A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



Stanhope continued to reside in Weardale for nearly seven years whilst 

 Chandler was bishop. The only personal touch connected with Chandler is 

 a speech made by him at Quarter Sessions in 1740. A time of great scarcity 

 had led certain traders to buy up all the corn upon which they could lay 

 their hands in order to keep up prices for their own benefit. This drew 

 down upon them a dignified rebuke from the bishop who presided and 

 addressed ^-^ those present upon the importance of enforcing an Act of 

 Edward VI against those guilty of such action. Otherwise the episcopate of 

 Chandler is marked by two matters of importance in which the bishop had 

 no hand. The first is the deepening of that stream of educational and chari- 

 table activity of which there had been some commencement under Crewe 

 and Talbot. Schools were erected in Newcastle and at Easington, and alms- 

 houses were built at Gateshead and elsewhere. '^^ The other is the beginning 

 of the Evangelical Revival which made its appearance fitfully before 1750, 

 but matured after that year. Wesley first passed through the county in 1742 

 and 1743, on his way to and from Newcastle.^^' At this place he made a 

 very considerable impression, and it is scarcely probable that the zeal which 

 found expression in Newcastle during Chandler's episcopate was confined to 

 Northumberland. Constant communication with the northern city and its 

 enthusiastic societies would inevitably draw into the bishopric itself some 

 influence from a revival which was already stirring so large a part of England. 

 The first recorded work of Wesley in the county of Durham was a sermon at 

 Sunderland in 1743, when he preached in the High Street. 'The tumult 

 subsided in a short time so that I explained without any interruption the one 

 true religion, Righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.' 



Butler, who had been familiar with the diocese for sixteen years as 

 vicar, returned to Durham as bishop in 175 1. His tenure of the see was 

 brief, and although appointed in 1750 on the death of Chandler, he did not 

 enter the bishopric until nearly a year had passed. In July, 1751, he 

 delivered his famous primary charge, and, it would seem, in Newcastle, not 

 in Durham, as is generally supposed.'^* This historic document, which is 

 almost the only relic of his episcopate in the north, draws a very gloomy picture 

 of the general condition of religion. '^^ ' It is impossible for me, my brethren, 

 upon our first meeting of this kind, to forbear lamenting with you the 

 general decay of religion in this nation.' So he begins, and after pointing 

 out that this is admitted, he proceeds : ' Different ages have been distin- 

 guished by different sorts of particular errors and vices, the deplorable 

 distinction of ours is an avowed scorn of religion in some, and a growing dis- 

 regard of it in the generality.' The picture, of course, is perfectly general 

 and is not intended to be a representation of the state of a diocese which he 

 had left thirteen years before. Indeed, in view of the probably indifferent 

 state of Butler's health at the time, and the somewhat antiquated references 



"' The speech is preserved in B.M. Add. MSS. 6468, fol. 54, where there is also a contemporary print. 

 The statute referred to is 5 and 6 Edw. VI, against Forestallers, Regrators, and Engrossers. 



'-' Schools at Easington, Surtees, Hist. Dur. i, 39. Almshouse at Gateshead, Sykes, Local Records, I 738, 

 a useful authority for many events and dates in the northern counties. An act of mob violence directed against 

 a Romanist chapel in Sunderland in 1746 is described in the Gent. Mag. for that year, p. 42. 



'■' For his early work at Newcastle, see Journ.of the Rev. John IVesley ('Everyman's Library'), i, 373 ; ibid. 



i, 426. 



'-' The dates are given in Sykes's Local Rec. and Richardson's Table Book. 

 '" Printed in Buder's Works, first by Bp. Steere, and by later editors. 



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