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June 2003

Parish History Episode 26

THE RETREAT OF THE SCOTS

The men of Yorkshire had inflicted a great defeat upon the Scottish army in 1138, at the Battle of the Standard, fought at Northallerton. But at the end of that year Northumberland and Durham were still firmly in Scottish hands, though con¬tinuing exactions by King David's brutal troopers were turning the population against their new rulers. The King himself remained in Durham, negotiating with the Bishop, offering to restore the castles at Norham and elsewhere to episcopal control, in return for the Bishop of Durham acknowledging the overlordship of the King of Scotland.

Then in 1140 Geoffrey Rufus, the Bishop, died, and King David took steps to ensure that he was succeeded by a more accommodating priest, a man called Cumin, of Norman origin, but of long residence in Scotland, employed until then as a clerk of senior rank in the King's Chancery. He was consecrated by other Scottish bishops and brought to Durham in time to celebrate Christmas in the new cathedral there, in the presence of the King. The Prior and monks of Durham were furious at this violation of the right that they claimed, when a vacancy arose in the See, to elect whomsoever they chose to be their bishop. This infringement of protocol was to prove the final straw that would bring Durham out into open revolt against the Scots. Early in 1141 the monks elected William of St. Barbe, probably one of their number, to be their bishop. He seems to have travelled to York, and to have been consecrated by Archbishop Thurston, before returning to Durham, where he took up residence in St,. Giles' church, which he fortified, and William and his men faced Cumin and his Scots, holding the Cathedral and Castle of Durham, across the Wear. At one stage, the "Williamites" even engaged the services of a skilled military engineer who had served in the Crusades, and this engineer constructed a catapult which was meant to be capable of projecting stone boulders right across the valley of the Wear, from Gilesgate Hill to Cathedral Hill, and was said to be capable of destroying both Durham Castle and Cathedral. The infernal machine was tested, and, fortunately, was found to be incapable of living up to the manufacturer's "blurb". (Even in those days, the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction often proved elusive).

While Cumin seems to have enjoyed some support amongst the Norman lords in the Palatinate (including, perhaps, the le Springs), he relied principally on the swords of his Scotsmen, and this tended to alienate him from the people towards whom he was meant to be extending both feudal protection and pastoral care. William of St. Barbe had, of course, the support of other Norman lords, of whom the most notable was Sir Roger Conyers of Sockburn, famous for his faulchion, a curious short-bladed sword, with a straight back and a curved cutting edge, said to be of Saracen origin.

The Sockburn Peninsula, where Sir Roger had his castle, is larger and less steep than the Durham Peninsula, but like Durham it is almost entirely surrounded by loops of a river, in this case the Tees. There, in Sockburn Castle, the Conyers family would dwell tax-free, until the ending, in 1836, of the palatine powers of the Prince-Bishops of Durham, a concession granted presumably in gratitude for Sir Roger's support for Bishop William.

Another memento of the way that the Bishops of Durham were, at this period, dependent on the loyalty and courage of the Conyers family can be seen in the library of Durham Cathedral, where Sir Roger's falchion (or is it a replica?) still hangs - except during an episcopal vacancy, when it is returned to Sockburn, to be presented anew to the incoming bishop, as he crosses the Tees, after his consecration, usually at York.

The memory of this civil war having long faded, popular tradition claims that the falchion was the sword used by Sir John Conyers (a hero unknown to serious history) to slay a monster, known as the Sockburn Worm, which dwelt in the Tees, and which was prone to devastating the countryside on either bank of that river. This tale seems remarkably similar to that of the Awful Lambton Worm, and the hero himself seems to be made in the tradition of that bold crusading knight Sir John Lambton ( and it must be admitted that there isn't a great deal of written evidence for the existence of our "Bold Sir John" either ). Of course, Tees-siders claim that the Sockburn Worm is the origin of the tale of the Lambton Worm. But we on Wearside know better.

The war between the two rival bishops - Cumin and William - dragged on for three years, from 1141 to 1144, with William of St. Barbe eventually prevailing. This was possibly due less to Sir Roger's skill with the falchion than to a growing revulsion on the part of the people of the Palatinate against the behaviour of Cumin's Scottish soldiery, an ill-disciplined band of predatory scavengers. It must have been with great delight that the people of the land heard, in 1144, that King David had withdrawn across the Tyne, and had abandoned County Durham. Cumin fled with him, and now William of St. Barbe was the sole bishop.

Quite a few of the Norman lords left with Cumin, and this may well have included the le Spring family, who seem to fade out of sight in the middle of the Twelfth Century. The obvious inference is that they had retreated Northwards with the Scots, having sworn allegiance to Bishop Cumin and King David. We hear of them again from time to time, down to the Fourteenth Century when there is a record of one Sir John le Spring being murdered in a blood-feud, but according to "the Boldon Book" (the inventory of economic wealth within the Prince-Bishopric, which would be compiled by Bishop Hugh de Puiset after the war, to be described in next month's article), the manor and lordship farm of Houghton-le-Spring were in the hands of the bishop's bailiffs, which suggests that the le Springs had either abandoned their inheritance, or been evicted. The same fate seem to have befallen the original lords of Washington, across the River Wear from us. The Boldon Book informs us that William of Hartburn (a village now absorbed into Stockton-on-Tees) had exchanged that manor for the manor of Washington. It will be the descendants of this William of Hartburn who will take the surname Washington for themselves, and it will be from them that George Washington, the rebel captain who will, six centuries later, defeat the British and create the U.S.A., would be descended.

These fleeing lords left behind a war-ravaged countryside. It is impossible to say what the situation was in Houghton when Bishop William's forces finally occupied this area, but it is likely that the village had been destroyed, the people killed or fled, and the recently-built church left in ruins. The same thing seems to have happened in nearby villages such as Easington and Dalton-le-Dale. In each of these villages, the present church building dates back to Norman times, but the church seems to have fallen into ruin during the middle Twelfth Century, and then to have been rebuilt in the second half of the century, but in each village alike a part of the original structure was preserved and incorporated into the present building.
As Houghton, Easington and Dalton all lay in the area of East Durham reported to have been devastated by the Scots, the conclusion we are likely to draw is that the churches, and presumably the whole communities, in these parishes had been destroyed in the fighting, and were then rebuilt a generation or so later, as stability and prosperity returned to the region. The incorporation of fragments of Norman work in all three churches might also suggest reconstruction after the accidental or deliberate destruction of the earlier churches, having perhaps been burned down, perhaps by lightning or by human carelessness, or perhaps incinerated by Scottish raiders. After all, if the older churches had been deliberately demolished in order to build, on the same site, new places of worship in a newer style, one would expect that all of the old structure would have been pulled down. The fact that the North wall of the chancel of Houghton church did come to be incorporated into the new church suggests that it was standing as a noble ruin, a reminder of happier, pre-war days, a reminder, perhaps, of spiritual giants, real or imagined, who had worshipped God within those walls in former times; and perhaps the builders wished to preserve them, as an inspiration to the men of their own generation. It was a similar principle, perhaps, to that which led Norman-French priests to dedicate new churches rising at this period at Hartlepool and Darlington to old Anglian saints such as Hilda and Cuthbert.

But by the 1190's, when the renewed churches at Houghton, Easington and Dalton were coming to completion, it was half a century since King David's War. Had the destruction been that fierce that Houghton and much beside had lain in ruins for fifty years? Again, had the well-built, little Norman church of Saint Michael and All Angels suffered but little damage during the wars, and had it rather been the population which the church was intended to serve which had been wiped out by the wars, and the old church had stood, neglected and empty, like a church in a Highland glen after the population had been removed to Canada during "the Clearances"? And had damp and decay then entered the church, and allowed the building to sink into ruin?

We do not know the answers to these questions. But we do know of the existence of a priest from Houghton called Rogerus, who signs a document in 1147. This obviously suggests some continuity, though we do not know whether or not Rogerus was residing in Houghton when he signed that document at Durham: he may have been a refugee from his parish at the time - we do not know.