ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



letters patent were issued with full specification of the lands lately in the 

 possession of prior and convent which were now made the endowment of the 

 new foundation. ^*° Its early years, however, were saddened, not merely by 

 the alarms of war, but by the severe outbreak of plague due, it is said, to 

 the billeting of Scottish prisoners in various parts of the district.''" The 

 consequent distress was considerable. 



The next act was the first fingering of Church goods other than 

 monastic. This will be traced elsewhere. Nothing was carried away during 

 the remainder of the reign of Henry VIII. Inventories of the chantries 

 in Durham were drawn up in May, i 546.''*^ Any alarm occasioned by such 

 measures was diverted by the mad war of Somerset in Edward's first year. 

 In May Tunstall wrote to warn the bishopric to be ready ,^" and the Protector 

 ordered the bishop to search the Registers in support of the boy-king's claim 

 to the fealty of the Scottish monarch.^** During Edward's short reign the 

 bishopric was roughly handled. At the outset the Chantry Act dissolved the 

 chantries surveyed two years earlier, and in addition the various colleges 

 of the district. Six collegiate churches were thus destroyed — Auckland, 

 Chester-le- Street, Darlington, Lanchester, Norton, Staindrop. A royal 

 visitation perambulated the bishopric in the late summer of 1547, during 

 which time the bishop's authority was suspended.^" Details have not 

 survived, as they have for the analogous visitation of 1559, but the character 

 of the injunctions of Edward and the known views of Somerset would lead 

 us to conclude that an effort was made to impress upon the bishopric, as 

 elsewhere, the ceremonial and doctrinal changes so far attained. 



It is curious how absolutely in the dark we are as to the working of the 

 Edwardine changes of religion in Durham.''" It is probable that the visitation 

 and the sermons of Ridley, who accompanied the visitors, were tolerated 

 without outward remonstrance. We have no trace of the reception accorded 

 to the Prayer Book of 1549, which involved the entire supersession of the 

 familiar Latin services. We are not enlightened, moreover, as to the steps 

 which led to the temporary suspension of the see. In 1550 Tunstall, with 

 Whitehead the dean, and Hindmarsh the chancellor, was first accused of 

 some treasonable action by a certain Ninian Menville.^" It is suggested that 

 the real agent in this accusation was Northumberland himself, who desired to 

 oust Tunstall from the Palatinate and to secure for himself ' an impregnable 

 position ' in the north.^*^ The charge was so pertinaciously pressed that 

 in December, 1 551, Tunstall was sent to the Tower, and after ten months' 

 imprisonment was deprived. Warwick, now duke of Northumberland, was 

 already asking for the gift of the palatine jurisdiction, and pressing Home, 



"" Transcribed in Hutchinson, op. cit. ii, 137. 



'" See the interesting letter of Shrewsbury, L. and P. Hen. VIII, xix (i), 931, from Add. MSS. 32655, 

 fol. 100. 



**■ Surtees Society Publ. xxii, App. iii, pp. xlv-xlvii. For the St. Giles inventory see P.R O. 

 Exch K.R. Ch. Goods, ^j. 



'" Cal. Hamilton Papers, ii, 440. "* Cott. Cal. B, vii, 329. 



"' For an account of this important event, 'see Dixon, Hist. Ch. of Engl. ii. 428. The inhibition is in 

 Tunstall's register. 



"° Mr. Pollard says, without giving proof, that Tunstall though he voted against the Uniformity Act of 1 549 

 enforced its provisions in his diocese. The fragmentary character of the register at this stage prevents us from 

 following any diocesan regulations. 



"' See the facts as known in Dixon, Hist. Ch. of Engl, iii, 320. 



"* Diet. Nat. Biog. 'Tunstall,' 313. 



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