Bishop of Durham
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| Image:COA Durham Bishop.jpg | ||
| Province | York | |
|---|---|---|
| Diocese | Durham | |
| Founded | 9th century | |
| Cathedral | Durham Cathedral | |
| Present bishop | Tom Wright | |
| Signature | Dunelm | |
- See also: List of Bishops of Durham
The Bishop of Durham is the officer of the Church of England responsible for the diocese of Durham, one of the oldest in the country. He is an Anglican bishop in the province of York, and sits in the House of Lords. The current Bishop of Durham is Tom Wright (appointed 2003).
Other duties of the Bishop of Durham include (with the Bishop of Bath and Wells) escorting the sovereign at the coronation. He is officially styled The Right Reverend Father in God, (Name), by Divine Providence Lord Bishop of Durham, but this full title is rarely used. In signatures, the bishop's family name is replaced by Dunelm, from the Latin name for Durham (the latinised form of Old English Dunholm). In the past, bishops of Durham alternated their signatures between the French Duresm and Dunelm.
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[edit] History
[edit] Saxon
The line of bishops of Durham stretches back to the 10th century, when Aldhun, Bishop of Lindisfarne (995-1018), transferred his see to Durham. It owes its unique position to the 7th and 8th century Kingdom of Northumbria. This once stretched from the Humber to the Firth of Forth, making up almost a third of the entire mainland of Britain, although it was annexed by the Danish Kingdom of York in 878, by 954 Osulf of Bernicia obtained the ancient lands of Deira from Edred of England and Northumbria was transformed merely into an Earldom. Nevertheless, this still stretched from the River Tweed to the Humber and both the Bishops of Durham and the Earls of Northumbria remained virtually independent of the Kings of England, until the death of Tostig Godwinson at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066
[edit] Norman
[edit] 1066-1090
When William the Conqueror became king of England in 1066, he soon realised he needed to control Northumbria to protect his kingdom from Scottish invasion. William gained the allegiance of both Bishop and Earl, and confirmed their powers and privileges, acknowledging the remote independence of Northumbria. Even so, rebellions followed.
William therefore attempted to install Robert Comine, a Norman noble, as the Earl of Northumbria, but before Comine could take up office, he and his 700 men were massacred in the City of Durham. In revenge, the Conqueror led his army in a bloody raid into Northumbria, an event that became known as 'the Harrying of the North'. Aethelwine, the Anglo-Saxon Bishop of Durham, tried to flee Northumbria at the time of the raid, with Northumbrian treasures. The bishop was caught, imprisoned, and later died in confinement, his see becoming vacant, being filled by the King's man William Walcher in 1071. However, since the north was still not completely subdued, the King appointed an Anglo-Saxon called Waltheof, of the old Northumbria house, as the new Earl. The Northumbrian province thus maintained a degree of political independence despite being in the king's gift.
A close friendship developed between Walcher and Waltheof and the earl built a castle at Durham for his bishop. Even so, Waltheof was nevertheless executed in 1075 after another rebellion, with Walcher being appointed earl in his place, becoming the first and only Earl-Bishop of Northumbria. Walcher was a well-intentioned man but proved an incompetent leader, and this led to his murder in Gateshead in 1081.
[edit] 1090-1100
Despite Walcher's murder, the new King William Rufus continued William I's policy in Northumbria, replacing him with William of St. Carilef, who was also given the powers of Earl, but only south of the Rivers Tyne and Derwent.[1] This became the County Palatine of Durham, a virtually separate state, and defensive buffer zone sandwiched between "civilised" England and the often-dangerous Northumbria-Scottish borderland, with St. Carilef its first head, possessing nearly all the powers in this that the king had elsewhere.
In 1093 Bishop William demolished the old Durham Minster. The first stones of the replacement cathedral were laid by the Bishop and King Malcolm III of Scotland – even though Malcolm had invaded the county just two years before. Only a few months later, Malcolm III was killed during a raid on Alnwick.
Because the Earl joined the new King Donald III of Scotland, William Rufus invaded and took direct control of Northumbria. Suspecting of supporting the revolt, Bishop Carileph was summoned to Windsor to meet the king; he died there on January 6, 1096. The see was left vacant by the crown for three years, before William appointed his chief adviser Ranulf Flambard to it.
Flambard had acquired a fortune for himself and the king by collecting revenue from postponed appointments and through his tough approach to taxing the barons. Therefore, after William's death, the new king Henry I imprisoned Flambard in the Tower of London to appease the barons. The first prisoner in the tower, Flambard also become the first to escape – using a rope smuggled in by a butler in a cask of wine. He then fled to seek refuge in Normandy, then still Norman territory.
[edit] Zenith
- "There are two kings in England, namely the Lord King of England, wearing a crown in sign of his regality and the Lord Bishop of Durham wearing a mitre in place of a crown, in sign of his regality in the diocese of Durham".
- The steward of Anthony Beck, Bishop of Durham (1284 - 1311).
Carileph and successive post-1066 bishops had nearly all the powers within their County Palatine that the king had in the rest of England, with their own army, parliament, currency, and court system and with the power to:
- hold their own parliament
- raise their own armies
- appoint their own sheriffs and Justices
- administer their own laws
- levy taxes and customs duties
- create fairs and markets
- issue charters
- salvage shipwrecks
- collect revenue from mines
- administer the forests
- mint their own coins
For a period Carlisle was also placed under the bishop's jurisdiction, to protect the west of England from invasion.
This exceptional independence reached its full development by 1300, although it diminished very substantially during the sixteenth century. Full powers were not returned to the Crown until 1836.
[edit] Suffragan bishops
Suffragan bishops were common in the diocese of Durham until the Reformation, as assistants to the vice-regal bishop, as they ensured that episcopal functions continued to be performed while the diocesan bishop was playing his expected part in affairs of state. For instance Bishop Langley was frequently in London and occasionally overseas because as chancellor (the highest ranking servant of the Crown) to Kings Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI.[2]
[edit] 'Prince Bishops'
Although they were often called Prince Bishops this title was not actually used by any of the office holders and the phrase "The Land of the Prince Bishops" is an invention of the tourist industry.
[edit] Seals
To differentiate his ecclesiastical and civil functions, the Bishops used two or more seals: the traditional almond-shaped seal of a cleric, and the oval seal of a nobleman. They also had a large round seal showing them seated administering justice on one side, and, on the other, armed and mounted on horseback. That design was, and still is, used by monarchs as the Great Seal of the Realm.
[edit] Coat of arms
As a symbol of his palatine jurisdiction, the Bishop of Durham’s coat of arms was set against a crosier and a sword, instead of two crosiers, and the mitre above the coat of arms was encircled with a coronet, usually of the form known as a ‘crest coronet’ (and which is blazoned as a ‘ducal coronet’ though not actually the coronet of a duke). Although the jurisdiction was surrendered to the Crown in 1836, these heraldic symbols of their former power remain.
[edit] Post-Reformation
In 1536 Henry VIII withdrew much of the Prince-Bishop's secular authority. The last pre-Reformation Bishop of Durham, Cuthbert Tunstall, was deprived by Elizabeth I in 1559.
Their secular authority was further hedged during and after the English Civil War, and most aspects of it and the Prince-Bishop era were finally ended in the nineteenth century, for example:
- the Principality's final abolition in 1836
- Islandshire, an exclave resulting from the Bishop holding Bedlington, and the shires or parishes of Norham and Holy Island, all south of the River Tweed, and also the Bishop's duty to maintain a major fortress overlooking the Tweed at Norham to check Scottish incursions. This anomaly of county administration was resolved in the late nineteenth century.
- the creation of the diocese of Newcastle upon Tyne in the nineteenth century which ended their religious leadership for the whole of Northumbria which had survived the eleventh century foundation of Northumberland and the resulting end of their 'secular' leadership in that area.
The Palatinate court system, however, survived until the passage of Courts Act 1971.
People born in Bedlington, or the other parts of old North Durham, still had birth certificates issued with the County Palatine of Durham printed on them, and the North Durham satellite areas governed their areas as Urban District Councils still under the rule of Durham. It was in 1974, the time of the boundary changes, that all of these areas, and other "autonomous" towns connected to Durham, lost their independence. Bedlington became part of Wansbeck District Council.
[edit] References
- ^ The remainder, to the north of the rivers, became the county of Northumberland, where the political powers of the Bishops of Durham were limited to only certain districts.)
- ^ This was noted by Henry VIII who, in 1534, passed the Suffragan Bishops Act listing the places that might be used in providing titles for assistant-bishops appointed as assistants to diocesan bishops in Henry's new Church of England.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
Bishops: Saxon to Norman
Aldhun · Eadmund · Eadred · Ethelric · Ethelwin
Prince-Bishops: Norman to Reformation
William Walcher · William of St. Carilef · Ranulf Flambard · Geoffrey Rufus · William of St. Barbara · Hugh Pudsey · Philip of Poitou · Richard Marsh · Richard le Poor · Nicholas Farnham · Walter of Kirkham · Robert Stitchill · Robert of Holy Island · Antony Beck · Richard Kellaw · Lewis de Beaumont · Richard de Bury · Thomas Hatfield · John Fordham · Walter Skirlaw · Thomas Langley · Robert Neville · Laurence Booth · William Dudley · John Sherwood · Richard Foxe · William Senhouse · Christopher Bainbridge · Thomas Ruthall · Thomas Wolsey · Cuthbert Tunstall
Prince-Bishops: Reformation to Victorian
James Pilkington · Richard Barnes · Matthew Hutton · Tobias Matthew · William James · Richard Neile · George Monteigne · John Howson · Thomas Morton · John Cosin · Nathaniel Crew · William Talbot · Edward Chandler · Joseph Butler · Richard Trevor · John Egerton · Thomas Thurlow · Shute Barrington · William Van Mildert
Bishops: Victorian to present
Edward Maltby · Charles Thomas Longley · Henry Villiers · Charles Baring · Joseph Barber Lightfoot · Brooke Westcott · Handley Moule · Herbert Hensley Henson · Alwyn Williams · Arthur Michael Ramsey · Maurice Harland · Ian Ramsey · John Habgood · David Edward Jenkins · Michael Turnbull · Tom Wright
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