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.

Generally speaking, the county of Durham accepted the Revolution in 1688, though here and there some reluctance was manifested, and notwithstanding the efforts of Bishop Crewe and Dean Granville to promote allegiance to King James. Jacobitism, indeed, was spasmodic in the Bishopric, and it does not appear that in 1715 or in 1745 very wide sympathy was exhibited in the district when elsewhere the excitement was considerable. The eighteenth century witnessed two events of the greatest importance in Durham history. In the first place, after a period of long stagnation, industrial development caught the whole district and entirely changed its character. The coal trade had been prosecuted continuously since the thirteenth century at least, and the mines had proved a considerable source of revenue to the owners. Lead was an ancient industry, and the salt-pans of the county have a connected history, ranging over many centuries. These and other operations had increased in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, more particularly when a great development of shipping at Sunderland and at Hartlepool took place after the Restoration. A large export trade by sea spread rapidly. In the early part of the eighteenth century 175,000 tons of coal was the annual output on the Wear, and the history of the collier convoys at that time is a large chapter in the general history of North Country shipping. All this meant a considerable increase of prosperity, and by degrees the county which had been thinly populated, for the most part, became a hive of industry, in which rapid fortunes were made. The mines and the shipyards attracted labour from other parts of England, and the population of the county, returned as 58,860 in the early days of Elizabeth, amounted to 149,384 in 1801, a figure which has been multiplied by ten in the last hundred years. The Bishop and the Dean and Chapter largely shared in the vast increase of wealth which the working of coal-mines in particular produced. It cannot, however, be said with truth that the Church authorities neglected the cause of charity. A list of the benefactions directly due to the various Bishops, and also to Dean and Chapter, shows how much they did in various ways for the cause of education as well as for the spiritual well-being of the people. Indeed, subscription lists of the early nineteenth century, which still survive, prove that the clergy gave the chief proportion of what was given when some public call was made. It must not be forgotten that Durham University and Durham School were the direct foundations of the Church within the Bishopric.

The other important event to which allusion has been made was the appearance of the Wesleyan Movement in Durham. Bishop Butler wrote his famous work, the Analogy, in the western parts of the county, and published it in 1736. It may be doubted whether its local effect was considerable. Within a few years John Wesley passed and repassed through the county, and established his societies in Durham, Sunderland, Darlington, and elsewhere. They prospered exceedingly, and left a permanent impression upon the district, and this was deepened and extended when a fresh wave of Methodism travelled over the North of England early in the nineteenth century in connection with the spread of Primitive Methodism. There can be no manner of doubt that the Methodist Movement deeply stirred and influenced some classes of the increasing population which the Church left untouched.

The real dividing-line between Old Durham and the present day is to be found in the series of changes which took place in the reign of William IV. The spirit of reform was operating in various directions, and it was not likely that Durham could escape. The increasing wealth of the Church and the still independent powers of the Bishop attracted the attention of the party of change. The Dean and Chapter rose to their opportunity, and founded the University of Durham. The newly formed Ecclesiastical Commission reduced the large staff of the cathedral, and reduced the stipends of those who were left. The Bishop was henceforth to be no longer a great landowner, managing his own revenues and estates, but a prelate, like any other, drawing a fixed stipend. His officers went, and the Palatinate jurisdiction which Dudley had coveted was finally annexed to the Crown. Thus to-day George V. is, within the confines of the Bishopric, Earl Palatine of Durham.

TOPOGRAPHY OF DURHAM
By Miss M. Hope Dodds
Hist. Tripos, Cantab.

The Great North Road.