The monastic chroniclers of the see were chiefly interested in the doings of the Bishop in his castle and the Prior in his cathedral, and the occasional interventions of the Lord King in the quarrels of these august persons; they tell comparatively little of the life and affairs of the burgesses themselves, the descendants of the men from between Coquet and Tees, who obeyed the summons of Earl Ucthred in 995, and hastened to Durham to raise a shrine worthy of St. Cuthbert, who cleared the thick forest on the crag of Durham, divided the land by lot, and became the Haliwerfolc, the people of the Saint. Twice during the eleventh century they were besieged by the Scots, and each time the enemy was routed. The heads of the slaughtered Scots were exposed in the market-place, where the great fair of Durham was held on September 4, the Feast of the Translation of St. Cuthbert. There was also a fair on the saint’s other festival, March 20; but the September fair was the more important. The laws of the special peace of St. Cuthbert, which was proclaimed by the thanes and drengs before the fair opened, were written in an ancient Gospel-Book, and a copy of them is still preserved. In the winter of 1068-69 Robert Cumin, the newly created Norman Earl of Northumberland, advanced to Durham with his troops, but as the Normans lay there they were surprised by a sudden rising of the whole population, and slain almost to a man. A year later news came that William himself was approaching Durham to avenge the death of Cumin, whereupon Bishop Egelwin and the priests took the sacred body of St. Cuthbert and such of the treasures of the church as they could carry and fled to Lindisfarne, followed by the people of the city, who dared not remain without the sacred relic. The whole multitude took refuge on the island while William devastated Durham and Northumberland. At length peace was made, and St. Cuthbert and his followers returned to the desolate city. In 1072 William visited Durham, and installed the foreigner, Bishop Walcher, in the see. About this time also the first Norman castle was built in the city to keep the people in check; but when Bishop Walcher ventured out of his stronghold in 1080 he was murdered. Again William ravaged Durham, and the see was filled by Bishop William de St. Carileph, who began to build the present cathedral, and who founded the Benedictine monastery connected with it. To the new monastery he gave forty merchants’ houses in Elvet, which formed the nucleus of the Prior’s borough of Elvet. The troubles of Durham recommenced in 1140, when, the see being vacant, Durham Castle was seized by William Cumin, a nominee of King David of Scotland, who hoped through Cumin to annex the Bishopric. In the course of the struggle between the usurper and the new Bishop, William de St. Barbara, the greater part of the city of Durham was reduced to ashes. There were four years of desperate warfare before Bishop William entered his cathedral