A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



Catholicism in the county, and to its varying fortunes since the days of 

 EHzabeth. The neighbourhood was a continuous stronghold of the cause, 

 and several of the oldest families in the county are Romanist to this day. 

 A Jesuit Mission had made the district a 'residence' since about 1590, 

 w^ith its head quarters in the city of Durham. The mission continued to 

 work side by side with a secular mission until 1824. In its earliest days 

 the mission had been reinforced from Douai and other seminaries. In 

 1793 the French Revolution drove away from Douai the English college 

 founded there by Cardinal Allen in 1568. Despite an Act of 1791 which 

 declared it illegal to found any Roman Catholic school or college, it was 

 decided to found a new Douai in the north of England, not only as a 

 nursery for the priesthood, but also as a public school for boys. Settled 

 first for a brief interval at Tudhoe, under the Rev. John Lingard, after- 

 wards famous as an historian and controversialist, and then in 1794 at 

 Crook Hall, ten miles from Durham, the new institution was at length 

 in 1808 transferred to the breezy heights of Ushaw, some four miles from 

 Durham. Here the old Douai manner of life was followed, and is still 

 followed after a century with great fidelity. Since the first establishment 

 at Crook more than 900 priests have been trained in the college, and 

 a large number of laymen, numbering in all over 3,000 who have shared 

 the common life and work of the place have gone out into various walks 

 of life.^^^ 



Towards the end of Harrington's episcopate a popular religious move- 

 ment of some importance made its appearance in the county of Durham in 

 the shape of Primitive Methodism.'" Like the ordinary Wesleyan Method- 

 ism in all essentials, this new kind of Methodism, which had commenced its 

 career in 1807, differed from it in the great use made of the camp meeting 

 and in the prominence of the lay element in church organization. There can 

 be little doubt that the opportunity which it gave to its humbler members to 

 exercise any gift of prayer or preaching rendered it attractive to the miners 

 of Durham. Its first preachers, Clowes and Branfoot and Laister, entered the 

 bishopric in 1820 and 1821."^ Finding its converts at first amongst the older 

 Wesleyans, the movement soon gathered out in every important town and in 

 some country districts a rapidly-increasing band of adherents.'^" These, in no 

 few instances, were men of the humblest classes, whom the characteristic organ- 

 ization of the society taught not merely religious principles, but social and in- 

 dustrial improvement, as they learnt in their meetings to express their views 

 and to band together for protection.'" The miners of those days were sub- 

 ject to many disadvantages, and by degrees the men themselves formed unions 

 to gain some kind of amelioration of their condition. Certainly a large chapter 

 in the local history of the labour movement is connected with the Primitive 



"' Nothing perhaps is more eloquent as to the changes that time brings than the fact that several Ushaw 

 students are regularly matriculated undergraduates of the University of Durham, and come to and fro daily 

 in term time to attend lectures under the shadow of the cathedral. 



^'^ The story is well told in the Hist, of tie Prim. Met/i. Church, written by Rev. H. B. Kendall, a Durham 

 graduate. 



'" The exact dates are : Darlington, 1820 ; Sunderland, Weardale, South Shields, 1821 ; and Gateshead 

 rather later. 



^ In 1823 a considerable religious revival occurred in Weardale, which had previously been the scene of 

 Wesley's efforts. 



'*' See Kendall's Hist, ut supra, ii, 186-188. 



70 



