A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



was ruthlessly demolished. He erected two schools on the Palace Green, one 

 for plain song and the other for grammar. ^^^ 



Four episcopates now succeed which must be rapidly dismissed. We 

 still have the bishops' Cursitor Rolls for them, but their ecclesiastical informa- 

 tion is meagre, and there is no episcopal register proper between Langley and 

 Fox. Bishop Neville (1438-57), uncle of Edward IV and Richard III, 

 was a scion of the local house, and son of Ralph the first earl of Westmore- 

 land. His episcopate, which began with a fresh outbreak of the plague, was 

 signalized by a cessation of border warfare. He took part in various truces, 

 which were the means of producing this pause in the international hostility, 

 the chief occasion being in the cathedral in 1449. In 1448 Henry VI 

 paid a visit to the castle and to the bishopric, and has left a bombastic and 

 amusing letter giving a high appreciation of north country character. If the 

 royal visit was the most picturesque incident under Neville, his erection of 

 the still standing exchequer at Durham is the most important event. During 

 part of his time he had the bishop of Dromore as suffragan. Little else is 

 recorded of the bishop. 



For the second time a queen of England now succeeded in getting her 

 nominee appointed bishop. Laurence Booth (1458-76) was appointed in 

 the early years of the Wars of the Roses, and was placed in a position of 

 great difficulty in consequence. Durham had so far been Lancastrian, and 

 Booth presumably belonged to this party. For the most part the tide of war 

 flowed north and south of the bishopric. After Towton, in 1461, the 

 Lancastrian partisans fled to Scotland. Henry made an abortive expedition 

 thence through the bishopric in that year, and is heard of at Brancepeth.^** 

 A year's pause followed betore Queen Margaret came with French help and 

 captured certain Northumbrian castles. Edward came north in December, 

 1462, with Warwick, and seized these strongholds. The issue appears to 

 show that in this brief Lancastrian revival of 1461 Booth had in some way 

 manifested his sympathy with Henry and Margaret, for when Edward 

 signalized his triumph by spending Christmas at Durham,^" the bishop was 

 deprived of his temporalities.^" It seems equally clear that on the eve of the 

 decisive battles of Hedgeley Moor and Hexham in April and May, 1464, 

 when Edward again led an army into Northumberland, Booth was forgiven 

 and the temporalities restored."^ He was also permitted to reside where he 

 pleased in the realm for the next three years, and to absent himself from 

 attendance at the Parliament and council. '^^ The permission seems to hint at 

 some restriction of residence during his disgrace which we are not able to 

 trace. A month or two after this concession the king at York reviewed the 

 chief charters of privileges from the forged charters of William the Conqueror 

 down to the fourteenth century, documents on which the prior and convent 

 relied as the basis of their position, and granted them a full confirmation 

 of all."^ 



The peace of the bishopric was again endangered in 1468 during the 

 brief rising of Sir Humphry Neville, when he caused considerable trouble 



'^ Surtees (op. cit. i, Ivi) gives a summary of his chief acts in the Palatinate, as does Hutchinson, op. cit. 



'' 4°7-8. 



'"* Pari. R. V, 478. Perhaps the best reconstruction of an obscure period is in Jrchaeolo^a, xlvii, 266. 



'^^ Ibid. 271. "* Cal. Pat. 1 46 1-7, p. 215. 



'" Ibid. 347, 375. '^ Ibid. 325. ''' Ibid. 392-3. 



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