11 - The Size and Shape of Durham’s Monastic Community, 1274–1539

Summary

The fourteenth century dawned ominously for the Durham monks. In the summer of 1297 war broke out between England and Scotland, but, as relations between the two kingdoms had been strained before, the monks had no reason to anticipate that this marked the outbreak of recurrent conflict which would eventually lead to the complete loss of their valuable possessions in south-east Scotland in the fifteenth century. Similarly, their experience of disputes with successive bishops would not have made them appreciate just how costly was to be the one with Bishop Bek that ignited on 20 May 1300. Yet these were the local preliminaries which introduced the Durham monks to a half-century of disasters that afflicted most of north-western Europe. No other period could approach it for sheer dreadfulness, but a major crisis befell the Durham monks in 1438, when a massive failure to collect the revenues of the main estate came to light, a crisis that was compounded by a severe outbreak of plague in northern England.

It was perhaps in 1438 that the monks revised a statement of their tithe income. This looked back to a golden age late in the thirteenth century: in 1436, an exceptionally poor year, tithe income was less than a quarter of what it had been in 1293, and under sixty per cent of the level in 1348. The monks were evidently well able to assess their financial circumstances in the context of a very long chronological perspective. If they concluded that there was little cause for optimism they were right, for their position worsened somewhat during the mid-fifteenth century. Decline ceased, however, during the 1470s, and for the rest of the community's history revenues stabilised at about two-thirds of the level found during the first half of the fourteenth century, with some signs of a modest improvement. Broadly speaking, the size of the community reflected the serious decline in its resources, although not to the same extent (figure 11.1). How this equilibrium was achieved raises interesting questions, not least because there was no knowing what next year's harvest would bring, what devastating epidemic might break out.