the Wear, which was destined to be the Bishop’s fortress for seven and a half centuries. Within that castle Walcher was safe, and, helped by the Earl, he ruled his recalcitrant flock, not always wisely, but with all his power, until an insurrection which he strove to quell cost him his life. He died, however, not as mere Bishop of Durham, but as Earl of Northumbria as well, for when Waltheof the Earl died, William appointed Walcher in his place. Thus in the hands of the first Bishop after the Conquest was held the double authority of Bishop and of Earl. Whatever may have been the powers of the prelate in the Bishopric until this time, it is certain that from this point he claims a double authority within the Patrimony of St. Cuthbert. As for Walcher, stern example was made of what resistance to the Bishop’s lawful authority would mean, when William laid waste the land that had escaped ten years before, and extended his ravages north of the Wear and towards the Tyne.
Just before the eleventh century expired, an event of considerable importance took place when Bishop Carileph began the great cathedral which still crowns the height above the Wear at Durham. About the same time an understanding was reached between the Earl of Northumbria and the Bishop, by which all the rights and the independence of the Bishopric seem to have been recognized and confirmed, so that henceforward the Bishop was the undisputed lord of the lands of St. Cuthbert.[2] When in 1104 the cathedral was sufficiently advanced to receive the body of the saint within its eastern apse, a great ceremony took place, which served to carry the prestige of Durham beyond anything it had yet reached. Henceforward the stream of pilgrims which had steadily flowed to the shrine, whether at Lindisfarne, or Chester-le-Street, or Durham, swelled in volume until the attractiveness of Durham exceeded that of any place of pilgrimage in England. Only when the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury drew to it so large a share of patronage from the end of the twelfth century did a serious rival manifest itself. Carileph had divided the territory of St. Cuthbert, reserving part for the Bishop, and part for the Benedictine monks whom he placed in the new cathedral. Thus the Bishop had his estates henceforward, and the monks had theirs. At first the portion belonging to the monastery seems to have been disappointingly poor, a fact very probably due to recent ravages whose brand was not yet effaced. By degrees, however, the lands of prior and convent improved, and the gifts of pilgrims made the monks prosperous.
The Bishop who presided when the body of St. Cuthbert was translated in 1104 was Ralph Flambard. He was not the character to allow the prestige of the Bishopric to decline. Under him the resources of the county were ably administered, and the organization of his dominions was carefully developed. By degrees the traces of the Norman harrying were obliterated. How fair a country Durham was in the early twelfth century we may discover from the poetry of a monk from the monastery who was called Lawrence, and wrote a description of events and localities connected with Durham. He speaks of its scenery, its excellent products, its fine breed of horses, its open-air amusements, to say nothing of indoor revels at Christmas. The twelfth century, with sparse population, open moor and plain, and increasing prosperity, is far away from the noise of anvil and forge, the smoke of endless coke ovens, the squalor of congested towns, as they exist in the county to-day. But the scene changed too soon. After the accession of Stephen in 1135 fierce dynastic feuds broke out, and the Scots joined in the anarchy of the time, attempting to annex the territory of St. Cuthbert to the Lowlands of Scotland. Durham suffered severely in the conflict, and a mock-bishop, supported by the Scots, actually held Durham Castle and City against the lawful prelate. At length more quiet days came, and in the reign of Henry II. Bishop Pudsey, the King’s own cousin, succeeded in resisting the centralizing efforts of the monarch, and although he had to bow to the imperious Henry on more than one occasion, he carried on in the main the liberties and rights of the Bishopric. A little later he was enabled to round off the Bishopric lands when he bought the wapentake of Sadberge from King Richard, the only important part of the county which had never yet been included in the territory of St. Cuthbert. From this time the Earl of Northumbria disappears, and at last there is no rival whatsoever to powers which had been steadily growing. The Bishopric is now complete in head and members, and the Bishop is virtual sovereign of it, whilst the King is supreme outside. At this stage we may freely call the Bishop’s dominions the Palatinate of Durham—a name which continues to be usual until the power so described is, in 1836, annexed to the Crown. The word "Palatinate" is a conventional legal title which the lawyers brought into fashion to describe a great franchise with its independent jurisdiction.[3]
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.