August 2005

Parish History Episode 52
Cardinals, Kings & Rectors.

In 1405, the year of Archbishop Scroop’s execution, Durham also lost a bishop, Walter Skirlaw. It is not clear to me what support, if any, he gave to Old Percy’s ambitions, but he did not have the dangerous task of planning a coronation, and was thus not implicated in Percy’s treachery in the same way that Scroop had been. I presume that he died a natural death, but there was no hurry to replace him, and Henry IV was determined to ensure that he had no more trouble from the Northern Church while he undertook tiresome campaigns against Wales. The next Bishop of Durham, Thomas Langley, was to be appointed late in 1406, and was very much the King’s man, being often absent from his diocese, at the Court of Henry IV or of that king’s son, Henry V. Sometimes he travelled even further afield.

In 1409 he went to Pisa, in Italy, along with hundreds of other bishops, in order to attend a Council of the whole Western church, called in an attempt to end the Papal Schism. Many of the assembled prelates planned to create a permanent Council of Bishops which would, it was hoped, give a sort of parliamentary style of government to the Church. But first, the Council deposed both existing popes, Gregory XII of Rome and Benedict XIII of Avignon, before electing a new pope, who took the name of John.
However, Gregory and Benedict conspired among their supporters - and John among his - and for a brief period the Council discovered that it had increased the number of rival popes from two to three! The situation had become more confused than ever.

Langley returned to Durham, but in 1411 he was rewarded with a cardinal’s hat, the first Bishop of Durham to receive such an honour.
While Pope Gregory XII had made the appointment, it was probably King Henry IV who suggested the idea. One consequence of the Papal Schism was that kings began to have much greater influence at each of the rival Papal Courts. Each pope was desperate to obtain royal support
for his claims, so he could no longer take exception to the extension of royal authority into areas where earlier kings had possessed no
influence. Each rival pope endeavoured to ensure that not one of “his” kings would ever transfer his allegiance to the rival Papal Court. As a result of such implied threats, kings now discovered that they could take greater liberties with the Church in many ways: they had more say in the choice of prelates than had their predecessors, and they could retain a greater proportion of the Church’s wealth for the advancement of their own political ambitions than could earlier kings. To be sure, some earlier kings had tried as much, but usually with little success.

One symptom of these changes in relative power between king and pope was an expansion of the Cardinalate in both Papal Obediences. The
College of Cardinals had come into prominence in 1059, when the Lateran Synod of that year had decreed that thenceforth, on the death of a pope, his successor would be elected by the cardinals, thus excluding German kaisers and local patricians alike from influence in the process. Forover three centuries the system had worked, on the whole, smoothly and well: it resulted, perhaps, in a rather inward-looking Church, dominated by the Papal Curia, but it gave effective leadership to the Church (and almost everything else) in mediaeval Europe - it even survived the trauma of the death of Boniface VIII, and the transfer of the
Curia across the Alps, from Rome to Avignon. But it could not so well survive schism. At this period there began an expectation by kings, both those within the Roman and within the Avignonese Obediences, that the primates of their kingdoms, and sometimes other senior prelates as well,
should receive a cardinal’s hat from their pope. This not only added dignity to the Church within the kingdom, but it also might enable the king to be able to exert influence on the choice of a new pope when the present one died. It also meant that the cardinals came to be scattered all over Western Europe, many of them hardly ever being present at a conclave in Rome (or in Avignon). In the long run, this would assist popes in keeping
control of the Curia, and reduce the rôle of most of the cardinals merely to forming an electoral college during Papal vacancies.

Cardinal Langley would be present at the Council of Constance, from 1414 to 1417, and would cast his vote for Martin V, who would be
proclaimed as Pope by that Council. He would also vote for the condemnation of the Czech theologian Jan Hus, who would be burned at
Constance in 1415, despite the backing that the man received from his own Church in Bohemia, thus initiating a new schism between Papalists
and Reformers, a schism that has not yet been fully healed. Langley also voted for the condemnation of the English reformer John Wycliffe, but as Wycliffe was already dead, there was little that the Church could do against him.

Langley was active in the international affairs of the Church, and also in English politics: he successively held several important posts at the
King’s Court, twice serving as Chancellor of England, which was an office equivalent to that of a modern prime minister. But he was also active in his own diocese, paying for some reconstruction work, particularly the strengthening of the foundations of the Galilee Chapel (where his tomb now stands, more prominent than that of Bede), and starting to repair the damage after the cathedral tower was struck by lightning in 1429.

He also founded a free school for poor scholars in Durham City (now the fee-paying Durham School). He was a good and active bishop by the standards of his time, but of course, with so many duties undertaken, it was inevitable that he would neglect some of them. Some of his
successors must also have felt that his opposition to what he regarded as heresy was more stubborn than wise.

His encouragement given to King Henry V’s claim to the French Throne appears also, in retrospect, to have been unwise. After succeeding his father in 1413, King Henry almost immediately began to plan for an invasion of France, claiming to have succeeded to Edward III’s dubious claim to the French Throne. His campaign was even more brilliant than that of King Edward, and in 1415 the French army was decisively defeated at
Agincourt. A further series of disasters ensued for the French, and in 1420 King Charles VI sued for peace. Cardinal Langley negotiated the harsh terms which were granted to the French. Charles was permitted to retain the French Crown for the rest of his life, but he disinherited his son, also
named Charles, and in his place acknowledged (the unmarried) King Henry as his successor, the English king agreeing to marry King Charles’
daughter Catherine.

It was the high point of Cardinal Langley’s career. He returned to London, and then to Durham, in triumph. The Council of Constance was over, the Papacy was very nearly united again, Wycliffe was condemned, Hus had been burned, heresy had been defeated, and now the armies of England had prevailed over those of France, and France lay at England’s feet. It was the Will of Providence. England had been loyal to Rome throughout the Schism. If God desired that the land of France should be subject to the
Throne and Church of England, what desire could be more beneficial, and who were Henry of England and Thomas Langley of Durham to stand
in the way of God?

Unfortunately, it was not to turn out like that. The disinherited heir to France, the Dauphin Charles as he was known, was naturally displeased with the Treaty of Troyes. He withdrew to Bourges, out of reach of English arms, and continued the war. He ruled the South and East, the English the
North and West, in a situation akin to that of the partition of France by the Germans into Occupied and Unoccupied Zones in 1940. Next, Henry V and Charles VI died within a month of each other in 1422, Henry first, so he never wore the Crown of France. But, by the terms of the Treaty of Troyes, Henry V’s son, to be known as Henry VI, should have inherited both crowns. He never reigned, however, in his mother’s country, France.
A really dreadful girl, known to history as Joan of Arc, upset all the plans of Langley (and of God?) by assuming command of the Dauphin’s armies,
and leading them to victory over the English, recovering the primatial See of Reims, and crowning the Dauphin as Charles VII of France.

Shortly afterwards, Joan was taken prisoner, and was burned at the stake by the English, as a witch and as a heretic who had frustrated the Will
of God. But the war continued to go badly for the English, and soon nothing was left to them on the mainland of Europe, save for the port of Calais.

That was a bad beginning to the reign of the infant Henry VI (one year old at his accession). But worse was to follow. England, having lost her
possessions in France, was soon to face anarchy and strife at home. The armies returning in defeat from France were soon to be employed in civil
war. Her infant king, surrounded by bullying and overbearing barons and bishops, withdrew into himself, and took no interest in affairs of state. He
was effectively motherless as well as fatherless, for, almost as soon as her only son was weaned, Queen Catherine, who appeared to have a dislike
for the conquerors of her nation, who had tried to rob her brother of his inheritance, left London, not for home, but for Wales.

After Owen Glendower’s Rebellion had petered out, the newly-crowned Henry V had set out for France, leaving the English marcher lords to complete the subjugation of Wales, and to recompense themselves by appropriating Welsh land. However, like the Norman adventurers whom an earlier King Henry had sent into Ireland, these barons had quickly “gone native”, married into the local nobility, retained bards to sing of their greatness, and learned Welsh in order to make sure that the bards were singing the correct songs. Here, in newly-reconquered Wales, Queen
Catherine married a Welsh lord, Owain ap Tudor o Penmynydd. Parliament, fearing for the future, annulled the marriage, but the damage was done. Owain’s grandson, the Henry VII who was to be, would take England by violence, more successfully than Henry Tudor’s predecessor,
Henry V, ever took France.

But let us return from these affairs of state to those of Houghton-le-Spring. Much of what I have written above implies criticism of the Hierarchy of
the Church. I have drawn up a portrait of rival, quarrelling popes, of Reforming Councils burning heretics, and of a Bishop of Durham apparently having difficulty in separating the affairs of Caesar (Henry V) from those of God. Can the reader be assured that these corruptions did not affect our local Church?

Unfortunately, it would seem that they did. It is true that nothing seems to be known about John Henley, Rector from 1377 to 1390 (which, I hope,
indicates that he was a good man: no record of any scandal survives), but his successor, Thomas Walkington (to 1410) was a pluralist who held
several livings. He seems to have normally resided at Beverley, where he held a prebend’s stall in the Minster, but he was also Archdeacon of
Cleveland, and vicar or rector of several other parishes. He probably spent little time at Houghton. I do not know what attitude he, or the people of Houghton, took to the Rising of the Percies.

Walkington’s successor, John Newton (until 1427), was appointed by Bishop Langley, primarily to administer the affairs of the Diocese of
Durham at those times when Langley was absent, in London, Pisa, Constance, or Troyes. To enable him to live comfortably, he was granted the offices of Rector of Houghton-le-Spring and of Master of Sherburn Hospital, and appears to have well-nigh ruined both charges financially, through raising the maximum revenue and performing the minimum duties, and using the money saved to finance Bishop Langley’s projects for Durham, and possibly for more distant obligations, such as the French War. It is in Newton’s time that we last hear of St. Mary’s Church at West Herrington, the last survivor of the three chapels-of-ease, built probably during the incumbencies of Rectors Beckenham and St. Botolph to serve the inhabitants of outlying hamlets in the parish (the other two were at West Rainton and Warden Law: all three were damaged or destroyed during the
Black Douglas’s raid in 1319, the occasion when the parish church was besieged, but St. Mary’s had been rebuilt).

One of Rector Newton’s economies was to cease paying for a chaplain to serve St. Mary’s, and to give up maintaining the fabric, so that it began to decay. He believed that it would not hurt the Herrington folk to make them climb over the hill on Sundays to go to church. People in Herrington thought otherwise, and they took their Rector to Court, but Newton was very powerful in Durham during Langley’s prolonged absences, and they found it difficult to obtain any redress in the Courts of the Palatinate - and even when the Courts found in their favour, they still seemed unable to obtain enforcement of the Court’s judgment. St. Mary’s Church eventually tumbled into ruin.

Dick Toy

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