59 At a Meeting of the SURTEES SOCIETY, held in Durham Castle, on Tuesday, December 1st, 1925, the Right Reverend BISHOP WELLDON, Dean of Durham, in the chair, It was resolved "That the first volume of Fasti Dunelmenses, edited by the Rev. D. S. BOUTFLOWER, be the volume for the year 1926." INTRODUCTION THE Volume here presented to the Members of the Surtees' Society is the outcome of a suggestion made by one of their number some years ago to one of the few clergy of the diocese of Durham who was in a position to give spare time to the execution of this task. The late Bishop of Durham warmly approved its fulfilment. It has been a matter of labour to inquire into the individual careers of some 2,800 clergy, and to collect and put in order fully 10,000 statements concerning them. The search, however, has abounded with interest; and if the record be, as it is, still far from complete, it will be found, we trust, to have added considerably to previous efforts in the same direction, and consequently to a larger knowledge of the mediaeval history of the Church of England in the northeastern counties. There is to some minds a peculiar charm in those works which blend together the studies of history and geography. (A good instance of this is to be found in Professor Stokes's two volumes on the Irish Church.) To bring into one's own country the personalities of not a few men greater than most of their contemporaries, who trod the same ground and ministered (more or less) in the familiar churches, gives an increased interest to the places where we live and move, and in not a few cases unites our homes and sanctuaries with the great story of the English people and the English Church. Our so-called knowledge of either is not infrequently more fanciful than real, and consists of general, vague and erroneous opinions. It is more satisfactory to get down to specific and solid facts. There must be a starting point somewhere in every line of study, and in this case we find it in Randel and Hutchinson. It passes on into the pages of Surtees, under whose name and in whose spirit our society issues the results of its researches. The first of these was a Minor Canon of Durham Cathedral, and had access to the local records of its officiality. Hutchinson worked over a wider area. Surtees' interest was chiefly in the titles of estates, and the pedigrees of their proprietors. By his time some of the national records had been made known to the world. We are now much better off than he, in consequence of the numerous publications which open out to us the treasures of the national archives. It is from these we get the best evidence, the plain facts recorded in contemporary documents. The area in which our society is interested is the three north-eastern counties of Northumberland, Durham and Yorks. There has long been a very intimate connection between all the three, as the present volume will testify. We deal, however, here chiefly with the first two of them, and, to be precise, with the ancient diocese of Durham. This included the parish of Alston in Cumberland, and that part of the parish of Sockburn locally in the county of York. In the days of the first two Edwards it was extended for a time into Roxburghshire. But the peculiar of Hexham was and long afterwards continued to be a part of the diocese of York, and of it we do not profess to speak. There are other exclusions in the field of our work. We leave out the monastic houses. The abbeys and the priories occupied by the regular clergy do not fall within our scope, nor can we claim to deal with all the secular clergy; their numbers are overwhelming. It appears to be a fact that almost any man could be ordained, if he could find a friend to guarantee him an income of five marks a year till he obtained a ́benefice. Another large exclusion is that of the chantry priests, whose duties were confined to saying mass at minor altars in the parish churches. (Exceptions to the above distinctions will occasionally be found when on other grounds the appointment appears to be peculiar or interesting.) There is yet another class of persons, who were extremely useful in their place and day, but have left no mark on history these were the parochial chaplains, curates-in-charge in the absence of the beneficed clergyman. Such persons were numerous, when, as not infrequently happened, livings were held by pluralists. The amount of pluralism that prevailed in England in the Middle Ages and (be it remembered) for some centuries after was extraordinarily great. Professor Thompson has some striking instances to narrate in his papers on Pluralists in the diocese of Lincoln. Some of the most flagrant cases in his record are those of clergy also beneficed in the diocese of Durham. There is John Mansel, Rector of Houghton-le-Spring, holding at least six livings and eight appointments in Cathedral or Collegiate Churches. There is Bogo de Clare, Rector of Simonburn, with four dignities, and twenty-four parish churches in fourteen out of the seventeen dioceses in England. There is Walter de Langton, Rector of Staindrop and Vicar of Haltwhistle, who held at least seventeen Churches, fifteen |