SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



Roman civilization in Durham was too superficial to affect the Angle 

 settlers who swarmed into the country in the early sixth century. The 

 modern county seems to have been the southern and unimportant portion of 

 the kingdom of Bernicia. Such settlements as were made would be near 

 the sea in the river valleys. We can recognize them in villages such as 

 Billingham, Harton or Wyvestowe (Westoe), and their scattered nature at 

 first can be inferred from the curious filial arrangements that existed in the 

 Middle Ages between them and the vills which grew up on the surrounding 

 waste and shared their pasture or helped to till their demesne lands. 



In Saxon times Durham possessed no great royal village or castle, but in 

 673 we find the noble Benedict Biscop laying the foundation of the first 

 monastery at Monkwearmouth. It is true that, like St. Cuthbert's dwelling 

 and oratory on Holy Island, this monastery was at first of wood, but next 

 year saw a stone church begun by continental masons, perhaps from the same 

 France whence came the glaziers whom Benedict imported to glaze the 

 windows of his new church and also teach the art to his people. Civilization 

 was beginning in Durham, and the church was encouraged in its work by 

 Ecgfrith, king of Northumbria, who, in 682, gave the site of the Jarrow 

 monastery overlooking his port near the present Jarrow Slake. The name 

 Jarrow (Gyruu) means a marsh, but the industry of the monks soon turned 

 the neighbourhood into the glory of Northumbria, and in 685 Ecgfrith is 

 said to have given to Cuthbert, then bishop of Lindisfarne, certain lands in 

 North-east Durham. The life and writings of Bede prove that the Angles 

 were fast losing their barbarism, but unfortunately their civilization made 

 them unwarlike. 



In the middle of the ninth century the Norsemen fell upon Durham, 

 and in 867 the monasteries were plundered and burnt. When we can get 

 more definite information it is that the monks of Lindisfarne had found a 

 refuge upon the hills of Durham in 995, and, protected by the surrounding 

 forest and most of all by the holy body of St. Cuthbert, were beginning their 

 mission once more of civilizing Durham. 



Between 883 and 995 the congregation of St. Cuthbert, after eight 

 years' wandering, had lived at Chester le Street and, thanks to Alfred's 

 victories over the Danes, had found favour in the eyes of Guthred, the local 

 Danish king. Although in their first fury the Danes had made a special 

 point of destroying churches and monasteries, Guthred, probably by Alfred's 

 mediation, restored or recognized St. Cuthbert's right to all the land between 

 Tyne and Wear. Such a franchise was not strange to the Danish invaders, 

 who at a later date left Northern Bernicia to a Saxon ruler. Probably the 

 church had little real hold upon the ceded lands till the time of the Christian 

 Canute, but the congregation of St. Cuthbert, which would of course com- 

 prise many who were not monks, would be a refuge for the oppressed natives 

 and would be looked up to as their natural protectors. Durham was a safer 

 home than Chester le Street, and in the chaos of Northumbrian history in 

 the eleventh century the bishop and monks from their official position were 

 able to extend their possessions by purchase, legacy, or less innocent means. 

 However, it was not before Norman times that St. Cuthbert recovered all the 

 lands which the savage local rulers had torn from the church, as when Ella, 

 at the end of the ninth century, appropriated Billingham. 



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