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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 October 2022
The established view of the Viking-Age Northumbrian Church has never been substantiated with verifiably contemporary evidence but is an inheritance from one strand of ‘historical research’ produced in post-Conquest England. Originating c. 1100, the strand we have come to associate with Symeon of Durham places the relics and see of Cuthbert at Chester-le-Street from the 880s until a move to Durham in the 990s. By contrast, other guidance, including Viking-Age material, can be read to suggest that Cuthbert was at Norham on the river Tweed and did not come to Durham or even Wearside until after 1013. Further, our earliest guidance indicates that the four-see Northumbrian episcopate still lay intact until at least the time of Æthelstan (r. 924–39). The article ends by seeking to understand the origins of the diocese of Durham and its historical relationship with both Chester-le-Street and Norham in a later context than hitherto sought.
1 Historia de Sancto Cuthberto [hereafter HSC], ed. and trans. T. J. South, AST 3 (Cambridge, 2002) 52–9; for further discussion, see below at pp. 130–5.
2 Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio [hereafter LDE] ii.I, in Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, ecclesie: Tract on the Origins and Progress of this the Church of Durham, ed. and trans. D. W. Rollason (Oxford, 2000), pp. 146–8; and Annales Lindisfarnenses et Dunelmenses [hereafter ALD], ed. W. Levison (with H. E. Meyer), ‘Die “Annales Lindisfarnenses et Dunelmenses” kritisch untersucht und neu herausgegeben’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 17 (1961), 447–506, at 478–89; the Ealdhun episode is inserted at ALD, s.a. 995 (ed. Levison, p. 486).
3 Dumville, D. N., ‘Textual Archaeology and Northumbrian History Subsequent to Bede’, Coinage in Ninth-Century Northumbria: the Tenth Oxford Symposium on Coinage and Monetary History, ed. Metcalf, D. M., Brit, BAR. seri. 180 (Oxford, 1987), 43–55 Google Scholar; A. Woolf, From Pictland to Alba: 789 to 1070 (Edinburgh, 2007), pp. 81–5.
4 E.g. Higham, H. J., The Kingdom of Northumbria, AD 350–1100 (Stroud, 1993), pp. 183, 191–2 and 226Google Scholar; D. Rollason, Northumbria, 500–1100: Creation and Destruction of a Kingdom (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 244–55; K. L. Jolly, The Community of St Cuthbert in the Late Tenth Century (Columbus, 2012), pp. 15–36; K. Cross, Heirs of the Vikings: History and Identity in Normandy and England, c. 950–c. 1015 (Woodbridge, 2018), pp. 139–46; C. Rozier, Writing History in the Community of St Cuthbert, c. 700–1130: from Bede to Symeon of Durham (Woodbridge, 2020), pp. 32–96.
5 The following argument is drawn from earlier work that formed part of a wider re-evaluation of Viking-Age ‘Northumbrian’ political history; for which see N. McGuigan, ‘Neither Scotland nor England: Middle Britain, c. 850–1150’ (unpubl. PhD dissertation, Univ. of St Andrews, 2015). It has also been summarized in print by S. Foot, ‘Kings, Saints and Conquests’, Conquests in Eleventh-Century England: 1016, 1066, ed. L. Ashe and E. J. Ward, (Woodbridge, 2020), pp. 140–64, at 146–51; as well as A. Woolf, ‘The Diocese of Lindisfarne: Organisation and Pastoral Care’, The Battle of Carham: a Thousand Years On, ed. N. McGuigan and A. Woolf (Edinburgh, 2018), pp. 231–9, at 232–3, and V. Thomson, ‘A New Reading of Late Anglo-Saxon Sculpture in and around the Tweed Valley: Carham, Lindisfarne, Norham and Jedburgh’, Battle of Carham, ed. McGuigan and Woolf, pp. 174–201, at 176–7; also noted by L. Roach, Æthelred the Unready (New Haven, CT, 2016), p. 173, n. 121 (cf. ibid. p. xv, Map 1); and Edmonds, F., Gaelic influence in the Northumbrian Kingdom: the Golden Age and the Viking Age (Woodbridge, 2019), p. 111 Google Scholar, n. 93.
6 E.g. Rollason, D., ‘ Lists of Saints’ Resting-Places in Anglo-Saxon England ’, ASE 7 (1978), 61–93.Google Scholar
7 ‘Then lies St Cuthbert in the place known as Ubbanford, near the water that is known as the Tweed.’ Liber Vitae, ed. W. de Gray Birch (Winchester, 1892), pp. 86–97 (from Stowe 944) and Secgan be þam Godes Sanctum and Notationes de sanctis, ed. F. Liebermann, Die Heiligen Englands: Angelsächsisch und Lateinisch (Hanover, 1889) [hereafter, Secgan], pp. 9–20 (from CCCC 201 and Stowe 944).
8 Rollason, ‘Lists of Saints’ Resting-Places’, pp. 63–8.
9 Secgan, p. 9; see Rollason, ‘Lists of Saints’ Resting-Places’, p. 68.
10 Secgan, p. 10; for Ubbanford as Norham, see Historia regum ‘Part 2’ [hereafter HR2], ed. T. Arnold, Symeonis monachi opera omnia [hereafter Sym. Op.], 2 vols., RS 75 (1882–5) II, 95–283, at 101, and Roger of Howden, Chronica [hereafter RHC], ed. W. Stubbs, 4 vols., RS 51 (1868–71) I, 59.
11 The author’s own geographical origin may have affected his interest in this information, for instance; or he may have lost interest in presenting river names while drawing up the text; or he may have only been interested in the names of rivers that were less familiar (hence omission of the Thames and Severn). Rollason, it should be stressed, acknowledged that rivers were used as reference points in both ‘halves’ of the text.
12 Mercian Register, s.a. 909 (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS C, ed. K. O’Brien O’Keeffe, AS Chronicle: a Collaborative Edition 5 (Cambridge, 2001), p. 75): ‘Her wæs Sancte Oswaldes lic gelæded of Beardanigge on Myrce’; translated ‘In this year St Oswald’s body was brought from Bardney into Mercia’, in English Historical Documents, c. 500–1042, ed. D. Whitelock, Eng. Hist. Documents 1, 2nd ed. (London, 1985) [hereafter EHD, I], no 1, p. 210; cf. ASC MS D (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS D, ed. G. P. Cubbin, AS Chronicle: a Collaborative Edition 6 (Cambridge, 1996)) 906 (p. 37): ‘Her wæs Sancte Oswaldes lichoma alæded of Beardanigge.’
13 To reconcile the Symeonic tradition with the interpretation of the ‘Resting-Places of Saints’ designed by Rollason, some scribe would have had to ‘update’ Oswald’s body but retain the outdated location for Cuthbert’s; Rollason himself makes a list of such ‘interpolations’, for which see Rollason, ‘Lists of Saints’ Resting-Places’, pp. 63–4; see also Blair, J., ‘A Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Saints’, Local Saints and Local Churches in the Early Medieval West, ed. Thacker, A. and Sharpe, R. (Oxford, 2002), pp. 495–565, at 550Google Scholar.
14 Text is William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum Anglorum [hereafter WM, GP] iii. 130.5, in William of Malmesbury: Gesta pontificum anglorum / ‘The History of the English Bishops’, I: Text and Translation, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom with R. M. Thomson (Oxford, 2007); for the date, see ibid. p. xii, and n. 8 therein; see also A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England, c. 550–c.1307 (London, 1996), p. 182. William’s Durham episcopal lists, like those initially available to John of Worcester, seem to be less fully developed than those fine-tuned by the Symeon and his associates, see McGuigan, ‘Middle Britain’, pp. 65–7 (where the term ‘Symeonic School’ is used to include Symeon and associates or acolytes who for all appearance look indistinguishable but who, in practice, may have consisted of several individuals working together in association with or under the leadership of Symeon).
15 The manuscripts that the editors refer to as the ‘β tradition’, which may originate in corrections that William himself made; see Thomson, R. M. with Winterbottom, M., William of Malmesbury: Gesta pontificum anglorum / ‘The History of the English Bishops’, II: Introduction and Commentary (Oxford, 2007), p. 185 Google Scholar.
16 WM, GP iii. 130.5 (ed. Winterbottom et al., pp. 408–13).
17 WM, GP iii. 130.5 (ed. Winterbottom et al., pp. 410–11). ‘On the death of Bishop Ealdhun, therefore, the clerics had gone into session to discuss the choice of their future ruler, and, as happens on such occasions, they could not come to a decision because of a party split. Then Eadmund, whom no one had thought of calling in, came upon them as they hesitated, and in his usual joking manner said: “Take me and make me bishop.” They all, as if God had inspired them, snatched the words out of his mouth, as though God had spoken. Aghast and repenting what he had said (for he preferred ball games to the cowl), he was made monk; then they asked Æthelred [manuscript variant reads ‘Cnut’], who was king at that time, to make him their bishop. This prelude was of good omen, as the locals tell. The king kindly assented to their request, and God made all their hopes come true. For under Eadmund’s rule the church’s prosperity was much advanced. The holy body [of Cuthbert] was taken to Durham, the church there was completed from its foundations, and many other things happened besides which deceiving oblivion will never blot out among these people in any age.’
18 Without reference to Anglo-Norman evidence, our only certain dates for Durham bishops are Ealdhun’s floruit of 1009 (S 922, Burt 32) and the succession of Eadmund’s own successor Æthelric c. 1041 (ASC D, 1041), but everything we are told does suggest that changing the name ‘Æthelred’ to ‘Cnut’ is an accurate ‘correction’; see again, for instance, Foot, ‘Kings, Saints and Conquests’, pp. 146–51; and Thomson with Winterbottom, Introduction and Commentary, p. 185.
19 See HSC, ch. 20 (ed. and trans. South, pp. 58–9). ‘Also at that time the good bishop Eardwulf and abbot Eadred bore the body of St Cuthbert from the isle of Lindisfarne and wandered with it through the land, carrying it from place to place for seven years, and finally they arrived at the mouth of the river that is called Derwentmouth, and there they placed it in a boat so that they might thus transport it across the adjoining sea to Ireland. Then all his [i.e. St Cuthbert’s] people who had long followed him, mourning that their pious patron was being taken away, wept and wailed as they stood on the shore, because they themselves were captives being left behind and their captive lord was being abducted. Then God manifested a great miracle out of love for his beloved confessor. For a horrible storm arose on the sea, three very great waves fell on the ship and at once, marvellous to say, that water was turned to blood. Having seen this, the bishop and the abbot fell at the feet of the saint and, terrified with fear, they returned to the shore as quickly as possible and carried the holy body to Crayke, and there, having been charitably received by the good abbot named Geve, they remained for four months, and from there they translated the holy body to Chester-le-Street. At this time King Alfred died, as well as bishop Eardwulf.’
20 HSC, chs. 13–20 (ed. and trans. South, pp. 52–9).
21 See LDE ii.I (ed. and trans. Rollason, pp. 146–8); cf. ALD, s.a. 995 (ed. Levison, p. 486). ‘Now, in the year of our Lord 995, that is in the seventeenth year of the reign of King Æthelred, the said bishop [Ealdhun], who was then entering the sixth year of the episcopal office which he had accepted, was forewarned by a heavenly premonition that he should flee as quickly as possible with the incorrupt body of the most holy father Cuthbert, to escape the fury of the Vikings whose arrival was imminent. Accordingly he raised that body in the 113th year since it had been brought to Chester-le-Street and, accompanied by all those people who are called the ‘people of the saint’, he transported it to Ripon. It is related that one very memorable circumstance about the flight was that in all that multitude no one from the lowest to the highest was afflicted by any scourge of illness, but instead the whole party completed their journey with neither suffering nor inconvenience. It was not only men but also young and even new-born animals (for it was springtime) who accomplished the whole journey safe and sound and without any difficulty or hardship. When three or four months later peace had returned, they were taking the venerable body back to its former resting place, and they had reached a place called Wrdelau, which is near Durham on the east side, the cart on which they were carrying the coffin containing the holy body could be moved no further.’
22 LDE ii.I (ed. and trans. Rollason, pp. 146–8).
23 E.g. Hodgson-Hinde, J., Symeonis Dunelmensis opera et collectanea, Surtees Society 51 (Durham, 1868), xxxv–xxxviii Google Scholar; H. H. E. Craster, ‘The Patrimony of St. Cuthbert’, EHR 69, 177–99, at 177–8.
24 Simpson, L., ‘The King Alfred/St Cuthbert Episode in the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto: its Significance for Mid-Tenth-Century History’, St Cuthbert, His Cult and His Community, ed. Bonner, G., Rollason, D. and Stancliffe, C. (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 397–411 Google Scholar; South, HSC, pp. 27–36; see also, Rollason, LDE, pp. lxxii–lxxiii; the only part of the text that Craster thought specifically to be served by the hypothesis was the rubric that opens HSC in the Cambridge manuscript, which claimed to take the story usque nunc temporis, ‘up to the present day’, something that has other explanations (including provenance in an earlier, longer version of the text).
25 Craster, ‘The Patrimony of St. Cuthbert’, p. 178.
26 For these dates, see South, HSC, p. 15, and Rollason, LDE, p. xlii–xliv.
27 Ecgred is known from a contemporary letter written to Wulfsige of York; for which see, D. Whitelock, ‘Bishop Ecgred, Pehtred and Niall’, Ireland in Early Medieval Europe, ed. D. Whitelock et al. (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 47–68, at 48–50, and EHD, I, no. 214, at pp. 875–6
28 This error was one of Craster’s ‘interpolations’, see Craster, ‘The Patrimony of St. Cuthbert’, p. 178. For an attempt to explain this error in a different way, see S. Crumplin, ‘Rewriting History in the Cult of St Cuthbert from the Ninth to the Twelfth Centuries’ (unpubl. PhD dissertation, Univ. of St Andrews, 2006), p. 40; it is worth noting that both locations are also at quite some geographic distance from Durham and northern England.
29 For the turbulent Peterborough episcopate, see LDE iii.7 and iii.9 (ed. and trans. Rollason, pp. 162–3, and pp. 168–73); see also McGuigan, ‘Middle Britain’, pp. 188–9, and W. M. Aird, St Cuthbert and the Normans: the Church of Durham, 1071–1153 (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 52–74.
30 E. Van Houts, ‘Historical Writing’, A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World, ed. C. Harper-Bill and E. Van Houts (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 103–22, at 117; and The Acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. D. Bates (Oxford, 1998), pp. 22–30 for more detail. This is not to suggest, incidentally, that HSC was influenced by these precise textual forms.
31 For these, see Regesta Henrici primi, 1100–1135, ed. C. Johnson and H. A. Cronne, Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, 1066–1165, volume 2 (Oxford, 1956), nos. 572, 1431; see also, R. Sharpe, Norman Rule in Cumbria 1092–1136: a Lecture delivered to Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society on 9th April 2005 at Carlisle, Cumberland and Westmorland Ant. and Archaeol. Soc. Tract 21 (Kendal, 2006), pp. 57–8. This tendency is also one way of accounting for the superficially significant fact that HSC did not mention, and why no eleventh-century scribe ‘interpolated’, a story about the translation to Durham.
32 For strife in Northumbria in the 1080s, see HR2, p. 199.
33 See South, HSC, pp, 12–14; see also, Brett, M., ‘John of Worcester and His Contemporaries’, The Writing of History in the Middle Ages, ed. Davis, R. H. C., and Wallace-Hadrill, J. M. (Oxford, 1981), pp. 101–26, at 101–4Google Scholar. For Hemming’s Cartulary, see London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. xiii, available in an eighteenth-century edition Hemingi chartularium ecclesiæ Wigorniensis, ed. T. Hearne (Oxford, 1723); and Liber Eliensis, ed. E. O. Blake (London, 1962) and translation by J. Fairweather (Woodbridge, 2005). For pre-Conquest northern English charters, see Charters of Northern Houses, ed. D. A. Woodman, AS Charters 15 (Oxford, 2012) [hereafter Woodman, North], of which nos. 18–20 are of most interest here.
34 E.g., McGuigan, ‘Middle Britain’, pp. 48–55. For its Edwardian coverage, see HSC, chs. 19–24 (ed. and trans. South, pp. 58–65). South’s discussion of the sources for HSC can be found at pp. 4–12.
35 See below, n. 78.
36 Durham Liber Vitae: London, British Library, MS Cotton Domitian A.VII: Edition and Digital Facsimile with Introduction, Codicological, Prosopographical and Linguistic Commentary, and Indexes, ed. D. Rollason and L. Rollason, 3 vols. (London, 2007) [hereafter DLV] I, 140; North 19; cf. HSC, chs. 29–31 (ed. and trans. South, pp. 66–9), with discussion at pp. 112–13.
37 Aird, St Cuthbert and the Normans, pp. 33–5; D. Rollason, ‘The Wanderings of St Cuthbert’, Cuthbert: Saint and Patron, ed. D. Rollason (Durham, 1987), pp. 45–61.
38 Gullick, M., ‘The Hand of Symeon of Durham: Further Observations on the Durham Martyrology Scribe’, Symeon of Durham: Historian of Durham and the North, ed. Rollason, D., Stud. in North-Eastern Hist. 1 (Stamford, 1998), 14–31, at 17–18 and 29Google Scholar.
39 ALD, s.a. 807, s.a. 924, s.a. 1046 (ed. Levison, pp. 483, 485 and 486).
40 E. Craster, ‘The Red Book of Durham’, EHR 40 (1925), 504–32, at 519–23; A. J. Piper, ‘The Historical Interests of the Monks of Durham’, Symeon of Durham, ed. Rollason, pp. 301–32, at 305–6 and 308–10.
41 Cronica monasterii Dunelmensis [hereafter CMD], in ‘Red Book of Durham’, ed. Craster, pp. 523–9, at 526.
42 Craster saw CMD as borrowing from HSC, but that had been based on his tenth-century theory of HSC’s origins; the presentation in this article might suggest that CMD could be the earlier of the two.
43 For Descriptio status ecclesie Lindisfernensis et Dunelmi, see LDE, ed. Rollason, pp. 258–65; for discussion of this tract, see ibid. pp. lxvi–lxvii.
44 For the suggestion of an early date, see B. Meehan, ‘The Siege of Durham, the Battle of Carham and the Cession of Lothian’, The Scottish Hist. Rev. 55 (1976), 1–19, at 18–19; but see fuller discussion in C. J. Morris, Marriage and Murder in Eleventh-Century Northumbria: a Study of ‘De Obsessione Dunelmi’, Borthwick Papers 82 (York, 1992), 7–10.
45 There was a battle between the Scots and Northumbrians at an unknown location in 1006 (AU 1006.5); some tradition about the 1006 battle may be the source of the text’s potentially accurate combination of rulers, but the siege that influenced this text otherwise was probably a different event of c. 1040; see Woolf, Pictland to Alba, pp. 254–5.
46 See Meehan, ‘The Siege of Durham’, p. 6, n. 8, for a brief discussion of 969 as a ‘disastrous mess’; Meehan offered an extremely complex multi-stage case for a scribal error, but Meehan’s ‘just possible’ correction to 999 would not affect the argument at hand.
47 De obsessione Dunelmi, ed. Arnold, Sym. Op. I, 215–20, at 215; for translation and commentary, see Morris, Marriage and Murder in Eleventh-Century Northumbria; see also see McGuigan, ‘Middle Britain’, pp. 14–15; and MacLean, S., ‘Recycling the Franks in Twelfth-Century England: Regino of Prüm, the Monks of Durham, and the Alexandrine Schism’, Speculum 87 (2012), 649–81, at 674–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
48 Historia regum ‘Part 1’ [hereafter HR1], in Byrhtferth’s Northumbrian Chronicle: an Edition and Translation of the Old English and Latin Annals, ed. C. Hart, Early Chronicles of England 1 (Lewiston, 2006), 2–233, at 214–15 (=Sym. Op. II, 82); HR2, pp. 95–283, at 110; RHC I, 42; Roger of Wendover, Chronica, sive, Flores Historiarum [hereafter RW], ed. H. O. Coxe, 5 vols. (London, 1841–4) I, 326. For recent discussion of HR2, see D. Woodman, ‘Annals 848 to 1118 in the Historia Regum’, Battle of Carham, ed. McGuigan and Woolf, pp. 202–30.
49 From the ‘common stock’, translation in EHD, I, p. 194. John of Worcester reads ‘…exercitus Hreopedune deserens, in duas se diuisit turmas, cuius altera pars cum Halfdene in regionem Norðanhymbrorum perrexit, ibique hiemauit iuxta flumen quod dicitur Tine, et totam Norðanhymbrorum regionem suo subdidit dominio, necnon Pictos et Stratcluttenses depopulati sunt. Altera quoque pars cum Guðrum et Oscytel et Amund, tribus paganorum regibus, ad locum qui dicitur Grantebrycge, peruenit, ibique hiemauit’, for which see JW, Chron. (see below, n. 52), s.a. 875 (ed. Darlington et al., II, 304–5); cf. Roger of Howden s.a. 875 (HR1 proper is slightly fragmentary at this point), ‘[P]aganorum exercitus Reopadun deserens, in duas se divisit turmas, cuius altera pars cum Alfdene in regionem Northanhimbrorum perrexit, et totam Northanhimbrorum regionem dominio suo subdidit. Tunc Erdulfus episcopus Lindisfarnensis, et Edredus abbas, corpus Sancti Cuthberti de insula Lindisfarnensi tollentes per septem annos passim uagabantur. Altera autem pars exercitus cum Guderum et Oskitel et Amundo, tribus regibus, apud Grantebrige hyemauit’; for which see RHC I, 42. I have underlined the passage distinct to the ‘northern’ tradition.
50 HR1, pp. 222–3 (=Sym. Op. I, 86), HR2, p. 114; RHC I, 44–5; RW I, 335–6; in Cyril Hart’s interpretation, anything in HR1 has the potential to originate c. 1000, but even he seems to have believed it more likely that s.a. 883 was ‘a post-Conquest insertion made at Durham’ (Hart, Byrhtferth’s Northumbrian Chronicle, p. 223, n. 1).
51 The exception is HR1, which says nine (ix) years, though an interlineation was added to the manuscript correcting the original scribe’s number to seven (vii); for which see Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 139, 72v, and the useful notes by B. Meehan, ‘A Reconsideration of the Historical Works Associated with Symeon of Durham: Manuscripts, Texts, and Influences’ (unpubl. PhD dissertation, Univ. of Edinburgh, 1979), p. 195 (for 74v). HR1’s outlying figure is potentially interesting as a possible sign of a distinct source behind its s.a. 875 ‘interpolation’; the entry mentions Bishop Eardwulf but not Chester-le-Street: ‘Eardulfus episcopus et abbas Eadredus de Lindisfarnensi insula corpus sancti Cuthberti tollentes per.ix. annos ante faciem barbarorum de loco ad locum fugientes, cum illo thesauro discurrerunt’, HR1, s.a. 875 (ed. Hart, p. 214=ed. Arnold, Sym. Op. II, 82).
52 John of Worcester, Chronicon [hereafter JW, Chron.], in The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk with J. Bray, 2/3 vols. (Oxford, 1995–8).
53 Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. Darlington et al., II, xxviii–xxxv; marginal entry is on the left at Oxford, Corpus Christi College 157, p. 318, printed JW, Chron., s.a. 995 (ed. Darlington et al., II, 444–7), with the scribe identified by Darlington, et al., ibid. p. 447, n. 1.
54 Cf. Oxford, Corpus Christi College 157, pp. 280, 282, 284, 285, 286, 304, 307, 309, 311, 314, 316, 328 and 335; printed JW, Chron., ed. Darlington et al., pp. 230–1, 240–1, 246–7 (and n. 6), 60–1, 268–9, 352–3, 372–3, 386–7, 398–9, 418–19, 438–9, 506–7 and 544–7; Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, p. 121, n. 3.
55 The Augustinian’s St Andrews Foundation Account, ed. and trans. S. Taylor, The Place-Names of Fife, 5 vols. (Donington, 2006–13) III, 600–15, at 602, 608, n. 336.
56 LDE ii.12 (ed. Rollason, pp. 116–7).
57 LDE iii.1 (ed. Rollason, pp. 146–9).
58 For the two slightly different accounts of the provosts and priests of Hexham, see The Priory of Hexham, ed. J. Raine, 2 vols., Surtees Society 44, 46 (Durham, 1864–5) I, Appendix, vii–viii, and vii, n. j (where this specific claim is made); for the lineage, see LDE iii.1 (ed. Rollason, pp. 146–7).
59 LDE ii.12 (ed. Rollason, pp. 116–17).
60 To borrow a term derived from the ‘sociological charter’ analogy employed by the renowned Anglo-Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski for oral–historical traditions that function to legitimize the rights and inequalities that make up any social order; see B. Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion (Boston, MA, 1948), pp. 79–124; a good discussion of how ‘history’ works in this context can be found in M. Herzfeld, Anthropology (Malden, MA, 2001), pp. 55–89; for a longer study about the flexibility and utility of genealogy and ‘historical memory’ even within a modern literate society, see Shryock, A., Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan (Berkeley, CA, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
61 For which, see Augustinian’s St Andrews Foundation Account, ed. and trans. Taylor, pp. 602, 608; for the ‘B version’, see S. Taylor, Place Names of Fife III, 567–79; cf. T. M. Charles-Edwards, ‘The Seven Bishop-Houses of Dyfed’, The Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 24.III (1971), 247–62.
62 LDE iii.1 (ed. Rollason, pp. 146–9).
63 Reginald of Durham, Libellus de admirandis beati Cuthberti virtutibus, ed. J. Raine, Surtees Society 1 (London, 1835) [hereafter Cuth. Virt.], 27–8; for the etymology of the name, see DLV, II, 219.
64 Cuth. Virt., p. 29; cf. Longstaffe, W. H. D., ‘The Hereditary Sacerdotage of Hexham’, Archaeologia Aeliana, 2nd Ser., 4 (1860), 11–28, at 13–14Google Scholar.
65 Durham Episcopal Charters, 1071–1152, ed. H. S. Offler, Surtees Society 179 (Gateshead, 1968), no. 5; cf. D. S. Boutflower, Fasti Dunelmenses: a Record of the Beneficed Clergy of the Diocese of Durham down to the Dissolution of the Monastic and Collegiate Churches, Surtees Society 139 (Durham, 1926), 187.
66 Cf. Herzfeld, Anthropology, p. 57, with the late-nineteenth-century ‘Columbus’ as the originator of all oppressive social order among late-twentieth-century Andean peasants, including late-nineteenth-century land legislation.
67 For discussion of the Hexham descendants of the heroic companions of Cuthbert, see Aird, St Cuthbert and the Normans, pp. 116–22.
68 See HSC, ch. 9 (ed. and trans. South, pp. 48–9). ‘At this time the saintly Cuthbert died and was succeeded by bishop Ecgred, who transported the former church, originally built by beatified Aidan in the time of King Oswald, from the isle of Lindisfarne to Norham and there rebuilt it, and translated thither the body of St Cuthbert and [that] of King Ceolwulf.’
69 HSC ch. 9 (ed. and trans. South, pp. 48–9).
70 ‘[A]nno ab incarnatione Domini octingentesimo octogesimo quarto, ecclesiam quandam olim factam a beato Aidano tempore sancti Oswaldi regis, de Lindisfarnensi insula ad Northam, quae antiquitus Ubbanforde dicebatur, transtulit. Aedificata ibi ecclesia in honore sanctorum Petri et Pauli, corpus Sancti Cuthberti et sancti Ceowlfi regis corpus illuc transtulit, et in eorum nomine ecclesiam dedicavit’; for which, see Vita sancti Oswaldi regis et martyris [hereafter VSOR], ed. Arnold, Sym. Op. I. 326–85, at 361.
71 The printed version is missing about half its content, mostly extracts from Bede omitted by Arnold for that reason; for discussion, see Tudor, V., ‘Reginald’s Life of Oswald’, Oswald: Northumbrian King to European Saint , ed. Stancliffe, C. and Cambridge, E. (Stamford, 1996), pp. 178–94Google Scholar.
72 See n. 27 above.
73 According to Symeon (LDE ii.5 (ed. Rollason, pp. 92–5)), Ecgred’s episcopate begins and post-dates the time of King Eanred; Symeon calculated that Ecgred’s episcopate ended in 846 or 847, but Symeon’s treatment of this phase of chronology is virtually useless and better evidence suggests that King Eanred was probably still reigning in the early-to-mid 850s, for which see Pagan, ‘Northumbrian Numismatic Chronology in the Ninth Century’, and Rollason, LDE, p. 91, n. 931.
74 See Rollason, LDE, pp. 122–3, n. 78, for the dating of Cuthbert’s arrival at Chester-le-Street in 883, which is not explicitly stated by LDE in annalistic form.
75 See p. 128 above; for the suggestion that it returned to Lindisfarne from Norham, see Aird, St Cuthbert and the Normans, pp. 24–5.
76 See above, p. 136, and n. 38. It is also worth noting, as it seems to have escaped significant scholarly notice, that the mid-twelfth-century Vita Kentegerni imperfecta, written in Durham’s neighbouring diocese, refers to ‘Symeon once monk of Durham’ as the author of a certain ‘History of his own St Cuthbert’ (Symeon monachus olim Dunelmensis de Sancto suo Cuthberto historiam contexuit…), wording that mirrors the incipit of Historia de Sancto Cuthberto in one of the three surviving manuscripts, hence its modern title; see Vita Kentegerni imperfecta auctore ignoto, prologue, ed. A. P. Forbes, Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern: Compiled in the Twelfth Century, Edited from the Best MSS (Edinburgh 1874) , pp. 243–52, at 243. This could obviously refer to Libellus de exordio, and as the title suggests Vita Kentegerni imperfecta does not survive intact. Judging by the full, re-written version by Jocelin of Furness, there may have been similarities between the texts, including a resemblance between the ‘Donation of Guthred’ and a similar Glasgow episode, which we might call by analogy the ‘Donation of Rederech’; see Jocelin of Furness, Vita S. Kentegerni, ch. 33, ed. Forbes, Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern, pp. 159–242, at 218-19.
77 See LDE ii.1 (ed. and trans. Rollason, pp. 78–9), and ii.5 (ed. and trans. Rollason, pp. 92–3).
78 For discussion of ‘Guthred’s Dream’, see South, HSC, pp. 116–17; M. Lapidge, The Cult of Swithun, Winchester Stud. 4.ii (Oxford, 2003), 555, n. 26; and B. Colgrave, Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert (Cambridge, 1950), p. 35; the text is HSC, ch. 33 (ed. and trans. South, pp. 68–71). There is evidence that the episode may be based upon (it is at least related to) accounts about the death of King Causantín mac Cinaeda that circulated in the Insular Scandinavian world in the centuries after his death in 877, for which see Hudson, B. T., Prophecy of Berchán: Irish and Scottish High-kings of the Early Middle Ages (Westport, CT, 1996), p. 204 Google Scholar.
79 Cuth. Virt., p. 149: ch. 73.
80 HSC, ch. 21 (ed and trans. South, pp. 60–1); the William of Malmesbury recension of the lists is represented by WM, GPA, iii. 140.5 (ed. Winterbottom et al., pp. 410–11), with the revised Symeonic version represented by LDE, prologue (ed. Rollason, p. 4) – for a sample of lists, see McGuigan, ‘Middle Britain’, p. 251.
81 For learned Durham pretensions on Carlisle, see R. Sharpe, ‘Symeon as Pamphleteer’, Symeon of Durham, ed. Rollason, pp. 214–29, particularly pp. 215–18; for the archaic place-name forms, see Woolf, Pictland to Alba, p. 82.
82 See HR2, p. 101 (= s.a. 854); RHC I, 45 (= s.a. 883).
83 For this quote, see Charles Edwards, ‘Seven Bishop-Houses of Dyfed’, p. 261. For the ‘Properties of the Diocese of Lindisfarne’, see now Woolf, ‘Diocese of Lindisfarne’, pp. 233-6.
84 It might be tempting to see Viking-Age Lindisfarne in light of what we know about its original mother house, Iona, in the same era; for which, see, for instance, M. Herbert, Iona, Kells, and Derry (Oxford, 1988).
85 See RW, I, 396, and the equivalent annal in the short ‘Chronicle of 957’ that follows HR1, in Sym. Op., II, 91–5, at 94. This view of the sculpture at Lindisfarne I take from David Petts, pers. comm.
86 For sculpture at Norham, see The Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, Volume 1. County Durham and Northumberland, ed. R. Cramp (Oxford, 1984).
87 Chronicle of the Kings of Alba, ed. and trans. B. T. Hudson, ‘The Scottish Chronicle’, Scottish Historical Review 77 (1998), 129–61 (text and translation at 148–61), at 151; and N. McGuigan, ‘Ælla and the Descendants of Ivar: Politics and Legend in the Viking Age’, Northern History 52 (2015), 20–34, at 25–31; and further, McGuigan, ‘Bamburgh and the Northern English Realm’, pp. 96–121.
88 See S 779 and S. Keynes, An Atlas of Attestations in Anglo-Saxon Charters, c. 670–1066. I, Tables (xxx), ASNC Guides, Texts, and Studies, 5th draft ed. (Cambridge, 2002), table LVI, for Eadwulf’s last appearance; for Ælfsige’s, S 781, and Keynes, Atlas, table LIV; both charters are, however, from Ely archives, though contemporary sources put Cuthbertine prepositus Ealdred in Wessex during Ælfsige’s episcopate, for which see Jolly, K. L., The Community of St. Cuthbert in the Late Tenth Century (Columbus, OH, 2012), pp. 66–8 and 325–6Google Scholar.
89 ASC 993 CDE, trans. EHD, I, p. 235.
90 S 922 (Burt 32).
91 See McGuigan, ‘Ælla and the Descendants of Ivar’, p. 30, n. 44; note also that Richard of Hexham believed that the Aln had been the border between the dioceses of Hexham and Lindisfarne, for which see Priory of Hexham I, 20,
92 HSC, ch. 4 (ed. and trans. South, pp. 46–7).
93 LDE iii.2 (ed. Rollason, pp. 148–9); the phraseology here (particularly uniuersa populorum) might be read to suggest that ghosts of the sees of Lindisfarne and Hexham had wrought themselves very prominently on eleventh-century ecclesiastical organization.
94 See Woolf, Pictland to Alba, pp. 230–40.
95 Anglo-Norman learned attempts to organize Viking-Age Northumbrian history confuse the ealdordom with the Bamburgh polity, but claims that Uhtred was appointed to the ealdordom are confirmed in the ASC: see ASC CDE 1016 and ASC CDE 1017 (trans. EHD, I, p. 248, p. 251); see also S. Keynes, ‘Cnut’s Earls’, Reign of Cnut: King of England, Denmark and Norway, ed. A. Rumble (London, 1994), pp. 43–88, at 57–8; and N. McGuigan, ‘Bamburgh and the Northern English Realm: Understanding the Dominion of Uhtred’, Battle of Carham, ed. McGuigan and Woolf, pp. 95–150, at 121–9.
96 Foot, ‘Kings, Saints and Conquests’, pp. 146–51, sees Cnut’s reign as key; see also T. Bolton, The Empire of Cnut the Great: Conquest and the Consolidation of Power in Northern Europe in the Early Eleventh Century (Leiden, 2009), pp. 276–87; Hudson, B. T., Viking Pirates and Christian Princes: Dynasty, Religion and Empire in the North Atlantic (Oxford, 2005), pp. 106–27Google Scholar; Woolf, Pictland to Alba, p. 263.
97 WM, GP iii. 118 (ed. Winterbottom et al., pp. 388–91).
98 E.g. Kirby, D. P., ‘The Saxon Bishops of Leicester, Lindsey (Syddensis), and Dorchester’, Leicestershire Archaeol. and Hist. Soc. Trans. 41 (1965–6), 1–8, at 3Google Scholar.
99 Illustrated Keynes, Atlas, table XXXVII (and later episcopal tables), and discussed more fully in McGuigan, ‘Middle Britain’, pp. 58–64. A fuller study of this specific issue is intended for the future.
100 S 401; cf. the consecutive appearance of the four non-Wessex bishops Cynesige, Wigred, Seaxhelm and Æscberht in S 425.
101 Alex Woolf, pers. comm., has suggested that this might be Mayo. For the Irish house of Mayo and its eighth-century Northumbrian bishops, some of whom appear in Northumbrian annals, see Orschel, V., ‘Mag nEó na Sacsan’, Peritia 15 (2001), 81–107 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
102 See, again, Keynes, Atlas, table XXXVII.
103 ASC D, 1056; ASC almost certainly refers to him taking the see in 1041, though Durham is not specifically named (ASC D, 1041).
104 CMD, pp. 524–5; the reason for viewing it as this type of interpolation is based on Hexham’s exit from the Durham familia in Henry’s reign, but as we argue in this article, Eadmund’s episcopate also provides a suitable political context (see also n. 87).
105 For motive and other relevant discussion, see R. Walterspacher, The Foundation of Hexham Priory, 1070–1170, Papers in North Eastern Hist. No 11 (Middlesbrough, 2002). For discussions of Hexham and emergence of Durham, see also D. Rollason, ‘The Beginnings of the Diocese of Durham’, Friends of Durham Cathedral (1995), pp. 23–34.
106 Grants that HSC attributes to the time of Ealdhun and to the time of Cnut appear genuine, i.e. HSC, chs. 29–32 (ed. and trans. South, pp. 66–9), and we have reliable surviving evidence of grants in the area of former Danish settlement, including notitiae of a later-tenth-century grant to sancte Cuðberhtes stowe of land in Yorkshire by a certain Ðureð eorl, for which see S 1659 (North 19), S 1660 (North 18), S 1661 (North 20), as well as DLV II, 140, and Woodman, North, pp. 353–8. See also H. H. E. Craster, ‘Some Anglo-Saxon Records of the See of Durham’, AAe 4th Ser. 1 (1925), 189–98.
107 LDE iii.7 (ed. Rollason, pp. 160–7).
108 ASC 1041CD; De obsessione Dunelmi, pp. 219–20; HR2, p. 198.
109 RHC I, p. 59 (for Gospatric and the Southumbrians at Norham); and LDE iii.22 (ed. Rollason, pp. 208–9) for the Southumbrians at Melrose. Durham’s loss of control north of the Tyne in the early Norman era and its potential significance for the emergence of the later Anglo-Scottish border is explored in detail in McGuigan, N., Máel Coluim III, ‘Canmore’: an Eleventh-Century Scottish King (Edinburgh, 2021), pp. 276–85, 316-25 and 384-90Google Scholar.
110 De obsessione Dunelmi, pp. 215–220.
111 For this kinship, see Priory of Hexham I, Appendix, pp. vii–viii, at vii, n. j.
112 HSC, ch. 21 (ed. and trans. South, pp. 60–1)
113 See p. 157 above.
114 See LDE iii.15 (ed. Rollason, pp. 184–7). Significantly, we appear to learn also that Earl Gospatric and his follower Gilla Míchéil were involved in an attempt to relocate Cuthbert back north. We are told that Gospatric, who died at Norham in the 1070s (perhaps 1078), only relented when another of his followers, a cleric named Ernan, reported a vision of Gilla Míchéil in Hell. Gospatric may have been attempting to save Cuthbert’s relics from the Normans; and we can probably assume with safety that King William I’s march north the same winter had more persuasive effect than Ernan’s vision. See LDE iii.16 (ed. Rollason, pp. 188–93); for further discussion, see McGuigan, Máel Coluim III, pp. 263-4.
115 I would like to thank everyone who helped with this text at every stage, particularly Dr Alex Woolf, Professor Dauvit Broun, Professor John Hudson, Dr Keri McGuigan, Dr Rory Naismith and the anonymous reviewers.