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ART. IV.-The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham. By Robert Surtees, Esq. 3 vols. Folio. Lond. 1816-1828.

TOR rough, nor barren, are the winding ways

'NOR

Of hoar antiquity, but strewn with flowers-' The poet who said this, gathered among those ways an amaranthine wreath for himself. Mr. George Dyer* has expressed a similar opinion, very beautifully, in prose. It is no uncom

mon thing,' says he, to hear pursuits of this kind madet he subject of ridicule by men of fancy. What may not be so treated? But their importance and utility cannot be denied. It is not, perhaps, desirable to see men of the first genius shooting with this bow, because their sinews are formed for essays more pleasing and illustrious. But the scope of the antiquary is still wide and large. To his patient toil and plodding perseverance, the chronologist, the biographer, the historian, and the poet, stand eminently indebted; and works the most splendid in form, and which are constructed for the admiration of posterity, rise out of ordinary documents and researches, which may appear unpromising and trifling. Who can calculate on the consequence of a single date, sometimes to an individual, sometimes to a family, and sometimes even to the public ?χαρις σμικροισιν οπηδεί. Monuments, and their inscriptions, considered, in another point of view, as efforts of expiring mortality, which sighs for a little remembrance beyond the grave; or as tributes of surviving relatives and friends, who labour to preserve a name which they wish not to be quite obliterated, do but favour a wish natural to the human heart— a desire incident to the best and purest part of our species. Under the greatest debility of his frame, and amidst even a wearisomeness of existence, man still feels the tender and endearing tie of life, and is solicitous not to be forgotten; and he who preserves a monument from mouldering into ruin-who records a name, or who rescues an inscription that is nearly effaced, humours a useful propensity, the universal passion; and he is entitled, in his turn, not to be overlooked as a trifler, or as a labourer about nothing-operare nihil agendo.'

Even the humblest labourers among the ruins of time, such as the Old Mortalitys of the Gentleman's Magazine, are entitled to the respectful consideration which Mr. Dyer thus claims for them. But the local historian is sure of obtaining the gratitude of posterity, if he perform his task with faithful diligence: his name becomes far more intimately and lastingly connected with the city or district, the memorials of which he has collected, than that of any personage, however illustrious, who derives his title from it; and he erects for himself a more durable monument in

*History of Cambridge, vol. i., pp. 27, 28.

perishable

perishable paper than could be constructed of marble or brass. His work would have a great and continually increasing value within the narrow sphere of its subject, even if it were confined to that sphere; but it must be very imperfectly executed, if it does not contain some matter of illustration for the national annals, for the history of manners, for literature, philology, natural history, and various other departments of knowledge. No magazine is more miscellanous in its contents than a book like this before us, which, though strictly methodical in its structure, is nevertheless, and of necessity, a farrago in folio. It is to be liked the better therefore,' as King Henry's eldest son in the ballad was, for the heterogeneous legitimacy of his features; especially when, as in the present case, the farrago is brought together by one who is endowed, not only with the erudition and the perseverance required for such an undertaking, but also with such talents and genius as seldom condescend so to be employed; and with a playfulness of characteristic humour, which every now and then breaks out like a gleam of sunshine, to cheer his own patient labour, and excite the reader to a smile when least expecting to be so surprised.

In the

The general History of Durham is, in this respect, unlike that of any other county-that it has a thread of continuity in the succession of its bishops. No Rowland has given a map of it as i existed before the flood; and almost as little is to be said of its ante-ecclesiastical history as of its ante-diluvian. That portion or the bishopric which lies between the Tees and the Tyne, formed part of the Brigantian territory. The districts of Norham, Holy Island, and Bedlington, were occupied by the Ottadini. division of the Northumbrian kingdom, during the Heptarchy, Durham seems to have belonged to Deira; and the daylight of its history dawns when Oswald planted the cross in front of the army which had gathered round him to recover the throne of his fathers. The struggle appears to have been not merely between the heir of the kingdom, and one who had obtained it by conquest, but between the new and the old systems of religion; and the Christian king, after his victory, sent for missionaries from Scotland to complete the conversion of his kingdom. The first who undertook the office retired from it in despair, or in disgust. He was succeeded by St. Aidan, a monk of Iona: it is worthy of a passing remark, that this name is identified with Eudo, Otho, and Madocsuch are the mutations of language! The new faith must have spread slowly, if it had been propagated only by Aidan's exertions; for when he preached, it was in an unintelligible tongue, which Oswald interpreted to the congregation. When a place of abode was offered for himself and his companions, the saint made choice of Holy Island, then called Lindisfarne, to distinguish it from the

other

other Ferne Islands, the little rivulet Lindis flowing into it at low water, from the main land; and there Aidan's successor, Finan, built, or, in Saxon phrase, betimbered, a humble edifice, thatched with reeds. Such was the poor origin of the see of Durham. Oswald having become a popular saint, after he was slain in battle, a head was exhibited on the obverse of the capitular seal of Durham as that of the royal founder of the see; but Mr. Surtees suspects, that this caput Sancti Oswaldi had originally performed the functions of a Jupiter Tonans, such appropriations of antique gems being not uncommon in those ages.

In those days, the limits of a diocese and a kingdom were coextensive, as then, and for some time afterwards, were those of a parish and an estate. The abbots of Lindisfarne defended the ritual and the independence of their church against the assumed authority of Rome; but Rome prevailed. The Culdee abbot in consequence withdrew, taking with him the monks who adhered to their old usages, and part of St. Aidan's reliques; and two of his successors fixed their residence at York, and took from thence their episcopal title. The turbulent temper of St. Wilfrid served as the cause, and the inconvenient extent of the diocese as the pretext, for erecting Lindisfarne into a separate see; and the division was perpetuated. St. Cuthbert became the second bishop of the new diocese; in the wooden church of Lindisfarne he had his first sepulture; and his first translation when that humble edifice was replaced by a stone cathedral, roofed with lead, in the time of his immediate successor. Lindisfarne was now the seat of learning as well as of sanctity; and when King Ceolwulf endowed it with large possessions, abdicated his throne, retired thither, and introduced into the convent the use of ale and wine, the manner of life soon became comfortable enough to allure the idle and the dissolute, as well as to invite the weak and the studious. Unfortunately for those who, either for the love of luxury or of learning, had taken up their abode in such institutions, the wealth, the stores, (including those of the cellar,) which were to be found there, always attracted the Danes in their invasions. Lindisfarne was plundered and burnt by them in one of their earliest descents upon the coast; and, in the calamitous beginning of Alfred's reign, the danger of a second spoliation and massacre was so great, that the bishop and his monks abandoned the cathedral for ever, taking with them their treasures, and, as the greatest of all, the body of St. Cuthbert, which then commenced its travels. After seven years' wandering, they rested at Chester-le-Street. There they laid the foundation of a new cathedral; and Guthred, whom Alfred had raised to the tributary throne of Northumberland

added

added to the patrimony (as it was called) of St. Cuthbert, the whole country between the Tees and the Tyne.

There the incorruptible and wonder-working body remained one hundred and thirteen years in peace! and then, in the unhappy days of Ethelred the Unready, a second migration became necessary, and the monks took shelter with the precious coffin at Ripon. After Ethelred had purchased peace, they set out on their return; but when they had reached a place which is supposed to be the lofty eminence of Wardenlaw, five miles from the coast, and commanding a full prospect of the fertile vale of the Wear, the holy body would proceed no farther. The procession, of course, halted, Wardenlaw itself not being more immovable than the Saint in his ark; they fasted, they prayed, and on the third day St. Cuthbert communicated his pleasure to the Monk Eadmer in a vision: it was, that they should direct their course to Dunholme, where his church was to find a secure establishment for the future. The miracle was well performed, and no one of its kind (which is a common one) was more wisely intended; the site which they had chosen was favourable for defence, and the promise held forth in the vision was likely to inspire the people with confidence for defending it. The river Wear, a clear and rapid stream, which Drayton has well described as turning its watery trail in many a snaky gyre,' forms, in some of those windings, the peninsula on which the cathedral and city of Durham were now to be founded, clipping, the poet says, that beloved place close in its amorous arms. The sloping sides of the eminence were, at that time, so covered with thick wood, as to make it appear not easily habitable; but the small portion of level ground on the summit was cultivated. Thither the procession directed its course, and the zeal of the whole country, already excited by the return of the saint after his flight to Ripon, was doubly raised by this miraculous declaration of his pleasure. The first business was to erect a tabernacle or little church of boughs, as an immediate receptacle for his holy body, where it remained only till a small edifice called the White Church could be made ready to receive it. Gifts and oblations flowed in on all sides, and the whole population, from the Coquet to the Tees, turned out with one consent in the saint's service. The woods were cleared, the cathedral was begun, and from the hour when the travelling bier was rested there, the peninsula ceased to be a solitude; the clergy and the workmen were with all speed housed upon the spot, and a city grew around the growing church, The work went on rapidly, when all who could be employed were eager to give their services, and no costs were to be calculated; and in the third year after his arrival on the ground, St. Cuthbert was removed from the White Church to the new cathedral.

Extensive

Extensive as the possessions of the see already were, they were soon enlarged by donations from certain northern chiefs, and from King Canute, who visited the shrine, and, if Simeon's authority may be received without suspicion, alighted at the distance of five miles from the city, and performed the rest of the way, with all his retinue, barefoot. It was still further enriched by a choice collection of relics, and Ælfred, the collector, by a pious practice common in those ages, succeeded in 'conveying,' as the relic-worshippers, like the wise, it call,' the remains of Bede thither from Jarrow. The new city was successfully defended against an attack of the Scots; and the heads of their slain leaders, according to the barbarous usage of the times, were exposed on poles in the market-place. But Durham had its full share in the miseries which were brought upon England by the Norman conquest. Egelwin, its bishop, submitted to William at the same time with the Earls Edwin and Morcar, and swore allegiance to him at York. The fate of these earls is well known; they are among the many persons who have left names to point a moral and adorn a tale,' as melancholy examples that, if moral courage be wanting, personal bravery will not avail to exempt the possessor from the reproach of pusillanimity. The bishop was not more fortunate; but he may be better excused, because of his clerical character, for having sworn allegiance; and it does not appear that he broke that allegiance voluntarily. When the Norman Comyn approached the city with seven hundred troops, to effect the subjugation of the province, Egelwin met him on the borders, and warned him how dangerous it would be to irritate an indignant people. The advice was treated with contempt, and the Norman, in the insolence of military power, putting to death several of the peasantry on his way, entered Durham, and allowed his troops to quarter themselves upon the inhabitants, as if they had nothing to apprehend from the conquered Saxons. But the men of the bishopric approached the city during the night; at day-break they had surrounded it, they forced the gates, the soldiers wese surprised and slaughtered. Comyn and his attendants defended themselves in a building which the Saxons set on fire, and they perished in the flames. The building was so near the cathedral that the western tower caught fire, and the whole edifice must have been destroyed had not the wind suddenly, as if by miracle, shifted to the east. But St. Cuthbert exerted himself in defence of his patrimony no further than to bewilder in a fog the first troops who were sent to take vengeance; and the merciless rigour with which that vengeance was exacted forms the bloodiest chapter in the history of the Norman conquest. Egelwin escaped into Scotland; he returned to bear a part in the effort which Edwin and Morcar made,-late,

and