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Sir Walter Scott described Durham Cathedral as 'Half church of God and half castle 'gainst the Scot'.1As exaggerated as this might be it does, in some measure, capture the historical, ambivalent relationship that Durham Cathedral has played in relation to Scotland. King Malcolm III of Scotland was present at the laying of the foundation stone of this Norman cathedral in 1093, and the vita of his consort, St Margaret of Scotland, was written by Turgot of Durham. Some of St Margaret's hair and a tooth were deposited in the tomb of St Cuthbert.2Yet, the bishops of Durham were prince bishops, with the power and duty to raise armies to keep out Scottish invaders when the boundaries of the Palatine of Durham were still hotly disputed. The cost of eight truces between 1311 and 1327 amounted to over £5,000 in Scotgeld. 3
The battle of Neville's Cross in 1346, only a stone's throw from the cathedral, resulted in a Scottish defeat and the Black Rood of St Margaret was captured and housed in the cathedral until the Reformation. Later, after the battle of Dunbar, the cathedral served as a prison for the Scottish soldiers, who suffered considerable, cruel hardship. Some of this ambivalent connection is woven together today in Durham Cathedral, where an altar is now dedicated to SS Margaret and Aiden, and a plaque commemorates the sufferings of the Dunbar prisoners.
A very positive liturgical contribution to Scotland came from William Whittingham, dean of Durham 1563-79. Whittingham was the main author (assisted by John Knox) of The Form of Prayers, a reviser of the metrical psalms of Sternhold and Hopkins, and he was editor of the Geneva Bible, all of which were adopted for use in the Church of Scotland. This article centres on a more disastrous liturgical influence: the ceremonial and liturgical revival of those who made up the Durham House group, or Durham College. This group of early seventeenth-century English divines was so named because they frequently met in the London house of Richard Neile, the bishop of Durham. It was Neile who gathered them together, and who also promoted them in the English church. Their ceremonial ideals were given expression in...