Remembering and Lamenting Lost Liturgy: The Text and Context of Rites of Durham,c.1593

1. Introduction

Symeon of Durham, who was both cantor and historian of Durham Cathedral Priory, c.1090–1129, recorded the following in his Tracts on the Origins and Progress of this, the Church of Durham:

The venerable Bishop Ealdhun solemnly dedicated the church on 4 September in the third year after he had founded it. While everyone rejoiced and praised God, he translated the incorrupt body of the most holy Cuthbert into the place which he had prepared for it and enshrined it there with due honour. In this way, the episcopal see, which had been founded originally on the island of Lindisfarne by the former King Oswald and Bishop Aiden, had remained in this place until the present day in the presence of the holy body. ¹

Ealdhun’s stone church was built on the forested Peninsular which was apparently chosen by St. Cuthbert himself. The cart carrying the coffin of the saint stopped and could not be moved, and it was taken as a sign that Cuthbert had chosen a nearby site for his resting place. The saint’s body had had frequent perambulations to protect it from Viking raids, and from 883–995 had been at Chester-le-Street. Renewed Viking threats resulted in a removal to Ripon, and now the body returned, not to Chester-le-Street, but to a final resting place on the Durham Peninsular. The stone church was enlarged, but in 1083 the cathedral’s secular canons and their families were replaced by a Benedictine community. ² In 1093 the foundation stone of the present Anglo-Norman building was laid, replacing the earlier Anglo-Saxon cathedral, though the Anglo-Norman cathedral was itself also enlarged over time. Cuthbert’s body was translated to a new shrine in 1104, erected behind the apse. With the construction of the Neville Screen the shrine became separated from the choir and high altar, and the shrine itself was rebuilt. Like the stone church predecessor, the successive Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman cathedrals were mausoleums, built to house the mortal remains of St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne. It was a shrine and a major site for pilgrimage. However, in 1539, with the suppression of the remaining monastic institutions in England, Benedictine ownership and practice came to an end, and alongside most of the shrines of England, that of St. Cuthbert was dismantled. A document entitled Rites of Durham narrated the event. The destruction was overseen by Dr. Leigh, Dr. Henley and a Mr. Blythman. Rites recorded:

After ye spoile of his ornaments and jewells, cuming nerer to his bodie, thingking to have found nothing but duste & bones, and finding ye chiste that he [St. Cuthbert] did lie in very strongly bound with Irone, then ye goulde smyth dide taike a great fore hammer of a smyth, & dide breake ye said chiste and when they had openede ye chiste they found him lyinge hole uncorrupt with his faice baire, and his beard as yt had bene a forth nettts growthe, & all his vestments upon him as he was accustomed to say mess withal: and his met wand of gould lieing besid him then, when ye gouldsmyth did pceive that he had broken one of his leggs when he did breake upe ye chiste, he was verie sorie for it & did crye alas I have broke one of his leiggs. ³

Dr. Henley, we are told, called on the man to throw down the bones. When the man explained that the skin and sinews held it all in place, Dr. Leigh stepped up to inspect the body, and confirmed that the body was whole. Dr. Henley refused to believe this, and stepped up to see for himself. Rites continued:

Wherupon ye visitores commaunded yt he should be karied in to ye revestre, where he was close and saiflie keapt in the inner pte of ye Revestrie, tyll such tyme as they did further knowe ye kings pleasure, what to doe with him . . . ⁴

The body remained in the Revestry for two years before finally being buried under where the shrine had once stood, which is still the site of Cuthbert’s remains.

2. The Rites of Durham

Rites of Durham not only narrates the destruction of the shrine and the state of the body; it purports to be a detailed description of the Cathedral’s furnishings, ceremonies and customs before the dissolution and the Reformation. John McKinnell rightly observes that its concern to include everything leads to it being constructed on a curious geographical principle, going methodically round the Cathedral and recording the decorations in and rituals connected with each place within and round it. ⁵ For example, regarding the choir of the Cathedral:

In the north side of the quire there is an almerye neer to the high altar fastened in the wall for to lay any thinge in ptaininge to the high altar. Likewise there is another almerye in the south side of the quire nigh the high altar enclosed in the wall to sett the challices the basons and the crewetts in that they did minister withall at the high masse with locks and keys for the said almeryes.

At the north end of the high altar, there was a goodly fine letteron of brasse where they sunge the epistle and the gospell, with a gilt pellican on the height of it finely gilded pullinge hir bloud out hir breast to hir young ones, and winges spread abroade wheron did lye the book that they did singe the epistle and the gospel, it was thought to bee the goodlyest letteron of brasse that was in all this cuntrye it was all to bee taken in sunder with wrests every joint from other. ⁶

Referring to the Jesus altar in the nave, where a mass was sung every Friday, Rites explained:

Also every frydaie at nyghte after that ye evinsong was done in ye queir there was an anthem song in ye bodye of ye church before ye foresaid Jh”us alter called Jesus anthem which was song every frydaie at nyght thorowghe out ye whole yere by ye mr (master) of the quiresters & deacons of ye said church, and when it was done then ye quiresters did singe an other anthem by them selves sytting on there kneis all ye tyme that ther anthem was in singing before ye said Jesus alter which was verie devoutly song every fridaie at nyghte by ye toulling of one of ye Gallelei Belles. ⁷

One of the main concerns of Rites was to describe the various Cathedral processions on festivals, and, as McKinnell astutely observes, “when we rearrange its account in the order of the church year, the major ceremonies it describes fall into a coherent and relatively brief sequence which begins on Maundy Thursday and ends at Corpus Christi.” ⁸ The ceremonies for Corpus Christi are described as follows:

There was a goodly prssession upon ye place grene on ye thursday after Trinitie sonndaie in ye honour of corpus Christi daie ye which was a pryncipall feast at that tyme. The baley of the towne did calle ye occupacions that was inhabiters within ye towne every occupation in his degre to bring forthe ther Banner with all the lightes appteyninge to there severall Banners & to repaire to ye abbey church Doure every banner to stand a Rowe in his Degree from ye abbey church Dour to Wyndshole yett [gate], on ye west syde of ye way dyd all ye Banners stand, and on ye easte syde of ye waye did all ye Torges [torches] stand pteyninge to ye sayd Bannares.

Also there was a goodly shrine in Saint Nicholas church, ordeyned to be caryed ye sayd daie in Prossession cauled Corpus Christi shrine all fynlye gilted a goodly thing to behould, and on ye hight of ye sayd shrine was a foure Squared Box all of christall, wherin was enclosed the holy sacrament of thaulter and was caryed ye said daie with iiij preistes up to ye place grene & all ye hole prossession of all ye churches in ye said towne goyng before yt and when it was a litle space within Wyndshole yett yt dyd stand still, then was Saint Cuthbert’s Banner browghte fourth with two goodly faire crosses to meete yt and ye prior and covent with all ye whole companye of ye Quere all in there best copes dyd meet ye said shrine sytting on there kneys and prayinge. The prior did sence yt and then caryinge yt forward into the abbey church ye prior and covent with all the quere following yt. It was sett in ye quere & solemne service don before ytt and Te Deum solemnly songe and plaide of ye orgayns every man praysinge god and all ye Banners of ye occupacions dyd followe ye said shrine into ye church goyng Rownde about Saint Cuthbert’s fereture lyghtinge there Torches & burning all ye service tyme. then yt was caryed frome thence with ye said prossession of ye towne back againe to ye place from whence it came & all the Banners of the occupacions following it, & setting yt againe in ye church, every man maiking his prayers to god did departe, and ye said shrine was caryed into the Revestrie where yt Remayned untill that tyme Twelvemonthe. ⁹

It is not the concern of this paper to discuss all the material in Rites of Durham. Rather, I am concerned with the broader question of the origins and circumstances of the text, its accuracy and its intentions.

3. The Text and Its Reliability

The earliest manuscript of Rites is a roll, of six scrolls, and the watermarks of the paper are 1593. It begins with the Battle of Neville’s Cross and ends with Corpus Christi. The next earliest manuscript is in the Cosin library and is in the hand of John Cosin, who was a prebendary of the Cathedral in the 1620s, and after the Restoration, was Bishop of Durham. This manuscript begins with a description of the Nine Altars, and contains more information on the furnishings of the various spaces in the Cathedral than in the roll. The later manuscripts have further notes and comments added, and so it was an evolving compilation, added to after the first text.

The work is anonymous. John McKinnell noted that the tone of Rites is conversational, with incomplete sentences, giving the impression of oral delivery and may represent the oral reminiscences of older people who remembered the ceremonies of the pre-Reformation Priory. ¹⁰ It has been conjectured that the author was George Bates, the last Registrar of Durham before the Dissolution, and Clerk of the Feretory, who would have been present at the destruction of the shrine. ¹¹ However, a more likely candidate is William Claxton, squire of Wynyard, a noted antiquary, and if not himself a recusant, he had relatives and acquaintances who were. He may well have had the assistance of George Cliffe, the last monk of Durham who apparently refused to subscribe to the articles in 1558, but retained the income of the twelfth stall of the cathedral until his death in 1595. In 1560 Cliffe was appointed vicar of Billingham, in 1562 had been collated as rector of Elwick, and in 1571, of Brancepeth. ¹² A further source might have been John Brimley, who was the last monk cantor appointed in 1535, and who then became Master of the Choristers, surviving the liturgical changes until his death in 1576. ¹³ Durham diocese was a notoriously conservative diocese, and other clergy who had had an earlier association with the cathedral could also have been oral sources, such as William Watson. Watson was the former chaplain to the Prior of Durham and sub-Prior. He was vicar of Bedlington from 1557 to 1575. ¹⁴ A. I. Doyle, comparing the style and handwriting with other known writings of Claxton, suggested that he was the compiler and scribe of the c.1593 roll. ¹⁵

But how reliable is Rites? No Customary for Durham Priory has survived, and the temptation is to use Rites as though it were itself a Customary. ¹⁶ The liturgical ceremonies of the Priory had come to an end in 1539 with the dissolution. Some liturgical ceremonies were almost certainly carried over in the new secular cathedral with Dean and Chapter, the new Dean, Hugh Whitehead, being the former Prior, and some of the monks were appointed prebendaries. Furthermore, Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall’s longevity, from 1529 to 1559, apart from a few months in 1552–53, had ensured that the diocese was almost impervious to Protestant reform. In spite of conservatism and considerable continuity, the question arises as to how accurate were any of those memories and reminiscences by the 1580s and early 1590s? Jan Vansina gives cautions about oral history and eyewitness accounts. Even the best eyewitnesses never give a movie-like account of what happened, and mediation of perception by memory and emotional state shapes an account. ¹⁷ Events and situations are forgotten when irrelevant or inconvenient, and others are retained and reordered, reshaped or correctly remembered according to the part they play in the narrative that needs to be told. Traditions are memories of memories, and change over time, even when dormant, because of the constant input of new items of memory which must coexist with older material and force its reappraisal. ¹⁸ Selectivity occurs for social reasons, and the effects are loss of information and the creation of a profile of past history which is the historical consciousness of the present. ¹⁹ Donald Spence in Narrative Truth and Historical Truth underscores the undoubted fact that the visual and pictorial can never be accurately reproduced verbally. ²⁰

John McKinnell, with reference to the celebration of Corpus Christi, noted that in comparison to the mid-fourteenth century Durham Missal (MS BL Harley 5289) and Durham Processional (MS BL Royal 7.A.vi) the ceremonies as described in Rites had undergone some expansion. However, he also noted that the performance of a play by one of the trades was an important element, but received no mention in Rites. True, Rites is concerned with the Priory and liturgical ceremony, but this important omission is a signal that what is recorded is selective.

In her study of the Liber Vitae of Durham, Lynda Rollason wondered whether the author of Rites had misunderstood this work, since the description offered by the late fifteenth-century inscription in the manuscript and the description in Rites differ too greatly to be reconciled without difficulty. ²¹ Even if some reconciliation regarding the Liber Vitae might be possible, Rites describes one of the major relics of the Priory, namely the Black Rood of Scotland, as though it was a rood, when in fact it seems to have been a small cross some eight inches high. ²²

There is also some uncertainty as to the accuracy of the description in Rites of the banner of St. Cuthbert. The author stated that Prior Fosser incorporated into the banner a corporal used by the saint to cover the chalice at mass. C. F. Battiscombe, in The Relics of Saint Cuthbert, pointed out that no corporal was listed amongst the relics recovered from Cuthbert’s stone coffin in 698, or from the wooden coffin-reliquary in 1104. Battiscombe argued that the word corporax means not corporal, but a corporal case, and that the cloth used by Prior Fosser was from the saint’s winding sheet. ²³ More recently Richard Sharpe has argued that elsewhere Battiscombe mistranslated Reginald of Durham’s words which refer to the corporalia, which Sharpe takes as corporals, but which Battiscombe had translated as “burse.” ²⁴ However, should Battiscombe be right about corporax, and that no corporals were ever listed amongst the relics, then it may be that what the author of Rites believed about the piece of white cloth was not in fact the case. There is sufficient reason to have some caution regarding the historical accuracy of Rites.

4. The Context of Rites of Durham

What, though, was the catalyst and the context for the compilation of Rites? Diane Newton conjectured that the 1590s were marked by economic distress and foreign wars which impacted particularly heavily on the north-eastern counties, and triggered a concerted effort to recover the “glories” of Durham’s past. ²⁵ With the failure of the Northern Rebellion in 1569, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587, and the disaster of the Armada in 1588, the hopes of a catholic restoration became more remote. What was remembered more vividly—though not necessarily more accurately—were those individuals who had been responsible for destroying the surviving material culture, and so preventing a return to any of the past.

In an article in 1977, Heije Faber made a comparison with Erik Erikson’s observations on the ritual bond between mother and child, and congregations and liturgical change. ²⁶ Liturgical change brings angst because it disrupts the bond between the believer and the Divine. A break in routine between mother and child is traumatic, and so is liturgical disruption. Trauma and nostalgia are thus important contexts for the text of Rites of Durham. Pertinent here is the observation of Stephen Legg:

Trauma and nostalgia are theoretically linked. While nostalgia denotes a positive attachment to a past real or imaginary home, trauma denotes the negative inability to deal effectively with a past event. While both conditions represent problematic engagement with the past, nostalgia often focuses on a time and place before or beyond a traumatic incident. ²⁷

Bruce Ross noted that nostalgia offers a mixture of the emotional as well as the cognitive, and although personal memories are usually involved and a concept of the past is a prerequisite, there can also be instances of nostalgia induced by events not personally experienced. ²⁸ Rites is certainly a work of nostalgia, in the wake of considerable liturgical and devotional trauma. This is not necessarily mitigated even if Rites is a collection of the memories of more than one individual. Claxton, if he was the compiler, was indeed an antiquarian, but moved in recusant and conservative circles. Of the possible sources, George Cliffe and John Brimley were present at the mass celebrated in the cathedral during the 1569 Northern Rebellion. Under oath in 1570 Cliffe admitted that he was present in his stall when Robert Pierson sang mass at the high altar, but claimed he had sat still in his pew and did not join in. He also affirmed that he did not receive holy bread or holy water, and denied all knowledge where the mass book and ornaments had come from. ²⁹ Present also were some of the minor canons and lay clerks, William Watson former sub-Prior, and John Brimley the Master of the Choristers and Organist. Brimley played the organ at the mass, and admitted to taking holy water, and was “sory for the same, and that he dyd yt by compulcion.” ³⁰ The information in Rites came from the memories of recusants, church-papists, and conservatives, and “group affiliation” colors the form and content of anamnesis. ³¹ It is against this context of memory, nostalgia and trauma that I turn again to the context of Rites.

Although the destruction of Cuthbert’s shrine is recorded, there is no mention in Rites of the Henrician Injunctions of 1536, reissued in 1538, which would have impacted the cathedral ceremonies. Thus the 1538 Injunctions 6 and 7 condemned “wandering to pilgrimages, offering of money, candles or tapers to images or relics” and prohibited candles, tapers or images of wax to be set before any images or pictures. ³² The removal of the statues from the Neville Screen, which Lehmberg conjectures was in 1538, goes unmentioned. ³³ The issue of the English Litany, 1544, in place of all other processionals, and the abolition of certain feasts as holidays also impacted the traditional ceremonies. The silence on these things means that the collective memory of Rites has both selective anamnesis and considerable amnesia.

Rites records that in the first year of King Edward’s reign, the commissioners, Dr. Harvey and Dr. Whitby, arrived at St. Nicholas, Durham. Harvey asked for the Corpus Christi shrine to be brought to him, and he trod on it and broke it into pieces. ³⁴ Yet the account is silent on the fact that Corpus Christi as a feast had been abolished in 1548. Though the sacrament shrine of St. Nicholas’s Church had perished, Rites fails to mention that Corpus Christi was restored under Mary. Rites noted that Bishop Tunstall died a professed Catholic, but it omits Tunstall’s repairs made to the bells and windows, the wainscot around the high altar, and a “cayse of ironwork was made for the Sacrament reserved there.” ³⁵ Rites is therefore selective in its recollections.

Rites also skips over the Elizabethan Injunctions of 1559. These ordered:

And that they shall take away, utterly extinct and destroy all shrines, covering of shrines, all tables and candlesticks, trundles or rolls of wax, pictures, paintings and all other monuments of feigned miracles, pilgrimages, idolatry and superstition, so that they there remain no memory of the same in walls, glasses, windows or elsewhere within their churches or houses. ³⁶

Elizabethan Deans Robert Horne (1559–60) and Ralph Skinner (1561–63) would have been responsible for carrying out these injunctions, and although Horne is mentioned with reference to the Corpus Christi shrine and a glass image of St. Cuthbert, those incidents related to Horne’s previous incumbency, under Edward VI, 1551–53, and not the time of Elizabeth’s Injunctions. The Elizabethan bishop of Durham who succeeded Tunstall, James Pilkington, carried out visitations of the cathedral in 1561 and 1567, and William Hutchinson noted that the latter was probably in consequence of orders, issued by the Queen’s commissioners, for the removal of superstitious books and defacing superstitious plate which remained in churches. ³⁷ During the Marian persecution which began in 1554, Pilkington had fled to the continent, living at different times in Zurich, Basel, Geneva and Frankfurt. Like many other such Marian exiles, he was somewhat “radicalized,” and when Bishop of Durham, pleaded for tolerance for those clergy who objected to the surplice. He set out to complete the Reformation in the Durham diocese, and wrote, “Our poor papists weep to see our churches so bare, saying they be like barns, there is nothing in them to make curtsy unto, neither saints nor yet their old little gods.” ³⁸ However, with a conservative clergy and closet-papist patrons, Pilkington’s success was mainly limited to the cathedral. His two brothers, John and Leonard, were prebendaries of the cathedral, and it is difficult to imagine that they had not been in sync with their brother in terms of removal of superstitious left-overs. However, no mention is made of the Pilkingtons in the earlier text of Rites. Archbishop Grindal, when Archbishop of York, issued Articles for the Province and asked whether the old service books had all been defaced and if vestments, pyxes, censers and “images and such other relics and monuments of superstition and idolatry be utterly defaced, broken, and destroyed.” ³⁹ Rites makes no mention of Grindal’s mop-up operation. Yet the text does single out Dean William Whittingham and his wife for special condemnation.

Whittingham had become Dean in 1563 and died in 1579. He had been in exile in Geneva, and was ordained there, was a main translator of the Geneva Bible, and was probably the editor of the Genevan Form of Prayers. ⁴⁰ Whittingham and his French wife certainly made many enemies in Durham and beyond. Rites asserted that the banner of St. Cuthbert, which had traditionally been taken into battle at significant times, and which had survived the destruction of the shrine, was burnt by Mrs. Whittingham, and that there were eyewitnesses to the event. ⁴¹ The Account Rolls of Durham, 1536–37, list a repair made to the banner of Cuthbert which cost five shillings, and so it had been carried and damaged during the Pilgrimage of Grace. However, it was not available for the Northern Rebellion 1569, and so it may well have been a casualty of Pilkington’s Visitation of 1567. Pilkington’s former fellow Genevan exiles, Whittingham and his wife, were obeying the Royal Injunctions and the bishop’s instructions, as did many other obedient zealous Elizabethan reformers. Whittingham is also recorded as attempting to destroy some of the bells, defacing a statue of St. Cuthbert, dismantling and defacing other monuments, and using the holy water stoups in his kitchen for salting fish and beef. ⁴² The silence of Rites on so many acts of confiscation and destruction, and the special mentions of Whittingham suggest that the Dean and his wife had become the primary target of blame for all the liturgical traumas over the previous twenty-five years, and framed and informed the memories of the more distant past.

5. Conclusions

I would suggest that the nostalgic remembrances of some who may have served as the last monks of Durham are all viewed through the final Elizabethan destruction of the material culture, c.1567, which put an end to any hopes of even partial liturgical restoration. It is quite believable that Whittingham and his wife were involved in some of the final iconoclasm, but the collected memories have forgotten or did not wish to remember the far more violent Henrician destruction, the dismantling of Cuthbert’s shrine being the final blow to the Cathedral’s original rationale. The Durham novel about a chorister, Dobsons drie Bobs, published in 1607, mentions that strangers still came to take a view of some of the ancient monuments in the Chancellor Shrine of St. Cuthbert, and the saint still rested there. But the rationale of the cathedral’s original existence as a place of pilgrimage had disappeared. Rites is our only source for the liturgical ceremonies and furnishings of the cathedral prior to 1539, and much of it may be accurate, but it is not a Customary, and should not be used as though it was. Nor is it a full and complete history of the events in purports to recall. Rites was never a comprehensive or complete account of the ancient liturgical practices of Durham Cathedral and their demise. It is a collection of personal memories of memories, and those are a moving lament for a lost liturgical tradition. One further question, though, is what is the intention of the collector and compiler of these memories? A roll in this period was usually reserved for maps, music and legal documents, and also, unlike a codex, it can be added to. Did the compiler, be he Claxton or some other, see the roll as a quasi-legal testament, a form of time capsule, preserving memories of things which might grow back and flourish once more in a more favorable ecclesiastical climate?