64 Durham Cathedral, by Rev. William Greenwell. 



until after the Conquest, a great change having taken place in 

 the meantime. The monks who had originally constituted the 

 congregation of St, Cuthbert, had fallen from the rule which was 

 at first observed. There was in those days a great tendency 

 among the regular clergy in the Saxon church, to degenerate 

 into a kind of secular clergy. Symeon says those at Durham 

 were neither monks nor regular canons. At Durham, as at Hex- 

 ham, and elsewhere, they were married, and had families, and 

 there was rapidly springing up an hereditary priesthood, father 

 succeeding son, and had that system gone on there would have 

 arisen a sacerdotal caste, with all the evils attending such a body. 

 The Norman conquest happily did away with that, as it did with 

 many other abuses. I incline to think that some indications of 

 such a state of things were discovered, when about three years 

 ago the foundations of the east end of the old Chapter-house, 

 which was so ruthlessly destroyed in 1798, were laid bare. Just 

 outside of the east wall of the present Chapter-house the graves 

 of Bishops Flambard, Galf rid Euf us, and William de St. Barbara 

 were met with, and in them were found three Episcopal rings of 

 gold set with sapphires, which I will show to you in the Library. 

 Much to our surprise, below the level of the Bishops' graves 

 there were found a considerable number of skeletons of men, 

 women, and children. There can, I think, be little doubt that 

 the remains found at a lower level than the graves of the 

 Bishops, those skeletons of men, women, and children belonged 

 to the married clergy and their families who occupied the 

 monastery at Durham, from the time of Ealdhun to the time 

 when they were dispossessed by Bishop William of St. Carilef. 

 I have already alluded to the congregation of St. Cuthbert, but 

 of that body I must give you some further account. The re- 

 ligious community, the congregation of St. Cuthbert, which 

 ultimately settled at Durham, included the Bishop and the 

 monks. The two formed one body, whose interests were identi- 

 cal, and the Bishop lived among the monks, over whom he ruled 

 within the community as he ruled over the diocese without. 

 This system went on at Durham until the establishment of the 

 Benedictine order shortly after the Norman Conquest. This 

 unity between the Bishop and the monks was very similar to 

 that which prevailed in the religious communities in Ireland and 

 Scotland. The Bishop was a member of the body and lived 



