William of Malmesbury on the Wear—Its Associations—Upper Weardale and its Inhabitants—Stanhope—Hunting the Scots—Wolsingham—Bollihope Fell and the “Lang Man’s Grave”—Hamsterley—Witton-le-Wear—Bishop Auckland—Binchester—Brancepeth Castle—The View from Merrington Church Tower—Wardenlaw—Durham—St. Cuthbert—His Movements during Life and Afterwards—The Growth of his Patrimony—Bishop Carilepho and his Successors—The Battle of Neville’s Cross—The Bishopric in Later Times—The Cathedral, Without and Within—The Conventual Buildings—The Castle—Bear Park—Ushaw—Finchale—Chester-le-Street—Lumley and Lambton Castles—Biddick—Hylton—Sunderland and the Wearmouths—The North Sea.

“Britain,” says William of Malmesbury, “contains in its remotest parts a place on the borders of Scotland where Bede was born and educated. The whole country was formerly studded with monasteries, and with beautiful cities, founded therein by the Romans; but now, owing to the devastations of the Danes and Normans, it has nothing to allure the senses. Through it runs the Wear, a river of no mean width and tolerable rapidity. It flows into the sea, and receives ships, which are driven thither by the wind, into its tranquil bosom.” With the mending of a few phrases, almost the whole of this description by the twelfth-century chronicler could be transferred to the Wear, and to the Durham and Sunderland, of our own day. The Scots have earned the right to be classed with the Danes and Normans as the pillagers of the fanes and castles of this centre of the ecclesiastical and political power of ancient Northumbria. Their modern successors, as destroyers of objects that “allure the senses,” are the mine-owner and the mill-owner, the railway and the blast-furnace, the chemical works and the dockyard. The march of modern industry has taken the place of the foray of the Borderers in the valley of the Wear, as on the neighbour streams of the Tyne and Tees; and, like the fires of Tophet, the smoke of its burning goes up day and night. Yet there are compensations. The Wear does not quarrel with the good fortune that has clouded its once pure air, muddied its whilom clear stream, and disturbed its “tranquil bosom” with keels that no longer depend upon the wind for their coming and going. The wealth that has come to it with peace and the development of its mineral resources and shipping trade is not despised, although it be soiled with honest coal-dust.

Besides, those who are acquainted with the Wear know that it has higher boasts than its importance as a channel of navigation and outlet of trade. Even in its busiest parts—from Sunderland and Monkwearmouth to Chester-le-Street and Lambton—venerable associations with feudal and monkish times struggle for notice with the evidences of modern prosperity and enterprise. At Durham decisive victory is won by the memories of the past over the grimy allurements of the present. From the Cathedral City we carry away impressions of the picturesque grouping of its old houses and bridges, of the ruins of its strong Norman keep built by the Conqueror to repress the turbulent townsmen, and of the magnificent fane which covers the bones of St. Cuthbert and of the Venerable Bede, rather than feelings of respect for its manufacturing industry, or even for its distinction as the seat of a Northern University. We remember the former glories of the County Palatine, the semi-regal power and pomp of its Prince-Bishops, the odour of miracle that drew throngs of pilgrims to its saintly shrine, and the treasures that had an equally potent attraction for grasping kings and barons and for marauding Borderers, in preference to statistical and other testimony of the growth of its trade and population. All up the valley of the Wear, to Bishop Auckland and Witton, and to Wolsingham and Stanhope, commerce has pushed its way, and the very sources of the stream have been probed by the lead-mining prospector. But beauty is there also, and in possession—the beauty of stately woods, embowering princely piles, like Brancepeth Castle, the very stones of which are part of the national history; of clear reaches of the river, sweeping under fragments of religious houses, such as Finchale Priory, gently draped by time with moss, lichen, and ivy; of old bridges and mills and quaint bright villages and wide stretches of fertile land. Beyond all these comes a wilder and barer district, where the hills draw closer to the river, and cultivation and population become more rare, and where at length, over the massive and rounded outlines of the fells, as we rise towards the great “dorsal ridge” of England, we catch glimpses of the Cumberland Mountains and of the Cheviots.

To trace the Wear upwards or downwards is like ascending or descending the stream of English history; from the busy present we move back into the feudal age, and at length into the quietude of primitive Nature. Primitive Nature holds her ground staunchly on Kilhope Law and the “Deadstones,” and over other great bare tracks of rolling upland, near the meeting-point of the shires of Cumberland, Northumberland, and Durham, whence the Welhope, the Burnhope, the Rookhope, and a host of lesser moorland streamlets, bring down their waters to feed the infant Wear. In spite of the mining prospector and the railway projector, many of these fells and dales are more lonely to-day than they were three, or even ten centuries ago. Of the great tangle of lines that cover like a cobweb the lower valleys of the Tyne and Wear, only one or two outer filaments find their way into the neighbourhood of Upper Weardale, and all of them fail by many miles to reach the solitudes of Kilhope Moor.

The smoke of one of the great “workshops of England” may hang darkly upon the eastern horizon, but it is still too distant to pollute the pure air of the hills. Roads, indeed, cross these wildernesses of “ling” and peat-moss—west and east from Alston and Nenthead into Weardale; north and south, from the valleys of the Allen and Derwent to the Tees—through tracts that, in the early part of the century, were traversed only by bridle and footpaths; but these serve in a measure to concentrate any passing traffic, and to leave the open moors more lonely than before. The travelling chapman with his pack, the drover, and the gipsy, promise to become as extinct, as wanderers of the fells, as is the moss-trooper from the Debateable Land, or the pilgrim on the way to St. Cuthbert’s shrine. Their occupants are the wild creatures of the hills and the flocks of black-faced sheep; with a sprinkling of shepherds, who preserve in their dialect and customs many relics of what Durham and the Wear were before the Coal Age. There are mining communities scattered up the valleys and along the hill-slopes; and at Burtreeford, a little above the bridge at Wearhead—the old rendezvous for the wrestling and other sports of Weardale Forest—is what is reported to be the richest vein of lead-ore in England. The lead-miners, like the other dalesmen, are in some ways a race apart, rough and unsophisticated, like the features of the district they occupy, but hearty, sincere, and full of sturdy independence of thought, and free from many of the vices which mark their class elsewhere. It is true now, as it was at the time of the “Raid of Rookhope,” when the Tynedale reivers were seen pricking over the moss by Dryrig and Rookhope-head to harry the lands of the Bishopric, that

The Middlehope and the Rookhope flow into the Wear from the north, below St. John’s Chapel in Weardale, through some of the wildest country in the Forest; and still farther down, upon the same hand, Stanhope burn meets the parent stream at Stanhope. This ground was the favourite hunting-field of the old Bishops of Durham, and in Stanhope Park they had their lodge, where, at stated seasons, they came with a great crowd of retainers to chase the buck and roe. These gatherings are not yet wholly forgotten in the legends of the district. It was the duty of the Auckland vassals of the See to erect the necessary buildings for the housing of the Bishop and his joyous company, including a temporary chapel, where, it may be supposed, the rites of the Church had, on a good hunting day, rather perfunctory performance. The turners of Wolsingham provided the three thousand trenchers for the feeding in the open air; and the Stanhope villeins had the task of carrying the provisions and conveying the surplus venison and game to the palaces at Bishop Auckland and Durham. Often there was more serious sport afoot in Weardale Forest—for instance, when Edward III. hunted the nimble host of Scots whom Lord Moray and the Douglas brought across the Border in 1327 to pillage the Palatinate. The invaders were mounted on hardy little horses, and with their bags of oatmeal at their backs, were themselves as well prepared as their steeds to rough it and pick up their living on the moors. After having been frightened from the neighbourhood of Durham by Edward’s approach, they led him a fine wild-goose chase over the hilly country between the Tyne and the Wear. At last the English van, under Rokesby, descried the Scots encamped upon a strong height south of the Wear. To the challenge to come down and fight upon the level, the enemy prudently replied that they were on English ground, and “if this displeased the King, he might come and amend it;” they would tarry for him. There were skirmishing and great noise and bonfires kept up all night; but next morning the King, surveying the ground from Stanhope Park, found that the Scots had shifted to another hill. On the twenty-fourth day of the chase, the English passed the river and climbed the mountain, but found only three hundred cauldrons and a thousand spits, with meat all ready for cooking; also ten thousand pairs of old boots and shoes of untanned hide. The invaders had cleverly outwitted their pursuers, and were already leagues off on their homeward way over Yadsmoss and the western extremity of the county, carrying with them hurdles they had made for crossing the marshy ground where the English could not follow.

Stanhope is a populous little township on the north side of the Wear, well sheltered by the hills on both banks. Its church and market records go back for five hundred years; and its rectory revenues, mainly drawn from tithes on lead-ore, are among the richest in England. There are rocks and grottoes and beautiful walks along the river margin, as well as around Stanhope Castle, which may stand near the spot where once rose the old forest seat of the bishops. Below Rogerley and Frosterley the valley begins to open; the bare heathy hills withdraw to a more respectful distance; and between them and the river there interpose fine stretches of rich woodland and cultivated fields. For the scarped faces of limestone and marble quarries and the crushing-mill of the lead-mine, one begins to see rising here and there the pit-head machinery of the colliery and the smoke of the iron furnace; from a moorland stream the Wear changes to a lowland river. Wolsingham, which now divides its attention between agriculture and mining, was once on a time the place of hermitage of St. Godric of Finchale, and the villagers held their lands for the service of carrying the Bishop’s hawks and going his errands while attending the Weardale Chase. South of Wolsingham is the long dark ridge of Bollihope Fell, and the spot, marked by a pillar, known as “the Lang Man’s Grave.” Here, says tradition, two huge figures were seen one clear summer evening engaged in mortal strife, until at length one of them fell; and on the place next day was found the dead body of a tall stranger, who was buried where he lay. Below Wolsingham the Wear flows by the grounds of Bradley Hall, an old lordship of the Eures of Witton and afterwards of the family of Bowes; and beyond Harperley the Bedburn Beck comes in, after draining the wild moorland tracts of Eggleston and Hamsterley Commons, and winding through some pretty wooded grounds and pastures. The scattered houses of Hamsterley are on the brow of a hill at the junction of the lead-measures with the great northern coalfield, and for generations its “hoppings,” or rural festivals and sports, have been famous in this part of Durham. Some of the most charming “bits” on the Wear are around Witton-le-Wear. The stream bends and twines under the shade of the high wooded banks upon which the village is placed, and the sides of its tributary brooks are not less richly and picturesquely clothed. The centre of all this beauty is Witton Castle, at the meeting of the Linburn with the Wear. It was long the seat of the valiant race of the Eures, who held it on military service from the Prince-Bishops. It is now a possession of the Chaytors, who have preserved part of the old castellated keep, and restored the rest of the building in something like the original style.

The course of the Wear has now brought us close to Bishop Auckland, and to Bishop Auckland Palace and Park, all that remains to the Bishops of Durham out of the score of manors and castles which they once held. After Durham Castle, however, Bishop Auckland Castle was always their favourite and most princely seat. It is wedged into a nook between the Wear and the Gaunless, and from the high ridge sloping down to the latter stream it commands magnificent prospects of the country around. The town may be said to have grown up under the shadow of the Bishop’s residence, but has in latter days discovered other and more dependable means of support, in manufactures and in the mineral wealth of the district. It is no longer, as in Leland’s day, “a town of no estimation,” either in trade or population. Formerly it had an ill name for insalubrity; but though the steep narrow streets running down to the Wear remain, it has done something to amend its reputation in this respect. Its chief architectural boasts, outside the Castle bounds, are perhaps the great parochial Church of St. Andrews, founded and erected into a collegiate charge by Bishop Bek nearly six centuries ago, and the fine double arch of Newton Bridge, erected by Bishop Skirlaw in 1388, spanning the Wear at one of the most romantic spots in the course of the river. But with the Park and Palace to be seen, the visitor does not linger long outside the Gothic doorway—itself a poor evidence of episcopal taste—that divides the Bishop’s demesne from the Market Place. From the Park and its far-reaching lawns and woodland, the great group of buildings which have been added to and altered by a long line of Bishops of Durham is separated by a battlemented stone screen and arches. Bishop Bek began in earnest the work of beautifying and strengthening the Castle, which had to serve the prelates as a fortified place as well as an episcopal residence. His successors have at intervals zealously, if not always wisely, followed in his footsteps as a builder and renovator. The Bishops dispensed princely hospitality at Auckland; and in Rushall’s time it was thought only “fair utterance” for the household to consume a fat Durham ox per week, and to drink eight tuns of wine in a couple of months; and it was this same Bishop who built “from the ground the whole of the chamber in which dinner is served.”

The place suffered badly, however, in the hands of Pilkington, the first Protestant Bishop, who “built nothing, but plucked down in all places;” and still more deplorable were its fortunes in the storm of the Civil War, when, after having entertained Charles I. as king, the Palace received him as a prisoner, and was afterwards committed to the tender mercies of Sir Arthur Hazelrigg, who pulled down part of the castle and chapel to erect a mansion for himself. Bishop Cosin, on the Restoration, repaired this “ravinous sacrilege” to the best of his ability; and the chapel, as we find it, is largely his work, and fitly covers his tomb. Hazelrigg’s hands also fell heavily on the fine Park, where he left “never a tree or pollard standing.” But this also has been repaired, though one will look in vain now in the leafy coverts by the banks of the Gaunless for the herds of wild cattle that once frequented them. Perhaps the Park is put to better use as the favourite and delightful resort of the townsfolk and visitors of Bishop Auckland.

Not far below Newton Bridge and Auckland Park is Binchester, marking the place where the Wear was crossed by the great Roman road of Watling Street, in its straight course across the county from Piercebridge on the Tees to Lanchester on the Browney, and Ebchester on the Derwent. Roman remains, in the form of sculptured stones, of votive altars, and of baths, have been discovered at Binchester, which may be the Binovium of Ptolemy; and here a cross-road from the south joined the old military way, coming past the sites of what are now Raby Castle, Staindrop, Streatham, Barnard Castle, and other scenes in Langleydale and Teesdale and on the banks of the Greta, since immortalised by history and legend. An older seat of the great family of the Nevilles than Raby Hall itself—Brancepeth Castle, beyond Willington—is near at hand. It got into their possession when the grandson of the Neville who “came over with the Conqueror” married the heiress of the Saxon family of Bulmer. From the Bulmers the Nevilles are supposed to have derived their badge of the “Dun Bull;” and one of their race may have been the hero of the legend that accounts for the local nomenclature by telling how “Sir Hodge of Ferryhill” watched the track of the savage boar—the “Brawn’s path”—from Brandon Hill, and dug a pitfall for him at the spot still marked by a stone at Cleve’s Cross, near Merrington. Brancepeth was the rendezvous of the “grave gentry of estate and name” in the North, who came to aid the Northern Earls, Westmorland, and Northumberland, in the unhappy rising in Queen Elizabeth’s time that cost so many of them their heads as well as their lands. It now belongs to Viscount Boyne. In spite of its low situation and the too intrusive neighbourhood of the great Brancepeth Collieries, it is a noble and massive feudal pile, and in its general effect has been pronounced “superior to any other battlemented edifice in the North of England.” In the Baron’s Hall are memorials of the battle of Neville’s Cross; but for the most interesting memorials of the noble family that ruled the Borders from Brancepeth or from Raby, and by turns formed alliances with, and plotted against, the king, one must go to the old church of St. Brandon, and look at the effigies in carved oak or stone of the Nevilles.

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.

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.

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—

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.

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:—

All this happened nine hundred years ago. In counting upon rest, St. Cuthbert and his brethren had reckoned without the Scots and the Normans. Aldune’s low and crypt-like structure did not last a century. It was rebuilt in statelier form by Bishop William de Carilepho, and Turgot the Prior; Malcolm of Scotland, then on his way to meet Rufus at Gloucester, also laying a foundation stone. Normans and Scots thus set their hands to the work of repairing the ruin they had made. It was the way of Durham and St. Cuthbert’s shrine to thrive more by the assaults of enemies than by the benefits of friends. In the meantime, the fame and importance of the place had vastly increased. King Canute had made a pilgrimage to the shrine of the patron saint, having travelled the distance from Trimdon to Durham, by way of Garmondsway, with naked feet and clad in pilgrim’s weeds. He added liberal gifts and fresh franchises to the see, and encouraged the monks to bring the remains of the Venerable Bede, the father of English Church and secular history, from Jarrow Monastery to be laid beside those of Cuthbert. Another great conqueror and sinner—William of Normandy—after he had wreaked terrible vengeance on the town that had become the centre of Saxon feeling in the north, and that had slaughtered his Norman garrison and his Norman Bishop, showed great respect for the shrine and patrimony of the saint; he even wished to look with his own eyes upon the incorruptible body, but a timely illness that seized him after saying mass in the cathedral baulked his purpose. Flambard, Pudsey, and the other successors of Carilepho, were not so much churchmen as great feudal lords, exercising almost regal sway on the Borders and a powerful influence at court. The privileges and revenues of the Prince-Bishops of Durham were a prize that the Sovereign himself might covet. They raised armies, coined money, levied taxes, appointed sheriffs and other judicial officers, and, in spite of their vows, exercised the right of presiding in court when sentences of life or death were adjudged upon criminals. In other respects their sacred office sat lightly upon them, and they caroused and hunted and intrigued and plotted on a grander scale than any baron of their time. Besides being Bishops of St. Cuthbert’s See, they were titular Earls of Sadberge, and they found it easy to shuffle off the sacred for the secular character, or the secular for the sacred, as suited them. At the same time they never forgot the tradition of their patron saint, or failed to seize an opportunity of magnifying the office and increasing the dignity and power that centred in the “Haliwerk,” or Castle, and the Cathedral. Thus Flambard divided his energies between building strong castles and completing the great church, and endowing public hospitals and his own bastard children. Hugh de Pudsey’s wealth—such of it as the rapacious hands of the Anjou kings left—was spent on similar objects; to him Durham town owes its first charter, and the Cathedral its famous “Galilee Porch,” or Lady’s Chapel, an ingenious compromise, as we are told, between the inveterate ascetic prejudice of St. Cuthbert against the presence of women, and the necessity of allowing the sex access to the chapel dedicated to the Virgin. In Bishop Anthony Bek’s days the See may be said to have reached the zenith of its splendour. He was little less than a Sovereign within his extensive domains; was right-hand man of Edward I. in planning and in seeking to carry out the subjugation of Scotland; led the van with his Northumbrian levies at Falkirk, and carried away the Stone of Destiny from Scone to Westminster; and, dying, left all he had to St. Cuthbert and the Church.

Signal revenge did the Scots work for these wrongs in the time of later bishops; England was never engaged in foreign war or domestic broil but they seized the opportunity of crossing the Border, and the See and the city of Durham caught the brunt of their attack. That was a crushing check, however, which they suffered in 1346, in the days of the learned Bishop Hatfield, when David of Scotland, taking advantage of Edward III.’s absence on his French wars, crossed the Border and with a great host of hungry horsemen was harrying the country up to the gates of Durham. England was not altogether defenceless; for the king had left behind him able guardians of the North Country, in the persons of his Queen Philippa and the Prince-Bishop. The “Haliwerk folk” assembled for the protection of their beloved fane, and the Nevilles and other great lords called together their retainers to fight under the standard of St. Cuthbert. The two armies met at the Red Hill, a broken and hilly piece of ground a short distance west of the city; and after having hung long doubtful, the fortune of war went utterly against the Scots, who left their king in the hands of the victors. A group of monks took up their position at the “Maiden’s Bower,” and signalled to another company upon the central tower of the Cathedral how it went with the battle; and when at length the invaders were put to rout, a solemn “Te Deum” was chanted, and this commemorative custom was continued almost to our own day. Lord Ralph Neville, who led the protecting troops, caused the monument to be raised which has given its name—“Neville’s Cross”—to the battle; his body, with that of other members of the great family that once ruled at Brancepeth and Raby, is buried in the nave; and over his grave was placed, with his own standard, the banner wrested from the King of the Scots. Though Queen Philippa was so good a friend to Durham, yet the churlish patron saint could not brook her presence near his shrine, and when she took up her quarters in the Prior’s house she had to flee hastily in the night in her bed-gear. Not more hospitable was the welcome given to Margaret of Anjou, when fortune went finally against the House of Lancaster and she fled for refuge to Durham. The town and the Prince-Bishops had ventured and suffered much for the Lancastrian cause in the Wars of the Roses; but they dared not risk the vengeance of the victorious side, and hurried the despairing Queen across the Border into Scotland. More troubles awaited Durham at the time of the Reformation. For six years Cardinal Wolsey held the diocese, but confined his duties to drawing its rich revenues. His successor, Tunstall, was a man of rare moderation for his time. Though a Reformer, like his friend Erasmus, he was inclined to remain attached to the “old religion,” and he suffered at the hands of both parties as they successively came uppermost. In his days the monasteries—including that of Durham and the older foundations of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, which had long been annexed to it as “cells”—were suppressed; and the curious reactionary movement known as the “Pilgrimage of Grace” may be said to have had its beginning at Durham. It was renewed, with like disastrous consequences, in the time of the first Protestant Bishop, Pilkington, in the famous enterprise of the “Rising of the North,” when Queen Elizabeth’s partisans, the Bowes of Streatham, rose to notice over the ruin of the Nevilles and Percys, Earls of Westmorland and Northumberland. The Bishopric was temporarily suppressed during the Commonwealth; and the Cathedral interior suffered from being the place of confinement of the Scottish prisoners from Dunbar. But amends came at the Restoration, and whatever can be said against the personal or political character of Bishops Cosin and Crewe, they were princely builders, entertainers, and benefactors of the Cathedral and city. Other eminent men have since occupied the episcopal throne and palace—chief among them for learning and good works being Butler, the author of the “Analogy”; but since the year 1836 almost the whole of the old temporal distinctions and franchises have been stripped from the “Fighting Bishopric,” and Her Majesty is the Countess Palatine of Durham, and keeps “the peace of St. Cuthbert” as well as that of the Sovereign.

Durham and its cathedral have an aspect worthy of their history. No such grandly imposing combination of massive Norman strength and solemn religious beauty is presented by any other architectural pile in England. Seen from Framwellgate Bridge or any other of the many favourite points of view, it looks, what it has been in the past,

About its outward shape there is that air of “rocky solidity and indeterminate endurance” which so impressed Dr. Johnson in its interior. Half the majestic effect of Durham Cathedral is derived, however, from its situation, settled firmly and boldly upon the highest platform of the rocky promontory washed by the river, its huge central tower rising sheer above all its surroundings—the focus of the picture; its two lesser towers squarely fronting the west; the pinnacles of the eastern transept, or “Nine Altars,” balancing them on the other side; and, grouped around, the Castle and its lowering Norman keep, and the high masses of other buildings that surmount the beautiful green “Banks” and walks descending steeply to the Wear. Nearer at hand, after climbing and threading the narrow streets to the “Castle Green,” the exterior view of the great Cathedral is still profoundly impressive if somewhat monotonous. On the north door hangs the knocker and ring, to which the offender against the laws could cling and claim sanctuary, or “the peace of St. Cuthbert.” Within, the long arched roof and lines of alternate round and cruciform pillars are almost overwhelming, not so much on account of their height as of their ponderous strength and massive dignity. Many styles are represented, as many hands have been employed, in the interior; but the pervading spirit is the masterful and dominating genius of the Norman. The original work of Carilepho and Flambard is represented by the nave and choir. Bishop Pudsey’s hand is manifest in the Transition-Norman of the “Galilee” at the west end, under the light and delicate arches of which repose the bones of the Venerable Bede. The “Nine Altars,” extending eastward beyond the choir, is still later work, and was not completed until about the year 1230. In the graceful elegance of its slender shafts of stone shooting up to the extreme height of the roof, and broken only by the rich carvings of the capitals, and in the light that floods it through the beautiful “rose window” and other inlets, it forms a contrast to the somewhat sombre and heavy grandeur of the main portion of the Cathedral, and is one of our finest examples of the Early English style of church architecture. Here, however, was the “most holy place” in the Durham fane; for here is the platform of “the Shrine of St. Cuthbert,” and under it the remains of the hermit of Lindisfarne rest after their long wanderings; and beside them lie other relics—“treasures more precious than gold or topaz”—among them the head of St. Oswald, “the lion of the Angles,” and bones of St. Aidan. It was long believed that the place of the patron saint’s sepulture was a mystery, revealed alone to three brothers of the Benedictine Order, who, under oath, passed on their knowledge, upon their death-bed, to other members of the monastery.

But excavations made in 1827 have left little doubt that the spot pointed out in this Eastern Transept is that which contains the veritable remains of the “Blessed Cuthbert.” Above it hung his banner and “Corporax Cloth,” carried before the English host to victory at Falkirk, Neville’s Cross, Flodden, and other fields; and the miraculous “Black Rood of Scotland,” another of the spoils of war of the Bishopric, was among the treasures of Durham Cathedral until it was lost at the Reformation.

The chapter-house, the cloisters, and the dormitory represent most of what remains of the Monastery of Durham. Its priors took rank as abbots, and vied with the bishops of the See in piety and spiritual influence if not in temporal power. In the library and treasury are preserved many valuable manuscript relics of the monastic days, and in the great kitchen of the Deanery one may form an idea of the scale on which the old Benedictines lived and feasted. Other interesting ecclesiastical and secular buildings are collected upon the rocky platform above the Wear; but next to the Cathedral, the Castle takes first rank. It has long ceased to be the seat of episcopal state, as it has ceased to fulfil any warlike purpose in the land. It has been rebuilt, restored and added to many times since the Conqueror founded it to hold in check the Scots and to overawe the burghers; and it now helps to accommodate the Durham University—an institution which Oliver Cromwell first sought to establish, but which was only brought finally into existence upon the redistribution of the revenues of the See in 1837. Norman strength and solidity, so majestically exhibited in the interior and exterior of the Cathedral, become grim and sinister in the lines of the Castle, and in what remains of the fortifications that enclosed the ancient “Ballium.” Bishop Hatfield rebuilt the Great Keep and the Hall named after him, in which Bishop Anthony Bek, that “most famous clerk of the realm,” feasted Edward Longshanks on his way to conquer Scotland—the Hall which, before or since, has royally entertained a score of different Sovereigns as guests of the Prince-Prelates of Durham. But these restorations were made on the earlier foundations, and Keep and Hall and Norman Chapel retain many of the old features, and something of the old spirit.

Feudalism and romance quickly disappear from the scene when Durham is left behind, and the Wear, now becoming navigable for small craft, is followed farther on its course to the sea. There is an air of mournful solitude about the fragmentary ruins of Beaurepaire, or Bear Park, the retreat of the Priors of Durham, and of seclusion at the Roman Catholic College at Ushaw, founded for the use of the French refugees from the Revolution, and even at Sherburn Hospital, Bishop Pudsey’s great foundation for lepers, now converted to other charitable purposes. But the squalor of colliery rows intrudes upon the picturesque, and the clash of machinery puts to flight the old spirit of monastic calm. This eastern side of the county of Durham is a vast busy workshop—a Northern “Black Country;” and earth and air and water, and even the minds and thoughts of the inhabitants, seem to have an impregnation of coal-dust and engine-smoke. Finchale, three or four miles below Durham, is still, however, a lonely and retired spot; and a charming road through Kepyer Wood leads to the interesting ruins of the Priory erected by Bishop Pudsey’s son, near the place where the good Saint Godric dwelt in hermitage. There are still some remains of the beautiful Decorative work to be seen through the screen of ivy; and the effect is deepened by the situation, on a promontory round which the river makes a bold sweep, and by the fine woods of Cocken that enclose and form a background to the buildings.

Chester-le-Street and Lumley and Lambton Castles are the next places of note by the Wear. Something already we know about Chester, and how narrowly it escaped being the civil and ecclesiastical capital of the County Palatine, and the custodian of the bones of St. Cuthbert. Its business is now mainly with coal and ironstone; but it grumbles a little still over the golden chance it missed, and the baser minerals it has to put up with:—

It is supposed to have been a Roman station; but at all events its importance was considerable in Saxon times. The Church of St. Mary and St. Cuthbert is six hundred years old; and the most remarkable of its features is perhaps the “Aisle of Tombs,” a row of fourteen recumbent effigies supposed to represent the ancestors of the Lumley family, who have lived or had possessions hard by since before the Norman Conquest, and whose pedigree is so long that James I., compelled to listen [Pg 193]
[Pg 194]to its recital, conjectured that “Adam’s name was Lumley.” Camden has it, however, that a Lord Lumley of Queen Elizabeth’s time, who brought this collection of monuments together, “either picked them out of demolished monasteries or made them anew.” The family are now represented by the Earl of Scarbrough whose seat, Lumley Castle, overlooks the Wear and the deep wooded valley through which, coming from Houghton-le-Spring and Hetton-le-Hole, runs the Lumley Beck. It is a goodly and in parts an ancient pile, but since the collieries have crowded around it, Lumley sees little of its owners, and has to be content with the range of old family portraits in the Grand Hall, a companion set to the stone effigies in the church.

Lambton Castle is not only surrounded but undermined by pit workings to such an extent that the ground and the fine semi-Norman, semi-Tudor building upon it—the home for many centuries of the Lambtons, now Earls of Durham—threatened to collapse, and are partly supported by the solid brickwork with which the old mines were filled. Lambton belonged of old to the D’Arcys; but, according to the legend, it was after it came into the hands of the present family that the famous fight between the heir of the estate and the “Worm” took place. The county, as would appear from its traditions, once swarmed with loathly “worms” or dragons; and this one took up its station by coiling itself around the “Worm Hill,” and also frequented the “Worm Well.” The heir of Lambton encountered it in armour “set about with razor blades,” and the monster cut itself to pieces, the penalty of victory, however, being that no chief of Lambton was to die in his bed for nine generations. The most eminent name in the Lambton pedigree is that of John, first Earl of Durham, the champion of Reform, and the Greek temple that crowns the summit of Penshaw Hill, on the opposite or south side of the Wear, is erected to his memory.

At Biddick the great Victoria Railway Bridge crosses the Wear by a series of large spans at a height of 156 feet above the stream. The “Biddickers,” now good, bad, and indifferent, like other “keelmen” of their class, were a wild set last century, and among them the Jacobite Earl of Perth found refuge after Culloden. The banks of the stream, crowded with busy and grimy colliery rows and coal staithes, the lines of rail and tramway that run up and athwart the inclines, and the fleets of coal-barges ascending and descending, help to announce the close neighbourhood of Sunderland. Before we reach the seaport of the Wear, however, Hylton Ferry is passed. In spite of the increasing sounds and sights of shipping industry and manufacture, a little bit of superstition and romance continues to linger about dilapidated Hylton Castle, for a fabulous number of centuries the home of the fighting race of Hyltons, now extinct as county landlords: the countryside has not quite forgotten the family goblin or brownie—the “Cauld Lad”—the eccentric ghost of a stable-boy who was killed in a fit of anger by a former lord of Hylton; though it remembers and points out with more pride Ford Hall, where the Havelocks, a martial race of later date and purer fame, were born and bred.

It is not easy in these days to associate the three townships comprehended within the municipal and parliamentary bounds of Sunderland with cloistral seclusion or warlike events, or with romance or mystery in any form—more especially when the place is approached by road, rail, or river from the colliery districts that hem it in on the land side. Yet busy, smoky, and in some spots ugly and squalid as it is, Sunderland hardly deserves the censure that has been heaped upon it as a town where “earth and water are alike black and filthy,” through whose murky atmosphere the blue sky seldom shows itself, and whose architectural features are utterly contemptible. Sunderland has a number of fine buildings and handsome thoroughfares, and a large part of the town is lifted clear of the dingy streets by the wharves and river-bank. The animation on water and shore, the passing stream of coasting and river craft, and the other signs of shipping, shipbuilding, and manufacturing trade, spanned by the huge arch of the Cast Iron Bridge; the larger vessels—evidences of an ocean-going commerce—in and around the docks on either hand; even the smoke and shadows, and the dirt itself in the streets and lanes, might have been reckoned fine pictorial elements of interest in a foreign seaport.

Coal, lime, and iron; timber, glass, and chemicals; ship stores, ship fittings, and fishing, are the businesses to which modern Sunderland, Bishop Wearmouth, and Monkwearmouth, chiefly give mind and time. It was very different when they first began to be mentioned in history. The little harbourage at the mouth of the Wear was a shelter for ships, but it was also a place of refuge for studious and pious men. We hear of it first in the seventh century, when, soon after Aidan became Bishop of Lindisfarne, St. Hilda, or Bega, obtained a grant of land on the north side of the river and founded the convent of St. Bee’s. Biscopius, a Saxon knight in the service of King Oswyn of Northumberland, resolved to renounce war and the world, and having prepared himself by making a pilgrimage to Rome, whence he brought back many precious books and relics, he obtained from the pious King Ecgfrith a grant of land near the nunnery—the modern Monkwearmouth—and set to work in 674 to build the monastery of St. Peter’s; and a few years later he founded St. Paul’s, at Jarrow. It has to be noted that Biscopius, who took the name of Benedict, brought over from France masons and glaziers to instruct the natives in these arts, and that glass-making has ever since flourished on the Wear and Tyne. All this we know from the Venerable Bede, who, when quite a young boy, resided in St. Peter’s, under the Abbot Ceolfrid, before he took up his abode for life in the sister monastery at Jarrow. It is thought by archÆologists that part of the original building is to be seen to this day in the west porch and west wall of the old church of Monkwearmouth. Sunderland already existed at that date; and the name was probably confined to the peninsula between the natural harbour on the south side of the Wear and the sea. Of Bishop Wearmouth, or “the delightful vill of South Wearmouth,” as it was called, we do not hear until Alfred’s time, when large additional grants were made to Benedict’s monastery, partly in exchange for a “Book of Cosmogony,” which had been brought from Rome. The Danes, the pest, and the Scots troubled much the place, and reduced the number of the inmates of the house. Sometimes these were as many as six hundred; sometimes they were like to have perished altogether, and for two centuries the place lay “waste and desolate.” Malcolm was here on a plundering excursion when St. Margaret and her brother, the Atheling, happened to be in the Wear, waiting for a fair wind to carry them to Scotland—a meeting that probably changed the rude monarch’s life and the national history. In 1083 the brethren of both Wearmouth and Jarrow were removed to Durham, and, as we have seen, both houses were reduced to cells dependent on the monastery of St. Cuthbert.

The mouth of the Wear had compensation in the growth of other and more secular interests. Seven centuries ago Bishop Pudsey granted a charter to Sunderland; and the liberties and privileges of the borough were extended by subsequent holders of the See, in consideration of its increasing trade and consequence. In the sixteenth century, as we learn, the coal trade was already of some importance, and Sunderland was “enriched every day thereby;” grindstones also became a far-famed article of export from the Wear. Its industrial development was temporarily checked during the Civil War, when Sunderland became a centre of fighting between Cavaliers and Roundheads. The Scots army, under Leslie, Earl of Leven, encamped on what is now part of the long High Street of Bishop Wearmouth, and not far from the Building Hill, which local tradition points out as a Druidical place of worship. The King’s forces from Newcastle drew out to face the “blue bonnets,” first on Bolden Hill and afterwards at Hylton; and skirmishing took place, which was not attended with decisive results. The commercial development of Sunderland has since been steady and often rapid. Including Bishop Wearmouth and Monkwearmouth, it now contains some 130,000 inhabitants, and it ranks high among British ports in shipbuilding tonnage and coal output. It has other claims to distinction: Paley was rector of Bishop Wearmouth last century, and wrote his “Evidences” there; and further proofs could be given that learning and piety did not come to an end at Wearmouth in Biscopius’s and Bede’s time, any more than did the worldly enterprise of the “canny” inhabitants.

Outside, the North Sea beats against the long piers and lighthouses, and rocks the fleets of steamers and sailing craft lying at anchor, or plying between the Wear and the Tyne; and on either hand, at Roker and Whitburn, Ryhope and Seaham, are the bold cliffs and bathing sands, the caves and cloven “gills” and wooded “denes,” to which the dwellers by the Wear resort to fill their lungs with fresh air.

John Geddie.