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Durham Cathedral and Cuthbert Tunstall: a Cathedral and its Bishop during the Reformation, 1530–1559

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2019

ELIZABETH BIGGS*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Vanbrugh College, University of York, HeslingtonYO10 5DD; e-mail: elizabethcbiggs@gmail.com

Abstract

Cathedrals are usually thought to have had little role in the English Reformation and the reasons for their very survival in the new Church of England have been questioned. Instead of being an irrelevant and closed-off institution, Durham Cathedral was intellectually close to its Reformation-era bishop, the conservative Cuthbert Tunstall, and was involved in diocesan matters throughout his episcopate. Tunstall's evangelical successors also appreciated its potential for reform and the need to use its staff and resources. Cathedrals thus could be a tool to be used in the reformation of the diocese on both sides of the emerging confessional divide.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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Footnotes

This research was funded by the Zeno Karl Schindler Foundation as part of the ‘Durham Priory Library Recreated’ project at Durham University. Funding for archival work came from the Catholic Record Society's David Rogers Fund. Dr James Kelly and Dr Sheila Hingley gave invaluable help and advice, as did the anonymous reviewer.

References

1 ‘Aetat Cuthberti Tunstalli/dunelmensis Ep[iscop]i emptit 1585’: N. Hemmingsen, A postill or exposition of the Gospels that are vsually red in the churches of God upon the sundayes and feast dayes of saincts, London 1577 (RSTC 13063.5): DCL, R IV 30, title page and flyleaf verso.

2 D. Marcombe, ‘The dean and chapter of Durham, 1558–1603’, unpubl. PhD diss, Durham 1973, 376; Surtees, R., The history and antiquities of the county palatine of Durham, III: Stockton and Darlington wards, London 1823, 71Google Scholar.

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10 Greenslade, S. L., ‘The last monks of Durham Cathedral Priory’, Durham University Journal xli (1948–9), 107–13Google Scholar at pp. 109–12.

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12 His election was on 5 January 1520: DCA, priory register V, fos 184v–186r.

13 Ibid. fo. 199r.

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19 LP xx/1, no. 910.

20 They were named in the foundation grant of May 1541, printed in Statutes of the Cathedral Church of Durham, ed. A. Hamilton Thompson (Surtees Society cxliii, 1929), 2–13.

21 Greenslade, ‘Last monks’, 108.

22 For Crawford see DCA, DCD/B/BA/1, fo. 16r–v; for Rudd see CPR, 1549–51, 293.

23 CPR, 1553–54, 384.

24 CPR, 1550–53, 110.

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26 CPR, 1553–54, 83; CPR, 1557–58, 400.

27 Durham statutes, 174–5.

28 The registers of Cuthbert Tunstall, bishop of Durham, 1530–59 and James Pilkington, bishop of Durham, 1561–76, ed. G. Hinde (Surtees Society cli, 1952), nos 318, 348.

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32 Sturge, Tunstal, 114–16.

33 Salvin came from the local gentry family of Salvin of Croxdale: Reg. Tunstall, nos 215, 235, 286.

34 Greenslade, ‘Last monks’, 112.

35 Joyce M. Horn and others, ‘Canons of Durham: first prebend’, in Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1541–1857, XI: Carlisle, Chester, Durham, Manchester, Ripon, and Sodor and Man dioceses, London 2004, 86; Reg. Tunstall, no. 190.

36 DCA, Misc 2899; his will is printed in Wills and inventories I, ed. Raine, James (Surtees Society ii, 1835), 194–6Google Scholar. 36

37 Dobson, Durham priory, 342–3.

38 M. A. Loudon, ‘Cuthbert Tunstall, humanist bishop and counsellor to Henry viii: education and ecclesiastical patronage in Tudor England’, unpubl. PhD diss. Toronto 2004, 188.

39 These numbers are from the fifteenth century, but are highly likely to still hold true for the sixteenth: Dobson, Durham priory, 351.

40 C. Tunstall, De arte suppuntandi, London 1522 (RSTC 24319); L. Pacioli, Somma di arithmetica, geometria, proporzioni e proporzionalità: prelim: Fa. Pompilius: Epigramma ad lectorem: Giorgio Sommariva: epigramma ad auctorem (I, II), Venice 1494.

41 Euclidis Elementorum liber I, ed. S. Grynaeus, Basel 1533, sigs a2r–a5v.

42 British Library, London, ms Add. 24059, fo. 22v.

43 Georg von Peurbach, Theoricae nouae planetarum, ed. E. Rheinhold, Wittenberg 1542: Ushaw College Library XV G 8 26.

44 Ibid. sig. f 7v.

45 DCL, G I 19; H II 7; H II 5.

46 DCL, incunable 3.

47 ‘comment hic erat Tonstallus tum lo[n]done[n]s[is] nu[n]c dunelme[n]s[is] doctissim[us] episcop[us]’ [note that this was Tunstall, then (bishop) of London, and now the most learned bishop of Durham]: Diui Ambrosii … omnia opera, per eruditos viros emendata, ed. D. Erasmus, i, Basel 1527: DCL, D. VII. 23, sig. AA 5r.

48 Exposito Beati Ambrosii Episcopi Super Apocalypsin, ed. C. Tunstall, Paris 1554.

49 The Hereford manuscript which collates more closely to the printed text and which seems to have travelled with other books owned by Tunstall, but does not have his ownership mark, is now York Minster Library, ms XVI K 10; but the Durham copy of the same text has some sixteenth-century annotations: DCL, A I 10, fos 170r–234r.

50 This set of six books bound in three volumes has now been split; the first two volumes (books 1–5) are Hereford Cathedral Library, A IX 2–3; the third volume is Lincoln Cathedral Library, F.1.14; for Ridley's concern for textual criticism see Harvey, M. M., ‘Reaction to revival: Robert Ridley's critique of Erasmus’, in Cooper, Kate and Gregory, Jeremy (eds), Revival and resurgence in Christian history (Studies in Church History xliv, 2008), 7786Google Scholar at pp. 82–3.

51 Rosenbach Library and Museum, Philadelphia, Pa, C2. B582 519.

52 Psalterium Hebreum, Grecum, Arabicum, & Chaldeum cum tribus latinis interpratatonibus & glossis, Genoa 1516: Upper Library, Queens’ College, Oxford, Sel. d 48.

53 Psalterium quincuplex Latinum, Rouen 1500: York Minster Library, XI G 4.

54 Ibid. title page.

55 J. Trithemius, Sermones et exhortaciones ad monachos, Strasbourg 1516: York Minster Library, X G 13.

56 ‘Audi monache claustrales portans militia[rum] attende. Dicit ad te christus cui militas: te alloquitur celestis imperator cui ad altare ministras. Si meus vis esse minister virtutem paciente [et] humilitatis quam ex me didicisti oportet ut sequaris. Exemplu[um] enim dedi vobis o milites mei’: ibid. sig. a 5v.

57 Correspondence of Reginald Pole, i, ed. T. F. Mayer, Farnham 2002, 100–1.

58 Ibid. 128–30. Tunstall's copy of Cyprian with relevant annotations is DCL, P V 40, fo. 5r.

59 Preston had annotated his copy of Gerson on questions of apostolic succession and church unity and had added comments about Luther in the margins: J. Gerson, Prima (–quarta) pars operum Joannis gerson cancellarii universitatis Parrhisiensis theologi Christianissimi: Adiectis epistolis miraculorum et epithoma vitae eius, Strasbourg 1514: DCL P V 11 sigs h 1r, i 3v, k 1r.

60 The book was in the Durham collections by the seventeenth century, and while it is not possible to identify the hand, there are notes about monastic life on P V 11, sig. gg 4r. For Preston's death see Reg. Tunstall, no. 74.

61 A translation of the licence is given in Sturge, Tunstal, 362–4.

62 J. Cochlaeus, Articuli. CCCCC. Martini Lutheri, Cologne 1526, back flyleaf: Ushaw College Library, XVII.E.5.3/1.

63 Reg. Tunstall, nos 51, 53.

64 Edited in Valor ecclesiasticus temp. Henr. VIII: auctoritate regia institutus, ed. J. Caley and J. Hunter, London, 1810–34.

65 The Durham Liber Vitae: London, British Library, MS Cotton Domitian A.VII: edition and digital facsimile, ed. Rollason, D. and Rollason, L., London 2007Google Scholar, ii. 436, entry number C.1388.

66 LP x, nos 182, 183.

67 Sturge, Tunstal, 201, 257.

68 LP x, no. 182.

69 LP x, no. 183.

70 Ibid.

71 Priory register V, fos 255r, 256r, 264v–265r.

72 Reg. Tunstall, nos 159, 172, 173.

73 For example, in 1538 Thomas Cromwell and others were given the right to present to the next vacancy of the deanery of St Stephen's College, Westminster: LP xiii/1, no. 887, grant 15.

74 In 1539 William Hertborn, George Smythe, George Rogerley and Roger Butterfield.

75 Storey, R. L., Thomas Langley and the bishopric of Durham, 1406–1437, London 1961, 176Google Scholar.

76 Dobson, Durham priory, 58.

77 Ibid. 224; Storey, Thomas Langley, 200–1.

78 Storey, Thomas Langley, 187, 200–1.

79 A. J. Pollard, ‘Booth [Bothe], Laurence (c. 1420–1480)’, ODNB.

80 Dobson, Durham priory, 223, 231.

81 Mayer, T. F., ‘Not just the hierarchy fought: the Marian cathedral chapters, seminaries of recusancy’, in Evenden, E. and Westbrook, V. (eds), Catholic renewal and Protestant resistance in Marian England, Farnham 2015, 93123Google Scholar at p. 94.

82 Durham statutes, 72–3.

83 Ibid. 74–5.

84 Ibid.

85 episcopo assistant, eumque in muneris sui functione’: The Anglican canons, 1529–1947, ed. Bray, G. (Church of England Record Society vi, 1998), 97Google Scholar.

86 Durham statutes, 138–9.

87 Duffy, E., Fires of faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor, New Haven 2009, 50Google Scholar.

88 Durham statutes, 108–9.

89 ‘Decanus et Canonici in verbo dei … sint seduli cum ruri tum precipue in Ecclesia hac Cathedrali’: ibid. 108–9.

90 Ibid. 186–7.

91 LP xii/2, no. 1082.

92 Anglican canons, 157–9. Durham was far ahead of the rest, as discussed in Duffy, Fires of faith, 25.

93 Durham statutes, 143–9.

94 MacCulloch, D., Thomas Cranmer: a life, New Haven, 1996, 264–6Google Scholar.

95 Visitation articles and injunctions of the period of the reformation, ed. Frere, W. H., London 1910, ii. 91–4Google Scholar.

96 Ibid. ii. 135, 137–8.

97 Lehmberg, Reformation of cathedrals, 239.

98 At Durham over half the 1559 chapter were threatened with deprivation or were deprived of their prebends: Mayer, ‘Not just the hierarchy fought’, 94.

99 Acts of the Privy Council of England, 1550–52, ed. Dasent, J. R., London 1891, 480Google Scholar; Houlbrooke, ‘Horne, Robert’.

100 Rites of Durham, ed. Fowler, J. T. (Surtees Society cvii, 1903)Google Scholar, 68, 69, 77.

101 Acts of the Privy Council, 1550–52, 448–9.

102 J. Strype, Annals of the reformation, ii/2, Oxford 1824, 681.

103 Ibid.

104 Ibid. 690.

105 Calendar of state papers, domestic series, of the reign of Edward VI, 1547–1553, ed. C. S. Knighton, London 1992, no. 747.

106 MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, 520–2.

107 Northumberland called him ‘this peevish dean’: Calendar of state papers, Edward VI, no. 774.