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The Bishop of Durham is the officer of the Church of England responsible for the diocese of Durham, one of the oldest in the country. He is the senior bishop in the province of York, and sits in the House of Lords. Other duties include (with the Bishop of Bath and Wells) escorting the sovereign at the coronation. He is officially styled The Right Reverend Father in God, (Name), by Divine Permission Lord Bishop of Durham, but this full title is rarely used.The post of Bishop of Durham has existed since the eighth century. After the Norman conquest the Bishop was made Prince-Bishop of the Palatinate of Durham. They had their own army, parliament, currency, and court system. In 1536 Henry VIII withdrew much of the Prince-Bishop's secular authority, and this authority was further hedged during and after the English Civil War; the Principality was finally abolished in 1836. The Palatinate court system, however, survived until the passage of Courts Act 1971.
As the only such bishop in England, the Bishop of Durham bears on his arms a mitre enfiled of a coronet (instead of a plain mitre) and a crozier crossed with a sword in saltire (instead of two croziers) to symbolize temporal power.
The title "The Land of the Prince Bishops" is an invention of the tourist industry, but the Bishops of Durham did hold vice-regal powers, and more.
1 Two kings in England
- "There are two kings in England, namely the Lord King of England, wearing a crown in sign of his regality and the Lord Bishop of Durham wearing a mitre in place of a crown, in sign of his regality in the diocese of Durham".
- The steward of Anthony Beck, Bishop of Durham (1284 - 1311).
2 Origin of the Prince Bishops
The County Palatine of Durham was once a virtually independent state ruled by the so-called Prince Bishops, who were more or less the Kings of County Durham. It owes its unique position to the 7th and 8th century Kingdom of NorthumbriaNorthumbria was one of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in England, named because it was to the north of the River Humber. It was one of the Heptarchy. The name survives as an alternative description for North East England, which formed the heartland of the Kingd. Although it once stretched from the HumberHumber is also the name of one of the ranges of cars manufactured by the Rootes Group Humber is also the name of a river in Newfoundland, Canada, as well as a river and a college, both in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Humber is a large tidal estuary in no to the Firth of ForthThe Firth of Forth is the estuary or firth of the River Forth, where it flows into the North Sea between Fife to the north, and West Lothian, the City of Edinburgh, and East Lothian to the south. The river is tidal as far inland as Stirling, but generally, making up almost a third of the entire mainland of Britain, invasions by the VikingsViking refers in a loose sense to the North Germanic (ethnically Scandinavian) population of Northern Europe in the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th centuries, which during this time colonized, raided and traded the lengths of the coasts, rivers and islands of Eur and ScotsThe Scots tribe originated from Ireland, from the now-called counties Antrim and Down. In 500 under King Fergus, the Scots invaded Argyll and established the realm known as Dal Riata ( Dalriada) in the Pictish lands known as Caledonian by the Romans. reduced it to an earldom, stretching from the River TweedThe River Tweed (156 kilometres or 97 miles long) flows primarily through the Borders region of Scotland. It rises on Tweedsmuir at Tweeds Well. It drains the entire Borders region. Its lower reaches mark the Scots border with England for 27 kilometres ne to the TeesThe Tees a river of England, rises on the eastward slope of Cross Fell in the Pennine Chain, and traverses a valley about 85 miles in length to the North Sea. In the earliest part of its course it forms the boundary between the traditional counties of Wes. It acted as a buffer zone, protecting the rest of England from Scottish invaders.
