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September 2004

Parish History Episode 41

Collegiality

Bishop Bury had, we may recall (from the May issue of “Signpost”) granted Manserus Marmeyon, the Rector of Houghton-le-Spring, indefinite leave of absence, on grounds of (unspecified) ill health, numerous complaints having been received from various parties concerning the Rector’s behaviour. We need not necessarily feel too concerned about his health, as he seems to have survived for a further ten years, finally expiring in 1345, at a time when Bishop Bury himself was seriously ill. If the Bishop had any plans as to who was to succeed Marmeyon at Houghton, he did not reveal them to anyone in the short time remaining before his own death.

Bishop Bury was succeeded by Thomas Hatfield, a learnèd cleric who was well known to the King as he had, just like Bishop Bury before him, held several senior positions in the civil service of the King’s Household, prior to his elevation to the episcopate. (It was normal at that time for civil servants to be in Holy Orders: hence the change in meaning of the word clerical from priestly to administrative).

When Hatfield arrived in Durham, to be consecrated as Prince-Bishop, he would have soon been made aware of several vacancies in the parishes of the Diocese, and one of these would have been Houghton-le-Spring. He probably gave little immediate attention to that problem, as the King was mobilising for war, and Bishop Hatfield was summoned to the King’s side, and sailed with him to France, and was present at the Battle of Crécy (though not apparently taking part in any fighting: he appears to have been in command of some reserves who were not actually deployed in the battle). And, as we have seen, while King Edward and Bishop Hatfield were waging war in France, King David of Scotland came over the Border with a large army, and it seems to have been thanks only to the courage and resolution of Sir Ralph Neville, that Durham was saved, and the invading army was disastrously defeated, the Scottish king himself being taken prisoner.

When news of the Battle of Neville’s Cross reached King Edward in France, he released Bishop Hatfield from his duties with the Royal Army, and Hatfield returned to Durham, to be welcomed back by Prior Fossor and Sir Ralph, and all those who had fought to defend his city from the Scots. Soon Hatfield had returned to the normal work and responsibilities of a bishop, and amongst other matters he had to find, for Houghton-le-Spring, a replacement for Marmeyon.

Positions in other vacant parishes were, presumably, filled in what might be described as the normal manner, but it soon became apparent that Hatfield had other plans for Houghton. He was soon in correspondence with Avignon, where the new pope, Clement VI (who was mentioned in last month’s “Signpost”, in connection with the development of the doctrine of a Treasury of Merit), was encouraging the formation of collegiate churches - that is, of churches served not by a single priest, or by one priest together with some assistant curates, but rather by a “college” of equal or near-equal priests, known as canons.

The plan for Houghton seems to have been that the parish would be served by a college of ten canons or prebendaries. The rector and several other canons would devote themselves to the conduct of services - in particular to the chanting of masses for the souls of the benefactors of the church - and to study, and possibly to teaching; while the vicar, together with one or two other canons, would undertake the pastoral work of serving the parishioners, that is christening, marrying, churching and burying them as required, and would also take services in the three “chapels of ease” within the parish, when they came to be rebuilt.

We know very little about these chapels of ease, except that they had once existed at (Middle?) Herrington, (West?) Rainton and Warden Law, all of them outlying hamlets within the Parish of Houghton-le-Spring. No trace of any of these chapels remains, and they had probably not been stone buildings, but rather little more than wooden barns with thatched roofs. All three of them had disappeared at the time of the Black Douglas’s raid in 1319. Presumably he had burned all three of them to the ground.

This plan for a collegiate church at Houghton was very much in accord with the spirit of the time. Collegiate churches were popular with the clergy who often preferred to work in what we would now call a team ministry; and they were popular with those who endowed them, who thereby ensured the regular daily saying of masses for themselves, or for their departed relatives; and they were popular with the general public, for these colleges of priests, training themselves and others in the dignified presentation of worship, and in the modes of sacred music, enabled many lesser churches to have an almost cathedral-like style of worship, with daily offices of psalms and readings surrounding the regular recitation of the Mass.

In the Diocese of Durham there were two old-established collegiate churches, those at Norton and Chester-le-Street, whose origins (as colleges) go back to before the Norman Conquest. Later colleges had been established at Darlington, Staindrop, Lanchester and Bishop Auckland. In addition, the Benedictine monasteries at Jarrow and Monkwearmouth, as also of course the community of monks attached to Durham Cathedral, provided the residents of those towns with a similar standard of worship. One gets the impression that it was then felt that the ideal was to have one such collegiate church, served either by canons or by Benedictine monks, in each Rural Deanery, and Houghton-le-Spring (then part of Easington Deanery?) would have seemed an obvious choice for any new college which was then planned.

But our church never did become collegiate. Late in 1347, William Dalton was appointed sole Rector of Houghton-le-Spring, without any college of canons to assist him. It would indeed have been useful if he had had some assistance from nine other canons, for he had other duties which must have taken him away from Houghton. It seems that he was already drawing additional stipends as a prebendary of Lincoln Cathedral, and of the collegiate churches at Bishop Auckland, Bridgnorth and Hastings, and as a canon of the collegiate church at Ripon, and as both a canon and a sacrist of the collegiate church at Beverley. He can hardly have resided at all of them. It may well be asked whether he was resident at any of them. For it turns out that he also held the office of Controller in the King’s Household, which would normally entail residence in London. Perhaps he resigned from some of his other ecclesiastical posts, but he retained, for a while at least, his position in the Civil Service.

It may be that Dalton had expected only to be a junior canon at Houghton, but he found himself appointed as Rector, without any canons to assist him. He may have intended only to come here for his induction, but he did, it seems, eventually come to reside here. The tithes on wool, to be gathered at Houghton (tithes which would not need to be shared out between ten men), may have been for him a more valuable source of income than his salary in the King’s Household.

This list of Dalton’s sources of income obviously implies that many colleges of clergy must have existed on paper only - that the canons listed as being “on the strength” of the parish were absentees, milking the post for its income, and never being physically present. But, though most collegiate churches might carry one or two “passengers”, who were, so to say, parasites, drawing income but giving nothing back in return, it also seems to be true that most collegiate churches did in fact exist as colleges of priests working together for the good of their parish.

But, for good or bad, Houghton never did become collegiate. It may have been found impossible to get together the necessary endowments to pay the stipends for ten priests; or it may be that the wrong fees, or insufficient fees, were paid at Durham or at Avignon, and the whole scheme became blocked. But what would have been the result if our church ever had attained collegiate status ? Well, for a start, worship would have been more dignified. Some souls, it may be, would have benefitted from the Masses said on their behalf. The town might well have benefitted from the increased spending power of ten priests, from the additional sermons which would have been preached, and through the increased education and mental stimulation which might have inspired at least some of the laity.

The outlying hamlets certainly suffered through the abandonment of the scheme. The Herringtons and the Raintons would both have to wait until the Nineteenth Century for places of worship - first Methodist, and then, slightly later, Anglican - to be erected in their midst. But it is probable that no chapel would have been built, or rebuilt, at Warden Law, even if a College of Canons had been established at Houghton. Not only had the chapel and houses on Warden Law been destroyed at the time of Douglas’s raid, but it would appear that the population had also been wiped out. And now that the wool trade had become so prosperous, and the hills between Houghton and the sea were covered with flocks of browsing sheep, whose wool would be exported each year to the looms of Flanders, there was no incentive to re-establish the lost village, and so there would have been no point in rebuilding the chapel.

So, if a College of Canons had been formed to serve our parish, Middle Herrington and West Rainton would probably both now possess an ancient parish church, built perhaps in “Decorated” style. But the College in Houghton would almost certainly have been dissolved at the time of the Tudor Reformation. What traces of it, if any, might have survived ? Well, in some towns, mostly in the South of England, grammar schools were founded from the endowments sequestrated from such colleges, the beneficiary schools sometimes still retaining the name of “college” (Dulwich College, Dover College). But, though both Darlington and Bishop Auckland Grammar Schools may have benefitted in some degree from the dissolution of the collegiate churches in their respective towns, very little of what was taken from the Church in the North-East of England in Tudor times was used to promote education. In Scotland, though, both the universities of St. Andrews and of Aberdeen had new colleges (in the academic sense of the word) added to them at the time of the Reformation, endowed through the dissolution of collegiate churches within those towns. But the North-East of England had to await the Nineteenth Century before it received its own university.

There would also possibly have been some immaterial benefits arising from the foundation of a collegiate church in Houghton. Where clergy assemble together in numbers, there tends to be an increase in discussion and debate (and also, unfortunately, in controversy), and thereby intellectual stimulation occurs. Several collegiate churches were to become centres of that revolt against the powers of the Popes (who had, perhaps, once chartered them, and brought them into existence), which was to be known as the Reformation. Ulrich Zwingli had once preached his doctrines from the pulpit of the Hofminster in Zurich. Martin Luther held a stall at All Saints’, Wittenberg. It was in St. Giles’, Edinburgh, that Jenny Geddes threw her stool at the preacher, thus initiating a religious revolution in Scotland.

Well, St. Michael & All Angels at Houghton-le-Spring was not to play so crucial a role in the Reformation as did Wittenberg or Zurich. But yet, educational stimulation was to occur here. The endowments of a religious foundation (the Kepier Hospital in Durham) will be given by John Heath (who had obtained them from King Henry VIII) to Bernard Gilpin, in order to found a famous school in Houghton; and in Gilpin’s time Houghton-le-Spring will be the centre of a circle of informed men and women, albeit ones not so certain of their correctness as were Luther or Zwingli or Geddes. Worship and devotion will not be strangers to Houghton church, and before the Fourteenth Century is over, the new windows in our church will bear witness to the readiness of Houghton’s laity to ensure that our church was a fit dwelling-house for God.

But there was to be no college of priests at Houghton. Well, not at that time, at any rate, not in 1347. But yet, over six hundred and fifty years later (two-thirds of a millennium !), a Ministry Development Team was, in 2004, consecrated for the parish of Houghton-le-Spring. Two ordained priests, one deacon in training, seven lay ministers (licensed or training) and eight “team members” (of course, only two of these eighteen persons are in the full-time service of the Church in this parish) now share between them the duties which would have been performed by the proposed team of ten (full-time) canons. The present Rector has at last received the support which Pope Clement and Bishop Hatfield once proposed to provide for Rector Dalton.