ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



It is curious how little can be recovered as to the period represented by 

 the episcopates of Egerton and Thurlow. The former was one of the most 

 popular of Durham bishops, and if his rule yields few traces of church 

 extension or administrative energy, a picture of the courtly and amiable 

 prelate was handed down, in which he appears as a peacemaker whose 

 delight it was to reconcile contending parties and interests."^ He made him- 

 self popular in the county by his long summer residences and his bountiful 

 hospitality at Auckland. At Durham he recovered something of the lost 

 prestige of the bishops in the city by restoring the charter which had been 

 suspended for some years. A stronger character or a more statesmanlike 

 bishop would in all probability have done incalculable harm at a time when the 

 long Whig ascendancy was breaking up and party politics were absorbing the 

 attention of the gentlemen of the county. It seems to have been feared that 

 the question of Roman Catholic relief and the Gordon riots in 1780 would 

 find more than an echo in the north. Major Floyd was accordingly sent down 

 in that year to test the state of feeling. His report gives an interesting view 

 not only of the groundlessness of the fears referred to, but, so far as the city of 

 Durham is concerned, of the general relations of religious parties. He says, 

 writing from Durham : — 



All is quiet in the country. Newcastle is only thirteen miles off: a very large place 

 and full of colliers, mightily disposed to be troublesome, but at present they are quiet. They 

 have five companies of the loth Foot among them. Sunderland is a very populous place, 

 thirteen miles from here. A squadron of our regiment is there. All quiet. There are 

 prodigious numbers of Catholics in and about this town [Durham]. The street I lodge in is 

 almost all Catholic. The people of this house, too, are Catholics. This place is very large, 

 but not populous, being prodigiously over-run with clergy, who in all countries take up a 

 great deal more room than they ought, and eat out the industrious and useful. The chief 

 good I know of the clergy here is that they are quiet, and the populace is too inconsiderable 

 to be an object of terror to the Catholics.^*^ 



The words harmonize with the general impression of respectable religious 

 apathy and dulness which a survey of the bishopric at this time leaves on the 

 mind so far as existing records survive.^" The really energetic religious force 

 was the societies of John Wesley to which reference has been made. The 

 Baptist churches, never considerable though often vigorous, had been passing 

 through a period of stagnation and decay, and were just beginning to revive 

 under the leadership of a minister called Whitfield, who rallied the cause at 

 Hamsterley with much fervour.'*' The Calvinistic controversy which had 

 elsewhere paralysed the progress of the evangelical revival greatly impeded 

 the work of the Baptist community and divided their churches."^ 



'" See the account given by Hutchinson, Hist. Dur. iii, p. xi. 



'*' MSS. of the Earl of Pembroke (Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. ix, App. ii), 383. 



H7 



It may be worth while to quote in illustration of the religious conventionalism of the time the follow- 

 ing extract from a private letter dated Newcastle, Nov. 1 760 : ' Mr. Montague is gone to-day to attend 

 Mr. Bowes' funeral, which according to the custom of this country is to be magnificent. There is more pomp 

 at their funerals than weddings.' Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. xiii, App. iii, 140. 



^' The account is given in Hist, of the Northern Baptist Churches. In 1740 there was much complaint at 

 the annual meeting of the decrease of piety and of members. Differences between the minister and the people 

 prevailed (p. I 54). Whitfield, a Weardale man, had been a convert of Wesley, but turning Baptist became a 

 real power in his native county and outside Tt in frequent journeys and conferences (pp. 201, 214). He had 

 the reputation of considerable Hebrew learning (p. 264). He died in 1797. 



"' Ibid. 170. See too the estimate of the condition of religion in and out of the Church of England 

 about 1770. Ibid. 200 : The writer is inclined to minimize the activity of all religious bodies at that time. 

 The Presbyterians, thoroughly Scottish in their affinities, were a prey to the Moderatism which then 

 characterized the Church in Scotland. The Independents were not numerous, and were not remarkable for 

 piety or activity. 



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