A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



Until recent years it was a commonplace to talk of the Danish character 



of the northern counties, but recent investigations have thrown considerable 



doubt upon the existence of any strongly Danish elements in the population 



except in Yorkshire, at least so far as the eastern districts are concerned. 1 In 



county Durham much can be learned by an examination of the place-names 



and folk-speech. 2 From it we see that, roughly speaking, only the southern 



half of the county bears any trace of Danish place-names. 8 The suffix 'by' is 



only found three times* Raby, Aislaby, and Killerby all in the south, and 



' beck ' (Danish for a rivulet) has only superseded the Anglo-Saxon * burn ' in 



South Durham. Not one 'beck' flows into the Tyne, but twenty-four flow 



into the Wear and thirty into the Tees. On the other hand, no 'burn' flows 



direct into the Tees, and the village of Castle Eden furnishes us with a 



striking contrast ; the rivulet on the north of the village is called Castle Eden 



Burn, that on the south Coundon Beck. It would be tedious to elaborate the 



argument further to sustain the view that Danish influence, except in South 



Durham, the old wapentake of Sadberge, was only superficial, but it is 



interesting to notice that serfdom lasted longest in the south-east portion of 



the county, where the pressure of the Danes was greatest. 6 A line drawn 



westwards from Castle Eden would form the northern boundary of effective 



Danish occupation, though even here they would be little more than a 



governing aristocracy. North of the Wear their influence was certainly 



infinitesimal except on the coast between Tyne and Wear, in which district 



a non-Angle dialect, even to-day, hints at alien blood. 8 



It is safer on the whole to believe that the native population of the 

 county looked to and found a protector in the bishop when once he had 

 secured himself at Durham. Not till after the Norman Conquest did the 

 bishop or monks regain all the villages they claimed in the south and begin 

 to organize the bishopric south of the Tyne, after the sword of the Norman 

 king had avenged the murder of Walcher in 1080. More than a hundred 

 years elapsed after the Norman harrying before Boldon Book gives us a picture 

 of the county in 1183, just before Bishop Hugh Pudsey acquired the wapen- 

 take of Sadberge Danish South Durham from Richard I. During that 

 time the bishop and monks had steadily gained in importance, and not only 

 Angles but also the Danish 'drengs' or lesser nobles of the county were 

 dependent on the bishop. Commendation and the other processes which, 

 under the pressure of the Danish invasions, produced Anglo-Saxon feudalism 

 were at work in Durham also. The bishop and his monks, at first joint 

 landlords of St. Cuthbert's patrimony, would possess sake and soke, the usual 

 jurisdictions of landowners, but from the cases of Sedgefield 7 and, at a later 

 date, Wolviston 8 we see that St. Cuthbert's rights were not the same over all 

 the land. The early Norman bishops brought with them Norman lawyers 

 who would not be able to understand the peculiar position of the Saxon 



1 Arch. Ael. (New Ser.), ix, 59. ' Ibid, x, 173. ' Ibid. 93. 



4 Follonsby, near the Tyne, is a doubtful case. It seems to have been a later vill founded after the 

 time of Will. I. See Feodarium (Surtees Soc. Iviii), 1 1 z n. 



* See/w/p. 221. 6 Arch. Ael. (New Ser.), x, 93. 



7 Simeon of Durham says (Opera, Rolls Ser. i, 208) that Bishop Cutheard bought with the money of 

 St. Cuthbert the vill of Sedgefield and all belonging to it, except the holdings of three men, over whose lands, 

 however, he had sake and soke. 



8 Feodarium (Surtees Soc. Iviii), 141 . shows how the prior and convent gradually became owners of all 

 rights in the vill. 



I 7 8 



