Identifier: countiesofenglan01ditc (find matches)
Title: The counties of England, their story and antiquities
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Ditchfield, P. H. (Peter Hampson), 1854-1930
Subjects: Great Britain -- History England -- Antiquities
Publisher: London : G. Allen
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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Text Appearing Before Image:
Generally speaking, the county of Durham accepted
the Revolution in 1688, though here and there some
relcutance was manifested, and notwithstanding the
efforts of Bishop Crewe and Dean Granville to promote
allegiance to King James. Jacobitism, indeed, was
spasmodic in the Bishopric, and it does not appear that
in 1715 or in 1745 very wide sympathy was exhibited
in the district when elsewhere the excitement was
considerable. The eighteenth century witnessed two
events of the greatest importance in Durham history. In
the first place, after a period of long stagnation,
industrial development caught the whole district and
entirely changed its character. The coal trade had been
prosecuted continuously since the thirteenth century at
least, and the mines had proved a considerable source of
revenue to the owners. Lead was an ancient industry,
and the salt-pans of the county have a connected history
ranging over many centuries. These and other operations
had increased in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
more particularly when a great development of shipping
at Sunderland and at Hartlepool took place after the
Text Appearing After Image:

THE PALACE, BISHOP AUCKLAND


DURHAM 39

Restoration. A large export trade by sea spread rapidly.
In the early part of the eighteenth century 175,000 tons
of coal was the annual output on the Wear, and the
history of the collier convoys at that time is a large
chapter in the general history of North Country shipping.
All this meant a considerable increase of prosperity, and
by degrees the county which had been thinly populated,
for the most part, became a hive of industry, in which
rapid fortunes were made. The mines and the shipyards
attracted labour from other parts of England, and the
population of the county, returned as 58,860 in the early
days of Elizabeth, amounted to 149,384 in 1801, a figure
which has been multiplied by ten in the last hundred
years. The Bishop and the Dean and Chapter largely
shared in the vast increase of wealth which the working of
coal-mines in particular produced. It cannot, however,
be said with truth that the Church authorities neglected
the cause of charity. A list of the benefactions directly
due to the various Bishops, and also to Dean and
Chapter, shows how much they did in various ways for
the cause of education as well as for the spiritual well-
being of the people.

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