“How when the rude Danes burned their pile,
The monks fled forth from Holy Isle—
O’er northern mountain, marsh, and moor,
From sea to sea, from shore to shore,
Seven years Saint Cuthbert’s corpse they bore”;
how, also, among other strange experiences, the corpse in its stone coffin floated “light as gossamer” down Tweed from Melrose to Tillmouth; and how, after an excursion to Ireland and to Craike Abbey, it was brought back once more to familiar ground by Wear and Tyne, but never again to Lindisfarne.
DISTANT VIEW OF DURHAM.
It was perhaps because the saint or his guardians thought that the risks of disturbance were too great on Holy Island that the relics sought refuge at Chester-le-Street, and there rested for more than a century. And now began the period of power of the bishopric, united to that of Hexham. Alfred the Great had, on regaining the control of his realm, largely endowed the episcopal seat rendered illustrious by the sanctity of Cuthbert and the learning of Bede. The lands between Tyne and Tees became “the patrimony of St. Cuthbert,” and to these were added large possessions or authority in adjoining districts. The king decreed that “whatever additions the bishopric might acquire by benefaction or otherwise should be held free of temporal service of any kind to the Crown”—Cuthbert’s dying wish put into the form of a royal grant. The bishop thus became, within his own domain, a vice-king, exercising civil as well as spiritual jurisdiction. Lands and vassals were added by a natural process of selecting the service least onerous in this world and offering the greatest rewards in the next; and the nucleus was formed of the County Palatine, which retained, down to the present century, some of the properties of an imperium in imperio. In the time of Ethelred the Unready, the spoilers returned, and the monks and the canonised remains were again driven forth, this time as far as Ripon. There came a time when it seemed safe to move back to Chester-le-Street, but the saint does not appear to have relished reinstatement after eviction. The returning company of monks halted on high ground overlooking the fair Vale of Wear and the likely site of Durham, then an insignificant village, and known as “Dunholm.” At the top of the hill the precious burden became miraculously heavy, and the bearers had to set it down. Three days of prayer and fasting were required before inspired direction was obtained through a monk, or a dun cow—tradition is contradictory on the point—and the cortège finally halted in a grove of trees on the platform of the high peninsula formed by the bend of the river. Here first rose a “tabernacle of boughs,” and then a humble cell—the “White Church”—on the spot, as is supposed, now occupied by the church of St. Mary-le-Bow, in the North Bailey. In a few years’ time the bishop, Aldune, set to work to erect, upon the site of the present cathedral, a “roof divine” to worthily cover the bones of holy Cuthbert; and as the monkish rhyme (translated) runs:—
“Arch follows arch; o’er turrets turrets rise,