4 - Constructing a Monastic Past and Future at Durham, c.1083–1115

Summary

In 1080, the community of St Cuthbert occupied what was, on the surface, a stable position of prominence at the northern limit of William the Conqueror's realm. The episcopacy of William Walcher extended the secular and ecclesiastical influence of St Cuthbert's cult. Walcher had sponsored Aldwin of Winchcombe's re-establishment of monastic life at Jarrow, Whitby, Wearmouth and Melrose, and had brought the liturgical practices of the community into more regular observances. According to Symeon's claim, Walcher had also begun to reorganise communal life through the construction of new buildings of a monastic character.

Despite this apparent stability, Symeon's account of Walcher's death highlights a number of underlying tensions between the earl-bishop and the local populace. Symeon's chief accusation was that Walcher lacked leadership in his roles as both bishop and earl. Aird has argued that because the Normans had insufficient numbers to assert their military and political domination in the region, the ecclesiastical hierarchy maintained peace through an ‘uneasy coalition’ with the regional House of Bamburgh. The Durham Historia de regibus provided a detailed account of how tensions between Walcher's archdeacon, Leobwin, and the leader of the Bamburgh faction, Ligulf, led to the murder of Ligulf and the subsequent alienation of the Northumbrians. The fact that Ligulf was killed by Gilbert, who was described as holding secular power in the region under Bishop Walcher in the Historia, also implicated Walcher. These various tensions explain Symeon's claim that Walcher ‘did not restrain his men from freely doing what they wished and indeed doing several things of a hostile nature’, which subsequently ‘offended the native inhabitants’. Although Symeon did not mention the death of Ligulf, he did accuse Archdeacon Leobwin of having unjustly taken money and ornaments from the church to give to his followers, and claimed that Walcher's knights had ‘behaved very arrogantly towards the people, robbing many with violence, killing some, even some of the older people’. In his narrative of Walcher's death, Symeon explained that there was to be an official reconciliation at Gateshead between the bishop's knights and ‘those who had suffered them’ (‘qui fecerant iniurias at qui passi’)