Diocese of Durham

Diocese of Durham Church of England
Province:	York
Arms of the Bishop of Durham
Durham Cathedral
Bishop:	Paul Butler
Cathedral:	Durham Cathedral
Organisation
Suffragan bishop(s):	Bishop of Jarrow
Archdeaconries:	Auckland, Durham, Sunderland
No. of parishes:	249
No. of churches:	292
Details
Website:	durham.anglican.org

The Diocese of Durham is a Church of England diocese covering County Durham. The episcopal seat is Durham Cathedral, a massive early Gothic cathedral around which the City of Durham was built.

The Diocese was created in 883 as the Diocese of Chester-le-Street, but in 995 the body of St Cuthbert was brought from Chester to the defensive hill at Durham and the bishopric became the Diocese of Durham in that year of around 1000, and this led to the founding of the city. Legend states that the Order of St Cuthbert brought the saint's body here and the body could not be moved from the spot, so the cathedral was built at the peak of the hill, where Cuthbert's body would rest.

The Bishop of Durham lives not in the city but at Auckland Castle in Bishop Auckland. The diocese's administrative centre, the Diocesan Office, is located in the Scotland Wing of Auckland Castle.

History

Origins

The line of bishops of Durham stretches back to the 10th century, when Aldhun (995-1018), transferred his see to Durham. At the time the Diocese included County Durham and Northumberland, as it did until the nineteenth century.

The Bishop has a uniquely powerful position in the Middle Ages due to the perious state of the north in those days. 7th and 8th century Kingdom of Northumbria, which stretched from the Humber estuary to the Firth of Forth. Subsequently the Kingdom came under Danish]] and English sovereignty and was transformed into an Earldom.

When William the Conqueror became king of England in 1066, he soon realised the need to control Northumbria to protect his kingdom from Scottish incursions. He gained the allegiance of both the Bishop of Durham and the Earl of Northumbria by confirming their privileges and acknowledging the remote independence of Northumbria.

To quell rebellions, William installed Robert Comine, a Norman noble, as the Earl of Northumberland, but Comine and his 700 men were massacred in Durham. In revenge, the King raided Northumbria in the Harrying of the North. Aethelwine, the English Bishop of Durham, tried to flee with Northumbrian treasures, but was caught and imprisoned. He later died in confinement, leaving his see vacant for William to the King to appoint William Walcher as bishop of Durham in 1071.

Prince-Bishops

Durham Cathedral

The King appointed Waltheof, an Anglo-Saxon of the old Northumbria house, as the new Earl. Bishop William was on friendly terms with Earl Waltheof, who built a castle at Durham for the bishop. After another rebellion, Waltheof was executed in 1075 and in his place William Walcher was appointed Earl, becoming the first "Prince Bishop", never an official title but a fair description of the extraordinary powers enjoyed by the bishops. Walcher was well-intentioned but proved an incompetent leader. He was murdered in Gateshead in 1081.

King [[William II divided the Earldom into two parts: the lands north of the rivers Tyne and Derwent were ruled by the Earls of Northumberland, while the lands south of the rivers were put under the control of the Bishop of Durham.

The lands ruled by the bishops became known as the 'County Palatine of Durham', a defensive buffer zone between England and the Northumbria-Scottish borderland. Due to its strategic importance and its remoteness from London, the County Palatinate became a virtually autonomous entity, in which the Prince-Bishop possessed the powers of a King. Specifically, the Prince-Bishops had the authority to

• hold their own parliaments
• 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 northwest of England.

Durham's exceptional status reached its zenith by 1300, when Bishop Antony Beck remarked that:

“

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 Bishop's remarks were not well received at court, but his powers remained unabated.

To ensure that episcopal functions continued to be performed while the diocesan bishop was playing his part in political affairs of state, suffragan bishops were appointed. For instance, Bishop Thomas Langley served as chancellor to the Kings Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI and was frequently away in London and occasionally overseas.

Decline

In 1536 Henry VIII greatly diminished the Bishop's secular authority, which was further reduced during and after the Civil War in the next century.

From 1537 to 1572, there was one suffragan Bishop of Berwick. Since 1572, this position has remained in abeyance, and Berwick-upon-Tweed is now in Newcastle diocese.

After the Union of the Crowns of England and Scotland in 1603, the County Palatinate, originally founded to check Scottish incursions, increasingly became an anachronism.

On 5 July 1836 the palatinate was finally removed from the Bishop and vested as a franchise in the Crown, from which time County Durham has been a county like any other. In 1844 the Islandshire exclave was transferred to the jurisdiction of Northumberland, while the Bishop's duty to maintain a major fortress overlooking the Tweed at Norham also came to an end. In 1882 the Diocese lost Northumberland, when a new diocese, the Diocese of Newcastle was created. In 1971 the Courts Act modernised the English courts system and abolished the Palatinate courts.

Since 1906, there has again been a suffragan bishop in the diocese; the Bishop of Jarrow.

Still, people born in Bedlington or the other parts of old North Durham, 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. This prevailed until 1974, when administrative boundaries where changed and all of these areas, and other "autonomous" towns connected to Durham, lost their independence.

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, the same pattern as was (and is) used by monarchs as the Great Seal of the Realm.

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.

Bishop's Palace

The bishop's palace is Auckland Castle in Bishop Auckland. Until the 1830s and the national mood at the time of the Great Reform Act, the Bishop had at least two more castles; Norham Castle in Northumberland and his main Palace at Durham Castle now occupied by the University of Durham. The Bishop still has the right to use "his" suite at Durham Castle, although the right he retained to stable his horses in buildings adjacent to Palace Green in Durham has lapsed – it was noted in the preamble to University of Durham Act 1936 that the Bishop no longer kept horses.

Bishops of Durham

The Bishop of Durham is bishop responsible for the Diocese of Durham. As the senior bishop of the Province of York after the Archbishop, the bishop is a member of the House of Lords by right, not by rotation as most bishops are. The bishop is one of two (the other is the Bishop of Bath and Wells) who escorts the sovereign at the coronation.

The Bishop is officially styled The Right Reverend Father in God, (Christian Name), by Divine Providence Lord Bishop of Durham. In signatures, the bishop's family name is replaced by Dunelm, from the Latin name for Durham, a form of Old English Dunholm). In the past, Bishops of Durham varied their signatures between Dunelm and the French Duresm.

The bishop lived in Durham Castle from its construction in the 11th century. In 1832, Auckland Castle became the official residence of the Bishops of Durham until July 2012 when ownership of the castle was transferred over to the Auckland Castle Trust, a charitable foundation with the aim of beginning a major restoration of the grounds and castle and creating permanent exhibitions on the history of Christianity in Britain and the North East. The bishop continues to have offices in Auckland Castle but no longer reside there.

Early Mediæval bishops

Bishops of Durham
From	Until	Incumbent	Notes
995	1018	Aldhun	Previously Bishop of Lindisfarne.
1021	1041	Edmund
1041	1042	Eadred
1042	1056	Æthelric
1056	1071	Æthelwine
Source(s):

Before the Reformation

Bishops of Durham
From	Until	Incumbent	Notes
1071	1080	William Walcher
1081	1096	William de St-Calais
1099	1128	Ranulf Flambard
1133	1140	Geoffrey Rufus
1141	1143	William Cumin
1143	1153	William of St. Barbara
1153	1195	Hugh de Puiset
1197	1208	Philip of Poitou
1209	1213	Richard Poore	Election quashed by Pope Innocent III disputing with King John; later elected and consecrated.
1214	1214	John de Gray	Died before consecration.
1215	1215	Morgan	Election quashed.
1217	1226	Richard Marsh
1226	1227	William Scot	Election quashed.
1229	1237	Richard Poore	Translated from Salisbury.
1237	1240	Thomas de Melsonby	Resigned before consecration.
1241	1249	Nicholas Farnham
1249		Walter of Kirkham
1260	1274	Robert Stitchill
1274	1283	Robert of Holy Island
1284	1310	Antony Bek	Also Titular Patriarch of Jerusalem from 1306 - 1311
1311	1316	Richard Kellaw
1318	1333	Lewis de Beaumont
1333	1345	Richard de Bury
1345	1381	Thomas Hatfield
1382	1388	John Fordham	Translated to Ely.
1388	1406	Walter Skirlaw	Translated from Bath & Wells.
1406	1437	Thomas Langley
1437	1457	Robert Neville	Translated from Salisbury
1457	1476	Lawrence Booth	Translated to York.
1476	1483	William Dudley
1484	1494	John Sherwood
1494	1501	Richard Foxe	Translated from Bath & Wells, later translated to Winchester.
1502	1505	William Senhouse	Translated from Carlisle.
1507	1508	Christopher Bainbridge	Translated to York.
1509	1523	Thomas Ruthall
1523	1529	Thomas Wolsey	Archbishop of York. Held Durham in commendam.
1530	1559	Cuthbert Tunstall	Translated from London.
Source(s):

From the Reformation to the end of the Palatinate

Bishops of Durham
From	Until	Incumbent	Notes
1530	1559	Cuthbert Tunstall
1561	1576	James Pilkington
1577	1587	Richard Barnes	Translated from Carlisle.
1589	1595	Matthew Hutton	Translated to York.
1595	1606	Tobias Matthew	Translated to York.
1606	1617	William James
1617	1627	Richard Neile	Translated from Lincoln, later translated to Winchester.
1628		George Montaigne	Translated from London, later translated to York.
1628	1632	John Howson	Translated from Oxford
1632	1659	Thomas Morton	Translated from Lichfield.
1660	1672	John Cosin
1674	1722	Nathaniel Crew	Translated from Oxford. ('The Hon Nathaniel Crew' 1679–1697, then 'The Rt Hon The Lord Crew' from 1697)
1722	1730	William Talbot	Translated from Salisbury.
1730	1750	Edward Chandler	Translated from Lichfield.
1750	1752	Joseph Butler	Translated from Bristol.
1752	1771	Richard Trevor	Translated from St David's.
1771	1787	John Egerton	Translated from Lichfield.
1787	1791	Thomas Thurlow	Translated from Lincoln.
1791	1826	Shute Barrington	Translated from Salisbury.
1826	1836	William Van Mildert	Translated from Llandaff.
Source(s):

Bishops since 1836

Bishops of Durham
From	Until	Incumbent	Notes
1836	1856	Edward Maltby	Translated from Chichester.
1856	1860	Charles Longley	Translated from Ripon, later translated to York, then to Canterbury.
1860	1861	Henry Villiers	Translated from Carlisle.
1861	1879	Charles Baring	Translated from Gloucester and Bristol.
1879	1889	Joseph Lightfoot	Previously Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity.
1890	1901	Brooke Westcott	Previously Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge.
1901	1920	Handley Moule	Previously Norrisian Professor of Divinity.
1920	1939	Hensley Henson	Translated from Hereford.
1939	1952	Alwyn Williams	Translated to Winchester.
1952	1956	Michael Ramsey	Translated to York, then to Canterbury.
1956	1966	Maurice Harland	Translated to Lincoln.
1966	1972	Ian Ramsey
1973	1983	John Habgood	Translated to York.
1984	1994	David Jenkins	Previously Professor of Theology University of Leeds
1994	2003	Michael Turnbull	Translated from Rochester
2003	2010	Tom Wright	Previously Dean of Lichfield; returned to academia.
2011	2013	Justin Welby	Translated to Canterbury.
2014 (announced)	Bishop-designate	Paul Butler	Translated from Southwell and Nottingham; appointment announced 12 September 2013.
Source(s):

Outside links

• Church of England Statistics 2002
• Diocese of Durham