Whether chance or heavenly inspiration directed the choice of site, the selection of Durham as the stronghold of the religious feeling and of the temporal power of the North was a happy one. For centuries it was the core, not only of the Vale of Wear and of the County Palatine, but of ancient Northumbria. To the credit of the Scots, to whose account Durham and the Wear had afterwards to set down so terrible an array of losses and grudges, it has to be said that this region of the North was originally missionised and converted to Christianity from the further side of the Tweed. When the greater part of Saxon England was in heathen darkness, a spark of light was struck at Holy Island and Lindisfarne, and a little later at Jarrow and Monkwearmouth, and never after was it extinguished. It was carried thither by apostles of the Early Scottish Church, and when Oswald, King and Saint, granted Holy Island, close by his royal residence of Bamborough, to St. Aidan as a site for a monastic house and a centre of missionary effort, the germ was planted of the future See of Durham. Cuthbert also came from the other side of the Border--a Border, however, which did not exist in those days as a barrier of ecclesiastical and political power. He was a native of the pleasant vale of Lauderdale, and came as a member of the brotherhood of Melrose to reinforce the band of holy men whose home was at Lindisfarne, and whose special field of labour was the region between Tees and Tweed. The zeal and the austerities of his companions were not enough to satisfy the ardent soul of Cuthbert; neither was Holy Island a retreat secluded enough for the practice of those penances and prayers by which he sought to mortify the flesh and to propitiate Heaven in favour of his work. His fame for piety was such that he was promoted to be Bishop of Hexham, and afterwards to be head of the Monastery of Lindisfarne; but, laying down these charges, he retired to the surf-beaten refuge of the Farne Islands, and there spent the solitary close of his days. Even in his lifetime, St. Cuthbert's fasts and prayers had, according to the belief of that time, been efficacious in working miracles; and it may be judged whether his brethren were likely to allow the tales of wondrous cures wrought at the touch or word of the holy man to suffer in repetition, or to permit so valuable a power to die with him. On his death-bed, it is said, he exhorted his companions to hold fast by the faith, and, rather than submit to the violation of a jot or tittle of the doctrine and ritual committed to them, to take up his body and flee with it to some spot where the Church might be free, and finally triumphant. [Illustration: WILLINGTON.] [Illustration: BRANCEPETH CASTLE.]