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._
The Great North Road crosses the Tees by Croft Bridge, on which the
boundary between Yorkshire and Durham is marked by a stone dated 1627.
This road is the "Darnton Trod," along which criminals from the South
sought refuge all through the Middle Ages. Once across the Tees the
fugitive was safe, for the King’s writ did not run in the Bishopric.
Moreover, this was the road to the great sanctuary of St. Cuthbert at
Durham, where a man was safe from the vengeance of his enemies; and so
it happened that Darlington became a great resort of evil-doers, and in
1311 Bishop Kellaw issued a proclamation threatening with the terrors of
excommunication all those who molested merchants going to and returning
from Darlington market. The ill-name of the neighbourhood was not lost
after the Bishop had been deprived of his own writs in 1536. The little
inn of Baydale was the resort of the gentlemen of the road in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the rendezvous of Catton’s gang,
the haunt of Barwick and of Sir William Browne, all noted highwaymen of
the North.
The first hamlet in Durham through which the road passes is Oxneyfield,
where, in the fields by the wayside, may be seen the Hell Kettles, four
dark, still pools, formed by the natural sinking of the soil over the
salt measures in the north bank of the Tees. There is a tradition that
an Eastern diver, a black man, plunged into one of the pools, and
reappeared in the Skerne, having discovered a subterranean connection
between the two waters. The Black Man in North Country legends is
usually the devil, and this story may be connected with the belief that
the Hell Kettles sometimes grow boiling hot, and that the devil "seethes
the souls of sinful men and women in them," at which times the spirits
may be heard to cry and yell about the pools.
[Illustration: THE MARKET-CROSS AT DARLINGTON.]
Passing by this haunted place the road leads on to Darlington, a borough
full of historical relics, from the Bulmer Stone in Northgate to the
first locomotive at Bank Top Station. The Bulmer Stone is a large
boulder of Shap granite, which was borne down to its present
resting-place on a glacier in the Ice Age. Lying in the midst of the
level, marshy plains of the Skerne, it formed a landmark for the men of
the Bronze Age, and was perhaps the origin of the town. An Anglian
burial-ground, probably pre-Christian, was discovered in the town in
1876. After the conversion of the North a church was built, and two
Saxon crosses from it are preserved in the present Church of St.
Cuthbert. The history of this beautiful building does not come within
the scope of the present section. To the west of the church lies the
market-place, where in 1217 Stephen de Cantuaria purchased half a pound
of pepper at the fair on the Feast of All Saints, which he rendered to
Roger Fitzacris as service for this land in Milneflach and elsewhere.
From the market-cross in 1312 was read the Bishop’s order that a
tournament which had been proclaimed at Darlington should not be held,
as it was forbidden by the laws of the land. That market-cross is not
standing now, but its successor may be seen in the modern covered
market, a plain column surmounted by a ball, which was erected in 1727
by Dame Dorothy Brown, the last descendant of the family of Barnes,
whose members had held the office of bailiff of Darlington for over a
hundred years. The old toll-booth, in which the bailiffs held their
courts, was pulled down in 1806 and replaced by the present Town Hall.
Ever since 1197, Darlington enjoyed the title of borough, and yet it
possesses no early charters and had no corporate government; it was not
visited by the municipal commissioners in 1833, and was only
incorporated in 1868. Until its incorporation the Bishop of Durham
appointed a bailiff, who held the old manorial court of the borough.
Darlington enjoys the distinction of having retained its bailiff until
the middle of the nineteenth century, whereas in the other Durham towns
the Bishop had ceased to appoint bailiffs by the end of the seventeenth
century. The fame of Darlington rests on the fact that the first
passenger railway-line in England was laid between Darlington and
Stockton by George Stephenson, who was supported by the capital and
influence of Edward Pease of Darlington; the line was opened in 1825.
This is surely glory enough for any town!
[Illustration: AN OLD TITHE-BARN AT DURHAM.]
Great Aycliffe, lying five miles north of Darlington on the highroad,
was once one of the lesser forests of the Bishopric. About four miles
north of Aycliffe the road crosses a little stream by the hamlet of
Rushyford. This was a desolate spot in 1317, when on September 1 Lewis
Beaumont, Bishop-elect of Durham, and the Cardinals Gaucelin John and
Luke Fieschi, with a numerous train of attendants, travelled towards
Durham, Beaumont to be consecrated in the cathedral, the Cardinals to
negotiate a truce between England and Scotland. They had been warned at
Darlington that the road was beset, and this warning, which they
disregarded, proved only too true, for as they crossed the gloomy little
burn at Rushyford, they were set upon by the notorious freebooter, Sir
Gilbert Middleton, and his men. The Cardinals and their servants were
stripped of their goods and allowed to continue their journey, but the
borderers carried off the Bishop-elect to their fortress of Mitford
Castle, and there held him to ransom, until the Prior and Convent of
Durham by great sacrifices succeeded in redeeming him.
The next place of importance on the road is Ferryhill, a large modern
village six and a half miles south of Durham. Few traces of the past
survive here, except the fragment of an old stone cross, Cleve’s Cross,
which is traditionally held to commemorate the slaying of a great wild
boar, which ravaged Durham once upon a time, by a certain valiant Roger
de Ferry, whose family long dwelt in the neighbourhood in great honour.
About a mile to the south-east of Ferryhill is Mainsforth, the estate of
Robert Surtees, the historian of Durham.
Midway between Ferryhill and Durham the highroad crosses the River Wear
by Sunderland Bridge, and passes through the suburbs into the city of
Durham.
A bird’s-eye view of the city of Durham even at the present day is
surprisingly beautiful. In the Middle Ages it would have served as a
model for one of those fascinating little Jerusalems or Bethlehems,
walled, towered, and pinnacled, which the old Italian masters loved to
perch on the craggy hills in the background of some sacred picture. The
river sweeps round three sides of the crag, which is crowned by the
cathedral and the castle, and the narrow neck of land on the fourth side
was defended by a moat. The Prior’s borough of Elvet and the merchants’
quarter of Framwellgate lay on the opposite bank of the river, and were
connected with the citadel itself by their bridges.
The monastic chroniclers of the see were chiefly interested in the
doings of the Bishop in his castle and the Prior in his cathedral, and
the occasional interventions of the Lord King in the quarrels of these
august persons; they tell comparatively little of the life and affairs
of the burgesses themselves, the descendants of the men from between
Coquet and Tees, who obeyed the summons of Earl Ucthred in 995, and
hastened to Durham to raise a shrine worthy of St. Cuthbert, who cleared
the thick forest on the crag of Durham, divided the land by lot, and
became the Haliwerfolc, the people of the Saint. Twice during the
eleventh century they were besieged by the Scots, and each time the
enemy was routed. The heads of the slaughtered Scots were exposed in the
market-place, where the great fair of Durham was held on September 4,
the Feast of the Translation of St. Cuthbert. There was also a fair on
the saint’s other festival, March 20; but the September fair was the
more important. The laws of the special peace of St. Cuthbert, which was
proclaimed by the thanes and drengs before the fair opened, were written
in an ancient Gospel-Book, and a copy of them is still preserved.
In the winter of 1068-69 Robert Cumin, the newly created Norman Earl of
Northumberland, advanced to Durham with his troops, but as the Normans
lay there they were surprised by a sudden rising of the whole
population, and slain almost to a man. A year later news came that
William himself was approaching Durham to avenge the death of Cumin,
whereupon Bishop Egelwin and the priests took the sacred body of St.
Cuthbert and such of the treasures of the church as they could carry and
fled to Lindisfarne, followed by the people of the city, who dared not
remain without the sacred relic. The whole multitude took refuge on the
island while William devastated Durham and Northumberland. At length
peace was made, and St. Cuthbert and his followers returned to the
desolate city. In 1072 William visited Durham, and installed the
foreigner, Bishop Walcher, in the see. About this time also the first
Norman castle was built in the city to keep the people in check; but
when Bishop Walcher ventured out of his stronghold in 1080 he was
murdered. Again William ravaged Durham, and the see was filled by Bishop
William de St. Carileph, who began to build the present cathedral, and
who founded the Benedictine monastery connected with it. To the new
monastery he gave forty merchants’ houses in Elvet, which formed the
nucleus of the Prior’s borough of Elvet. The troubles of Durham
recommenced in 1140, when, the see being vacant, Durham Castle was
seized by William Cumin, a nominee of King David of Scotland, who hoped
through Cumin to annex the Bishopric. In the course of the struggle
between the usurper and the new Bishop, William de St. Barbara, the
greater part of the city of Durham was reduced to ashes. There were four
years of desperate warfare before Bishop William entered his cathedral
town, and at last received the submission of Cumin. Even then there
could be no true peace while England was torn with civil war, and it was
not until after the death of Bishop William that a brighter day dawned
with the election of Bishop Hugh Pudsey. Bishop Hugh rebuilt the ruined
city, restored the fortifications, and added to the cathedral. He
granted the burgesses a charter, by which the customs of
Newcastle-on-Tyne were confirmed to them, besides freedom from merchet,
heriot, and toll. The city of Durham stands first in Bishop Pudsey’s
great survey of the Bishopric (Boldon Book, compiled in 1183), when the
city was at farm for 60 marks. Records which relate to the actual life
of the citizens do not begin until the fourteenth century. The earliest
are various charters of murage, dated 1345, 1377, 1385, which authorized
the citizens to levy certain tolls, and to devote the proceeds to the
repair of the walls and streets. The city was governed
[Illustration: BISHOP PUDSEY’S CHARTER.]
by a bailiff, appointed by the Bishop, in the same way as Darlington. It
is not until the fifteenth century that gilds are heard of in Durham. In
1436 Bishop Langley granted a licence to several of the principal
inhabitants to form the religious gild of Corpus Christi in the Church
of St. Nicholas, in the market-place. This gild was closely connected
with the craft gilds of the town, which must have been in existence at
the beginning of the century. The first records of the gilds occur in
1447, when the Shoemakers (Cordwainers) and the Fullers each gave
recognizances to the Bishop that they would forfeit 20s. to him and 20s.
to the light of Corpus Christi if any member took a Scot as an
apprentice. The ordinances of the Weavers were enrolled and confirmed by
the Bishop in 1450, and in them reference is made to the play which was
to be played when they went in procession on Corpus Christi Day. The
gilds were not merely a picturesque feature of town life, they had also
a powerful influence on the development of the city. The corporation
granted by Bishop Pilkington’s charter of 1565--the first charter of
incorporation which the city obtained--was probably modelled on the
governing body of the Corpus Christi Gild. The governing charter of the
city until 1770 was granted by Bishop Toby Matthew in 1602, and by this
charter the Common Council of the town was to consist of twenty-four
persons, two being chosen from each of the twelve principal companies by
the mayor and aldermen. When the city of Durham obtained Parliamentary
representation in 1678, the franchise of the borough could only be
obtained by membership in one of the companies, and the procedure of
admission was therefore carefully regulated by the mayor and
corporation. But in 1761 Durham experienced two elections within a few
months of each other, and the political excitement completely
demoralized the city. All restraints were thrown to the winds, and
numbers of new freemen were admitted in a most irregular manner. The
reaction of this exciting time on municipal affairs was such that, in
1770, more than half the number of the twelve aldermen had resigned or
been removed, and it was therefore impossible to elect a mayor under the
charter of 1603, which consequently lapsed. The various feuds having
been cooled by an interval of ten years, Bishop Egerton granted a new
charter in 1780, with provisions closely resembling those of the old
one, and under this charter Durham was governed until it was included in
the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835.
The North Road, on leaving Durham, follows the course of one of the
Roman roads which passed through the county. It leads northward over
Framwellgate Moor, and six miles from Durham passes through
Chester-le-Street, which lies on the banks of the Cone Burn. As the name
indicates, a Roman camp was situated here, and numerous Roman remains
have been found. The monks who had fled from Lindisfarne in 876 with the
body of St. Cuthbert settled at Chester-le-Street after seven years’
wandering, when peace had been confirmed by the agreement between Alfred
and Guthred the Dane. It was the principal city of the see until 995,
when Bishop Aldhune fled once more before the renewed invasions of the
Danes. In Chester-le-Street the old custom is still kept up of playing a
football-match, in which the whole village takes part, on Shrove
Tuesday.
The borough of Gateshead lies on the Tyne, eight miles north of
Chester-le-Street. The south end of Tyne Bridge was the site of a Roman
camp, and afterwards, in the seventh century, of a Saxon monastery,
which was destroyed by the Danes. A little church which stood there in
1080 was the scene of the murder of Bishop Walcher, who was killed by
the infuriated populace while he was trying to pacify a feud between his
Norman followers and the Saxon nobles. The church was set on fire, and
the Bishop was killed as he rushed from the burning building. The traces
of early Norman work in the present building show that it must have soon
been rebuilt. The new church is first mentioned in 1256, when a
prisoner who had escaped from the castle of Newcastle took refuge in
Gateshead Church. Gateshead’s only charter was granted by Bishop Hugh
Pudsey at some time between 1154 and 1183, and confirmed by his
successor, Bishop Philip of Poitou. The little borough lay on the
outskirts of the Bishop’s forest of Gateshead, and the charter freed the
burgesses to some extent from the tyranny of that very great man, the
Bishop’s Head Forester. In its form of government the borough was
similar to Darlington. Gateshead has always been one of the principal
commercial centres of the county, and, though there are no signs of
craft gilds there, trade companies second in importance only to those of
Durham existed from the reign of Elizabeth till the end of the
eighteenth century. The prosperity of Gateshead very early excited the
alarm of Newcastle, and the history of the town is studded with the
attempts of its jealous neighbour to suppress its trade. In the
fourteenth century the efforts of the Newcastle Corporation were
directed against the fisheries and staithes on the south bank of the
Tyne, which were frequently destroyed by "the malice of the men of
Newcastle." In 1553 the two towns were united, but the Act was repealed
by Queen Mary, who came to the throne in the same year. It was proposed
to renew the union in 1568, but the anxious petitions of Gateshead, and
the opposition of several influential persons in the Palatinate,
frustrated the scheme. There are, however, several cases in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of the interference of Newcastle
with the trade of Gateshead. These troubles were the price that
Gateshead had to pay for its advantageous position by the side of the
greater town. Gateshead was given one representative in the House of
Commons by the Reform Act of 1832, and was incorporated by its inclusion
in the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835.
The boundary of Durham is now the south bank of the Tyne, but formerly
the Bishop’s jurisdiction extended over one-third of the river, and was
marked by a blue stone on Tyne Bridge. The old bridge, which stood where
the Swing Bridge is now, was built in 1248 to replace the Roman bridge,
Pons Ælii, which dated from _circa_ 119. In 1389 the burgesses of
Newcastle carried off the Blue Stone, seized the whole of the bridge,
and built a tower on the south end, which they held against the Bishop.
It was not until 1415 that Bishop Langley at length obtained judgment
against the Corporation of Newcastle, and took possession of the tower
with all his chivalry. The tower stood until the great flood of 1771,
when part of the bridge was swept away. After this catastrophe the whole
was rebuilt, the new bridge being completed in 1781. The High-Level
Bridge was built in 1849, and the present Swing Bridge replaced the old
stone one in 1876. Meanwhile, the conservation of the River Tyne had
been placed in the hands of commissioners, and the jurisdiction of the
Bishop over the river came to an end.
_Durham to South Shields._
The city of Durham, lying almost in the centre of the county, is an
excellent point of departure from which to visit the other towns and
places of interest in the Bishopric. The road which leads from the city
to the mouth of the Tyne runs north-east from Framwellgate Bridge. The
principal village through which it passes is Houghton-le-Spring, six and
a half miles from Durham. The place is closely associated with the name
of Bernard Gilpin, the Apostle of the North, who in the reigns of Edward
VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, was Rector of Houghton-le-Spring, and the
chief instrument in spreading Protestant doctrines through the North.
From here it is seven miles to the mouth of the Wear, where stands the
flourishing port of Sunderland. In early records the town
[Illustration: JACK CRAWFORD’S BIRTH-PLACE, SUNDERLAND.]
is usually called Wearmouth. It possesses two very interesting charters,
dated respectively 1180-83 and 1634; nevertheless, it did not rise above
the level of a manorial borough until 1835, when it was included in the
Municipal Corporations Act. During the Civil War Sunderland was the
principal centre of the Parliamentarians in Durham, which was on the
whole a Royalist county. The fact that Sunderland was an exception was
due to the influence of the family of Lilburne in the town, George
Lilburne, the uncle of the famous John Lilburne, being the only
magistrate in the borough during the war. At the same time the siege of
Newcastle diverted the coal trade to Sunderland, and thus laid the
foundation of its present prosperity. The town is famous in naval and
military history as the birthplace of two heroes--Jack Crawford, who
"nailed the colours to the mast" at the Battle of Camperdown, 1797, and
Sir Henry Havelock, who relieved Lucknow in 1857. The Sunderland Orphan
Asylum was founded in 1853 by the Freemen and Stallingers of Sunderland,
and endowed with the proceeds of the sale of the Town Moor, which had
become exceedingly valuable in consequence of the building of the
railway. The road crosses the Wear, and enters the parish of
Monkwearmouth.
The history of Monkwearmouth goes back to 674, when Benedict Biscop
founded there the monastery of St. Peter. The early history of the
monastery was recorded by the Venerable Bede, who relates how Benedict
brought over foreign masons and glass-workers to build his church, and
beautified it with sacred pictures brought from Rome. It was destroyed
by the Danes towards the end of the ninth century, refounded by Bishop
Walcher, _circa_ 1075, and finally annexed to the Convent of Durham by
Bishop William de St. Carileph in 1083. A cell of the convent was
maintained there until the Reformation, and Monkwearmouth continued to
be a manor belonging to the Dean and Chapter of Durham until it was
incorporated with Sunderland.
From Monkwearmouth the road runs parallel with the coast-line to South
Shields. Shield Lawe, at the mouth of the Tyne, was occupied in
pre-Roman times; an important Roman camp was built there; and later it
was one of the fortresses of the Saxon Kings of Northumbria, and the
site of St. Hilda’s first religious house, founded _circa_ 650. The
little convent was overshadowed by Benedict Biscop’s great monastery of
St. Paul at Jarrow, and both fell before the onslaughts of the Danes.
Jarrow subsequently became a cell of the Convent of Durham, and the
Chapel of St. Hilda at South Shields kept alive the name of the
foundress. After centuries of struggle with the burgesses of Newcastle,
who put down the trade of South Shields with a high hand, the borough
obtained Parliamentary representation in 1832, and incorporation in
1850. In the seventeenth century the salt-pans of South Shields were a
flourishing industry, but its chief importance is now its harbour. The
first lifeboat was built and used there in 1790.
_Durham to Hartlepool._