way Nevilles and Balliols, two of the great Bishopric families, held out against the crusading Bishop Bek, and in the end they had to give way. And once more there was strife on more than one occasion with the King, who now and then attempted to restrain the exuberant independence of the Bishop of Durham; and here, in the main, the Bishop was successful in asserting his rights and powers as inalienable.

Over this scene of complex organization and activity dark shadows came in the fourteenth century. The Scots, who had been quiescent for some time, fell upon the Bishopric with great ferocity during the reigns of the first three Edwards, and the years were seldom free from the record of invasion or pillage. It had come to be regarded as a prime duty of the Bishop to repress all northern incursions, and, as a contemporary document puts it, to serve as a wall of brass against the Scots. He had his fortified castles, Norham in Norhamshire, Durham in its own county, and Northallerton in Yorkshire. These three lay on one of the chief routes by which the invaders entered England, and were kept in threatening times well defended and provisioned. In 1312 Bruce pushed his forces right through Northumberland, and advanced into the heart of the Bishopric, delivering a blow against Durham itself, which must have been severe. Two years later in Scotland the troops of England were beaten at Bannockburn, and the humiliation of Edward II. was only effaced some years later by Edward III. in the victories of Halidon Hill, and more particularly of Neville’s Cross in 1346. The latter battle was the great glory of the men of Durham until it was forgotten in the greater prestige of Flodden nearly 200 years later. The tomb of Ralph Neville, badly battered by Scots in later days, still stands in Durham Cathedral as a local memorial of Neville’s Cross, in which he led the Bishopric troops.

The joy caused by these successes was soon dimmed when the terrors of the Black Death overwhelmed the district. Perhaps no part of England suffered much more severely. The pestilence rolled up towards the North in the year 1349, and at last made its dreaded appearance in the south-east of the county. From this point it spread with frightful rapidity, carrying off all orders and conditions of men, for none escaped. Sometimes a whole household perished, and here and there an entire village was obliterated. "No tenants came from West Thickley, because they are all dead," is the steward’s entry at one manorial court or halmote, as the local word is. In the winter that followed there was no sowing, and when the spring came men had not the heart to go to work on the fields, for the plague was renewed with increasing virulence, and everything was thrown out of gear. Villeins had run away from sheer terror; even madness was not unheard of; and whilst there was little to eat famine and misery stalked unchecked.[5] The Bishop’s lands and the Prior’s lands were going out of cultivation, for it was impossible to find labourers, or to bind them down in the old way. Grotesque attempts were made to keep up the former conditions of service, until by degrees stewards and bailiffs found out that they were face to face with the greatest economic difficulty which had ever appeared in the Bishopric. The Black Death practically brought to an end the rigid system of land tenure which had been kept up so long, for it gave the death-blow to serfdom, and the old services in kind, of which mention has been made. Discontent had long lurked in the manors of Durham, but from this time it became active and aggressive, until it pushed the peasants out to assert themselves and to seek for more congenial conditions of life. Elsewhere the transition was effected by bloodshed; in the territories of St. Cuthbert it came more peacefully, but to the accompaniment of much mutual mistrust and variance.

It is possibly in connection with all this covert rebellion on the part of the masses that Cardinal Langley built or finished the great gaol in the North Gate in Durham. This large building running up to the castle keep on one side, and down towards the river on the other, spanned Saddler Street for four centuries, until it was taken down in 1820. It was often filled with criminals who were imprisoned here for various offences in its gloomy dungeons. There was another gaol at Sadberge, but it does not seem clear what relation this bore to the more important building in Durham. But the fifteenth century brought its own special anxieties. In the dynastic troubles which led to the Wars of the Roses, the Palatinate was generally Lancastrian in sympathy. Henry VI. (only one of many English Kings who visited Durham) came to the shrine of St. Cuthbert at a time when his dominions had been cut short upon the Continent, and were still further menaced by the Scots. In the bitter days that followed, when he was driven from his throne, he took refuge in the Bishopric, whilst his brave wife went to the Continent to seek for troops to enable him to regain the crown. Even rectories were fortified in those days, for men had to take one side or the other, and to defend their property against bands of marauders. Of religious trouble and dispute, Durham had no large share at that particular time, though elsewhere the ferment caused by the Lollard Movement was producing much unrest. The Bishopric was too much under the control of the Church to allow much freedom of thought. Yet there were isolated instances of Lollard sympathy, exceptions to prove the rule, which were instantly repressed by ecclesiastical authority.

Dynastic trouble did not end when Henry VII. and his wife, Elizabeth, united the Red and White Roses. The Bishopric men, indeed, had no desire to rise against the strong government which the King set up in England; but they were caught in the tide of rebellion which was set going by Simnel and Warbeck. It was to stem this tide that Henry placed Richard Fox as Bishop of Durham in 1494. This prelate, the King’s tried friend, fortified afresh the castles of the see, and placed garrisons in them to check the advance of Warbeck through the northern counties. Fortunately, the invasion followed another line to the Battle of Stoke, and the men of Durham were spared the anxiety of decision. But Fox, keeping vigilant guard in his fortresses, was instrumental in concluding that alliance which was destined eventually to unite the English and the Scots as one nation. Henry’s young daughter, Margaret, was affianced to James IV. of Scotland, and in 1503 passed right through the Bishopric on her way to her northern home. Nowhere in all the long progress did the Princess receive a warmer welcome than in Durham, from the moment she entered the Bishopric at the Tees to the moment she crossed Tyne Bridge from Gateshead into Newcastle. A mighty banquet was given in her honour in Durham Castle, to which all the nobles and important personages of the district were invited. Little Margaret’s great-grandson was James VI. of Scotland and I. of England; and in his days border feuds passed away for ever. And yet at the moment of the banquet that consummation was a long way off. Ten years later the Scots invaded England at a time of grave national anxiety, when the King and his troops were warring in France. But the Bishopric musters turned out. Bishop Ruthall rushed up to Durham, and his men at Flodden contributed not a little to the great English success as they bore the banner of St. Cuthbert into the battle.

The century that had so recently dawned was destined to witness great changes in the Bishopric. Henry VIII. laid ruthless hands upon the power of the Church, and the monarch who extorted the submission of the clergy was not likely to allow the great power and independence of the Bishop of Durham to pass unchecked. Accordingly, in 1536, he cut short the judiciary authority of the prelate. This, as we have seen, was one of the most characteristic privileges of the Bishop, and neither Henry II. nor Edward I. had interfered with it. From this date the King was the authority who appointed the judges; and although in practice the old forms and methods were largely followed, the sanction was royal, and not episcopal. And next year, when the Council of the North was set up for the purposes of defence, execution of justice, and finance, in the northern counties, a still further blow was aimed at the Bishop’s power, for this court could, if it willed, supersede the Palatinate machinery. As a matter of fact, its first President was Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, who prevented such degradation of the Palatinate for the present. Yet one thing of large importance was carried out under the Council’s authority, when the great Abbey of Durham was dissolved in 1539. The monastery had stood unassailed for 450 years, but Henry set going the process of destruction which ended in the total suppression of every religious house in the land. It had been a wealthy foundation, a kindly landlord, an influence for good in the district, with its library, and its schools, and its varied means of usefulness. Yet every good object that it had served was eventually carried on. Prior and convent became Dean and Canons; monastic lands were now capitular estates; its chief school and library were maintained with greater efficiency; its solemn offices soon became the familiar vernacular service of the Church of England. Otherwise there was little monastic destruction in the county of Durham, for the great monastery had brooked no rivals; and a friary or two with a single nunnery were scarcely rivals. The dependent cells of Jarrow, Wearmouth, Finchale, however, shared in the fall of Durham Abbey.

Three or four years before the surrender of the monastery the people of Durham had taken part in the Pilgrimage of Grace--that exciting demonstration in which popular resentment against the fall of the smaller houses was exhibited. When Durham Abbey fell, there was no repetition of that rising, for severe punishment had been meted out in 1537; whilst in 1540 pestilence was desolating the district, and the gloom in consequence was depressing. But there was no sympathy with the changes which soon began to hurry on, and Durham was probably more opposed to the Reformation than any other district. Under Edward VI. the Bishopric became the object of the ambitious designs of Northumberland--one of the noblemen whom the rapid religious and political revolution of the time placed in power. He cast a longing eye on the Patrimony of St. Cuthbert; and in building up the fortunes of his upstart family (he was a Dudley, not a Percy, for the true Northumberland title was at the moment suspended) he probably intended to lay hands upon the whole Bishopric, and to arrogate for himself the Palatinate jurisdiction. He succeeded in getting the Bishop thrown into prison on false charges of treason, and then forced a Bill through Parliament which abolished the power of the Palatinate, and created two sees--one at Durham, the other at Newcastle. There can be little doubt that he intended to secure the Palatinate power for himself, and to rule in Durham as Duke of Northumberland; whilst his son, Guildford Dudley, recently married to Lady Jane Grey, was to be Prince Consort, and to share the throne of England. This most daring scheme fell to the ground when Mary came to the throne, and the recent legislation was at once abolished, and things went back to the conditions obtaining before the reign of Edward.

Under Elizabeth the Bishopric underwent a process of reconstruction in various ways. It was not a pleasant process. Socially the old system of land-tenure, which had been breaking up since the Black Death, was abolished, and a new method of leaseholds was evolved after much friction between the tenants on the one side, and the Dean and Chapter, or the Bishop, on the other. The power of the Bishop was now further attenuated, for the Queen laid hands upon large estates which were the undoubted possession of the see, with a history of many centuries’ attachment to the Patrimony of St. Cuthbert. The settlement of religion carried out in the early years of the Queen’s reign was largely unpalatable in Durham. Certainly the majority of the clergy acquiesced, but the acquiescence was largely external. So the people at large tolerated the changes that were wrought in churches and services, when the English liturgy took the place of the Latin offices restored by Mary, and when altars were broken down, and the church furniture in general was destroyed. The great Bishopric families--Nevilles, Lumleys, and others--scarcely concealed their dislike of the new régime in Church and in State, and after some years of endurance, they rose at last in 1569. Feeling sure of wide sympathy in Northumberland and Durham, the Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland gathered retainers together, and restored the old order in Durham Cathedral, whilst the people of Durham, lowly kneeling, were absolved from the guilt of schism. But inferior leadership caused the rising to collapse outside the Bishopric, and when the Queen’s army marched through Durham it swept the undisciplined forces of the Earls across the Tyne to be dissipated in the rigours of a cold Northumbrian winter. But, although the rebellion came to nothing, passive resistance was maintained. As the reign proceeded, this quieter condition was roused into greater activity by the seminary priests and the Jesuit missionaries who came into the country from institutions abroad, which sent over into England, and not least into Durham, a long succession of these emissaries. They went up and down the district, welcomed and protected by friends who received their ministrations, but not seldom hunted down by the vigilance of the Ecclesiastical Commission, which increased the stringency of its measures as the century drew to its close.

The last years of the great Queen witnessed a rather distressing condition of things in the county. Pestilence was a frequent visitor in times that were insanitary, and the transition to happier conditions in religion and in society was not complete. The villages were frequently unpopulated, and tillage was decayed, whilst the starving families wandered into the neighbouring towns in search of food. Probably the depressing state of affairs was worse in the Bishopric than in other parts of England, for it received a special aggravation in the Scottish inroads, which were renewed towards the end of the reign before their final extinction at the accession of James. When the Elizabethan Poor Law began its work, the county of Durham benefited by its operation, for regular collectors for the poor were appointed, and sometimes rates were levied, in place of the very uncertain alms of the "poor man’s box" in the church, to which parishioners were asked to contribute under the Injunctions of Elizabeth.

The Stuarts showed more regard for the Palatinate of Durham than did the Tudors. No Tudor sovereign, it seems, entered the county, but James I., Charles I., and James II. when Duke of York, paid ceremonious visits to Durham, and in general upheld the prestige of the see, though they never completely restored its independence. One of the most interesting episodes of the seventeenth century is the religious revolution carried out during the first forty years. Bishop Neile is credited with introducing to Durham a series of prebendaries who altered the aspect of the cathedral and produced great changes in the services. These "innovations" caused much comment, and although Charles in 1633 paid a special visit, and by his presence and countenance sanctioned what had been done, frequent remonstrance was made. The long reign of Elizabethan Churchmanship had accustomed the people to one uniform type of worship and ornament, and they were not prepared for the alterations now made in ritual and in the appearance of the churches. When the Scots entered England in 1640, by way of remonstrance against the King’s policy in Church and State, the Bishopric was not altogether unsympathetic; but when the armed demonstration proved to be an armed occupation extending over a year in duration, the royalism of Durham re-asserted itself. At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 it was warmly royalist. A second Scottish occupation after Marston Moor in 1644 kept this spirit in check, whilst the Long Parliament virtually superseded the Palatinate and governed the district by committees. Bishop, prebendaries, and other high ecclesiastics had fled when the Scots entered Durham in 1640. Parliament now seized upon the lands of Bishop and Chapter, and sold them or let them as opportunity offered. Thus for several years the old ecclesiastical constitution of Durham was destroyed, and in the parish churches, carefully cleared in 1644 from all "monuments of idolatry," a Presbyterian system was set up. It was not, however, fully carried out, and all manner of ministers were in possession when the Protectorate was set up in 1653. The cathedral services had long been silenced, and in 1650 Cromwell used the buildings as a convenient accommodation for the Scottish prisoners captured at Dunbar. On the petition of the people of the county, the Protector undertook to establish a college in Durham and to devote the cathedral and castle buildings to that purpose. Resentment and discontent smouldered during these years of tyranny. Indeed, more than one Royalist rising had to be repressed. When, at the beginning of 1660, there was talk of restoring the King, no voice of dissent was heard in the county.

Exuberant loyalty greeted the Restoration. Cosin was made Bishop. He was one of the group of influential men appointed by Neile forty years before, and now for twelve years he repaired the breaches of the city and diocese, and carried out the principles which he had formed in earlier life. The Palatinate jurisdiction was revived, with perhaps greater lustre than it had exhibited for a century past. In these days of royalist triumph Nonconformist and Puritan scarcely ventured at first to show their heads, but in Durham they were only biding their time. They found opportunity to promote a formidable rising, which was known as the Derwentdale Plot, aiming at some kind of overthrow of the restored Church and Crown. It was badly managed, and speedily collapsed; but Anabaptists, Quakers, and other parties managed to maintain their existence despite strenuous measures, and more particularly despite the vigorous working of the Conventicle Acts which were intended to crush Nonconformity.