BISHOP AUCKLAND PALACE AND PARK.
On the other or south side of the Wear are Whitworth Hall, the historic seat of the Shaftos, and Spennymoor, made memorable by a terrible colliery disaster; and by Sunderland Bridge, near the inflow of the Browney, you cross to the vicinity of deep and haunted Croxdale. Behind all these rises the high ridge upon which are perched Ferryhill and the lofty tower of the old Church of Merrington. This is a commanding historic site for surveying the County Palatine; and on a clear day the view ranges all up the valley of the Wear to the mountains of Westmorland and Cumberland, and south-east and east to the mouth of the Tees and to the Cleveland Hills in Yorkshire. Near by are many scenes of note in the annals of Durham. It was in Merrington Church that the usurping Comyn made his last stand in his “lewd enterprise” of seizing the Bishopric in 1144; and it was the gathering-place of the English forces that assembled to repel the Scots before Neville’s Cross. Eldon, which gave its name to the eminent Lord Chancellor; Thickley, where were reared those stout Cromwellians, General Robert and Colonel John Lilburn; Mainsforth, the home of Surtees, the historian of Durham and friend of Walter Scott; and Bishop Middleham, the residence of the Bishops for two or three centuries after the Conquest, are all within easy reach. To the north and north-east, Brancepeth and Ushaw College, and the town and towers of Durham, are in sight, and between the Wear and the sea rise Penshaw, Wardenlaw, and other heights, and the smoke of collieries innumerable.
Wardenlaw receives most countenance from tradition for the claim that it is the spot where St. Cuthbert made selection of the last resting-place for his bones, weary of long wanderings by land and sea. But, on the ground of situation, the honour might be disputed by a score of other sites commanding a view of the rich valley, the winding river, and the “guarded cliff,” crowned by the “Cathedral huge and vast,” that is at once a monument and a symbol of the grand old Saint of the North. To visit Durham, or even to see its three great square towers rising in stern and severe majesty over the Wear and the masses of houses and foliage clustered beneath, is to feel that the Age of Miracle is not yet past. Or, if the ancient phases of faith and life be indeed dead or dying, there has nowhere in England been left a more solid and impressive memorial of their former strength than the Cathedral of Durham. The Apostle among the Angles, dead these twelve centuries, seems to haunt his ancient fane, and to cast the influence of his austere spirit over the narrow streets and lanes of the venerable town. The spell by which these stately arches and massive towers rose, and which, in other centuries, drew towards Durham great crowds of pilgrims, and wealth and secular and ecclesiastical power unequalled in the North, is not yet wholly broken. To this day the town stands somewhat aside, with an air of proud seclusion, from the rush and din of the great highways of commerce that pass so near. It gives, indeed, a part of its mind and time to the manufacture of mustard and carpets and the raising of coal, but it does not give its whole heart, like its neighbour cities, to trade. It is a centre of academic culture and learning, and has its thoughts not unfrequently cast back into a darker but splendid past. St. Cuthbert’s body may follow the way of all flesh, but his will and his character are still living and acting powers in Durham.
WILLINGTON.
Whether chance or heavenly inspiration directed the choice of site, the selection of Durham as the stronghold of the religious feeling and of the temporal power of the North was a happy one. For centuries it was the core, not only of the Vale of Wear and of the County Palatine, but of ancient Northumbria. To the credit of the Scots, to whose account Durham and the Wear had afterwards to set down so terrible an array of losses and grudges, it has to be said that this region of the North was originally missionised and converted to Christianity from the further side of the Tweed. When the greater part of Saxon England was in heathen darkness, a spark of light was struck at Holy Island and Lindisfarne, and a little later at Jarrow and Monkwearmouth, and never after was it extinguished. It was carried thither by apostles of the Early Scottish Church, and when Oswald, King and Saint, granted Holy Island, close by his royal residence of Bamborough, to St. Aidan as a site for a monastic house and a centre of missionary effort, the germ was planted of the future See of Durham. Cuthbert also came from the other side of the Border—a Border, however, which did not exist in those days as a barrier of ecclesiastical and political power. He was a native of the pleasant vale of Lauderdale, and came as a member of the brotherhood of Melrose to reinforce the band of holy men whose home was at Lindisfarne, and whose special field of labour was the region between Tees and Tweed. The zeal and the austerities of his companions were not enough to satisfy the ardent soul of Cuthbert; neither was Holy Island a retreat secluded enough for the practice of those penances and prayers by which he sought to mortify the flesh and to propitiate Heaven in favour of his work. His fame for piety was such that he was promoted to be Bishop of Hexham, and afterwards to be head of the Monastery of Lindisfarne; but, laying down these charges, he retired to the surf-beaten refuge of the Farne Islands, and there spent the solitary close of his days. Even in his lifetime, St. Cuthbert’s fasts and prayers had, according to the belief of that time, been efficacious in working miracles; and it may be judged whether his brethren were likely to allow the tales of wondrous cures wrought at the touch or word of the holy man to suffer in repetition, or to permit so valuable a power to die with him. On his death-bed, it is said, he exhorted his companions to hold fast by the faith, and, rather than submit to the violation of a jot or tittle of the doctrine and ritual committed to them, to take up his body and flee with it to some spot where the Church might be free, and finally triumphant.
BRANCEPETH CASTLE.
The body of the saint thus became not merely a precious property, in which resided thaumaturgical virtues, but a symbol and pledge of monastic and churchly privileges; and it travelled farther and met with more adventures after death than in life. The pagan Norsemen became soon after the curse and the terror of the Northumberland coasts. Their first descent was made exactly eleven centuries ago—in 789—and four years later they returned and ravaged Lindisfarne, as well as Jarrow and other churches; but the monks, on coming back to their ruined home, found the incorruptible body of their saint intact in its shrine. Still later, in King Alfred’s time, the Danes hove down upon the shores of England, and the brethren had again to flee for their lives from the marauders. This time, however, because they were not sufficiently persuaded that another miracle would be vouchsafed for the preservation of the precious remains, or for some other good reason, they did not leave the saint to the mercies of the invaders. Church legend has repeated with many marvellous particulars the story—