A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



political sovereignty which had hitherto been 

 established at Bamburgh. Then Durham, for 

 the time, was not only sanctuary and fortress, 

 which it had been for eighty years, but the seat 

 of government in Northumbria as well, a position 

 which became permanently attached to it in 

 the 1 2th century. About the same time 

 Walcher began to convert the ecclesiastical 

 establishment into a Benedictine monastery, 

 and it is possible that the buildings between the 

 present chapter-house and deanery contain some 

 remains of his work. His rule was unfortunately 

 cut short by an ebullition of the Northumbrian 

 animosity against the Norman regime. The 

 murder of the bishop might have been avoided, 

 as Simeon seems to suggest, if he had been 

 willing to remain within his castle. How 

 strong eight years had made that fortress was 

 proved when the murderers rushed from Gates- 

 head, where they killed him, to Durham, and 

 there made a determined assault upon the 

 castle.^' Their efforts, maintained for four 

 days, were quite unsuccessful. But the castle 

 had to open its gates a little later to Odo of 

 Bayeux, who placed a military garrison there, 

 and apparently conducted his terrible expedition 

 of vengeance for the death of Walcher from 

 Durham as his base of operations.** Little 

 remains to-day of the castle as Waltheof built 

 it, with the exception of the interesting Norman 

 chapel, which is unhesitatingly ascribed by 

 Rivoira to the time of the reputed foundation 

 of the building, 1072. The chapel is the oldest 

 building in Durham. 



We now approach a century which made the 

 city what it was both architecturally and 

 politically until the Reformation, and although 

 that political prestige has long since disappeared 

 the architectural interest of the 12th century 

 largely remains to-day. St. Calais, the Norman 

 bishop who followed Walcher, was rash enough 

 in the days of Rufus to meddle with another 

 anti-Norman plot hatched in Durham, which had 

 so consistently fostered the English spirit of 

 resistance. For complicity in this affair St. Calais 

 was banished for three years to Normandy. The 

 castle had only surrendered its bishop after a 

 siege and during the prelate's exile was seized 

 and held by the king in his most approved 

 fashion. When the bishop came back he made 

 that pact with the Earl of Northumberland which 

 is reasonably supposed to confer upon the 

 mediaeval Bishop of Durham the outstanding 

 rights hitherto retained in the hands of the 

 earl, who held certain ill-defined powers over 

 the patrimony of St. Cuthbert.^' gy ^1,^3 

 transfer of rights we see, no doubt, how the way 



*' Simeon of Dur. op. cit. i, 118. 



3« Ibid. 



35 V.C.H. Dur. ii, 137. 



was paved for the erection of the great Norman 

 cathedral whose design St. Calais had very likely 

 formed during his absence on the Continent. 

 What Walcher had planned St. Calais carried 

 out, for he finished the transformation of the 

 ecclesiastical establishment into a Benedictine 

 monastery (1087). St. Calais began his great 

 church in 1093, carrying it eastward, and com- 

 pleting the walls of the quire, and westward to 

 the first bay of the nave. An important change 

 which affected the city as well as the Cuthbertine 

 lands outside was the division of property 

 between bishop and monastery instituted by 

 St. Calais, and completed by his successor.^" It 

 was probably by this arrangement that the 

 divided ownership of Durham and its suburbs 

 was defined. The land was now divided between 

 bishop and monastery. Up to this time the 

 bishop, as head of the congregation of St. 

 Cuthbert, had full rights over the church and 

 its immediate surroundings,^' whereas the earl 

 had at all events some ownership outside those 

 precincts. It was the earl, for instance, who 

 built the castle. 3* When St. Calais put the 

 monastery in place of the congregation by 

 authority of the bulls of Hildebrand, he became 

 supreme landlord of all the Cuthbertine terri- 

 tory, and by his agreement with the earl he was 

 constituted owner of all the earl's rights, and 

 Rufus endorsed the arrangement. ^^ St. Calais 

 was thus in a position to divide as he pleased. 

 In this way he made over the ancient settlement 

 of Elvet and Crossgate, with its church, to the 

 monastery.^ This, by the way, is a further 

 confirmation of the view taken above that 

 Elvet was the original settlement with a church 

 of undoubted antiquity. The bishop kept in 

 his own hand the castle and precincts and, for 

 the present, a much more immediate authority 

 and control over the monastery buildings than 

 was the case at a later date.''^ We have as yet 

 no proof of the existence of Framwellgate and of 

 what is now the parish of St. Nicholas, but it is 

 probable that there were such suburbs at this 

 date. 



To Bishop Flambard (i 099-1 128) the city of 

 Durham owes more than to any other single 

 prelate, but it is unfortunate that the dearth of 

 documents at this critical period prevents us 

 from tracing the details of his work. He was 



•"^ Simeon of Dur. op. cit. i, 123. 



3' Simeon represents the bishop as building the 

 church and Uchtred as helping. Bishop and earl 

 had often been at strife over their rights (op. cit. i, 

 125). 



3' This is clearly what Simeon represents. 



33 F.C.H. Dur. ii, 137. 



*" Ibid, ii, and reference there given. 



■" St. Calais builds as he wills, and so do Flambard 

 and Pudsey. There is as yet no dispute between 

 bishop and convent (ibid. 14). 



10 



