CITY OF DURHAM 



before the other the clergy of the diocese gathered 

 to take the oath of allegiance to the bishop. 



The expedition of 1296, when Edward I 

 passed through Durham, took many men from 

 the palatinate across the borders into Scotland, 

 and this service outside the bishopric proper 

 led them to formulate a claim, which they had 

 long tacitly held, that no obligation of service 

 outside the palatinate was incumbent upon 

 them. Durham men were again at Falkirk in 

 1298, returning without permission before the 

 campaign was over. The warlike Bishop Bek 

 remonstrated with the deserters, who pleaded 

 the immemorial right of bishopric men to serve 

 only between Tyne and Tees, on the ground that 

 they were the privileged guardians of the body 

 of St. Cuthbert. The bishop flung them into 

 his prison at Durham, an act which incensed the 

 bishopric barons and free tenants to the utmost, 

 until the movement assumed the proportions of 

 a serious rebellion. One outcome, which the 

 bishop probably did not desire, was the growing 

 popularity of the prior, with whom the offended 

 men of Durham sided as against the bishop. 

 We have no specific date in the chronicle for 

 the building of Auckland Castle and Chapel, 

 but it is not improbable that Bek, the builder 

 of both, erected the magnificent new abode as a 

 residence which would prove more pleasant 

 than Durham Castle and the immediate neigh- 

 bourhood of prior and convent. The feud 

 between bishop and prior continued, despite 

 the good offices of the king, and was intensified 

 in 1300 by a sudden attack upon the prior's 

 lands carried out by Bek's command. The 

 bishop seized some of the prior's manors into 

 his own hands, taking their rents and destroying 

 the parks. Scenes recalling those of the time of 

 Bishop Philip were now enacted, when a regular 

 siege of the abbey began. Armed men sur- 

 rounded it to prevent all approach of food or of 

 messengers. Down below in the valley men 

 broke up the prior's aqueduct, which seems to 

 mean the conduit crossing the river and bringing 

 water to the cathedral and Palace Green. Bek 

 was determined to oust Prior Hotoun, and 

 although he was not personally responsible for 

 every act of violence which now took place, he 

 was sufficiently to blame. Hotoun and his 

 monks held the monastery and its surroundings, 

 but the superior force of Luceby, the prior of 

 Bek's choice, beat in the doors of the cloister and 

 let his partisans into the church. In the general 

 hubbub Luceby was actually installed and by 

 the bishop's support he was kept in position. 

 Prior Hotoun was thrown into prison, but 

 managed to escape and take his appeal to 

 Rome.'*" It was the famous Boniface VIII who 

 heard this appeal and in the result the prior 



obtained a favourable decision, though he died 

 before he could be reinstated. A sentence of 

 Boniface when examining the adherents of the 

 bishop proves incidentally the great prestige 

 and importance of the prior's position at this 

 time. Bek urged that Hotoun had resigned his 

 office voluntarily, but Boniface brushed aside 

 the suggestion, saying that no one who knew 

 what it was to be Prior of Durham would ever 

 voluntarily give up the position. 



The strife between bishop and prior cannot 

 have failed to absorb the attention of the city 

 of Durham with its various jurisdictions depend- 

 ing on one or other of the two chief figures. 

 And yet another of the various struggles in 

 which Bek was engaged must have had a more 

 vital effect upon the citizens generally. The 

 circumstances have been set out in another 

 volume*^ and are concerned with a long con- 

 stitutional dispute between the bishop and the 

 commonalty of the bishopric. One point in 

 this, namely the question of service outside the 

 boundaries, has already been named. The 

 commonalty complained at the Parliament of 

 Lincoln as to various infringements of their 

 rights. These do not concern us generally, 

 though the decisions, no doubt, eased the people 

 from certain miscarriage of justice, and other 

 grievances which they preferred. Right of free 

 entry to St. Cuthbert's shrine was allowed to all 

 men of the bishopric ; hunting was made widely 

 possible ; and various other rights were assured. 

 The document clearly shows that Bek had very 

 greatly tyrannized over the country at large, but 

 its silence about the bishopric boroughs makes 

 it probable that these in general, and Durham 

 in particular, were quite able to hold their own. 

 The evidence of the Assize Roll of 1243 as to 

 the strength of the burgesses of Durham is 

 thus supported after an interval of sixty years. 



We have now definitely entered the i^th 

 century, which is one of the darkest of all the 

 centuries of local history. In the past the 

 troublers of the peace had often come from 

 within, but in and after Bek's day they came 

 from without in the shape of Scottish invader, 

 or of pestilence and famine. The first rumours 

 of troubles with the Scots were brought into 

 Durham in 1277, and after a respite they revived 

 in 1296, the year of the desolation of Hexham. 

 Edward's operations in Scotland kept further 

 invasion at bay for a number of years, but in 

 and from 1308 the troubles merely died away 

 in winter to revive with the new spring of each 

 year. Soon after his marriage in 1308 Edward II 

 would seem to have been with his wife at Dur- 

 ham, for a single roll of Bek's episcopate belonging 

 to that year contains the receipt entered by the 

 bishop's oflScial : ' And for "js. lod. of the 



40 



Hist. Dunelm. Script. Tra (Surt. Soc), 78. " F.C.H. But. ii, 154. 



19 



