Additional Manuscripts 833: James Raine Correspondence

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Introduction

	Rev. James Raine (the elder) (1791-1858)
	Contents

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Catalogue

• A. Antiquary and historian
• B. Librarian to the Dean and Chapter of Durham
• C. Secretary of the Surtees Society
• D. Rector of Meldon
• E. Principal Surrogate of the Consistory Court of Durham
• F. Miscellaneous

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Rev. James Raine (the elder) (1791-1858)

James Raine was born at Ovington (Yorks., N.R.) (for further biographical information see: Dictionary of National Biography, XLVII (1896), pp.175-6), on 23 January, 1791, the son of James and Anne Raine. He was educated at Kirby Hill School and at Richmond Grammar School in Yorkshire. The first step in his long and varied career was his appointment in 1812 as Second Master of Durham School. This post he held until 1827. He was ordained Deacon in 1814 and Priest in 1818. Meanwhile, in 1816, he had been appointed Librarian to the Dean and Chapter of Durham, a post which he retained until his death. The Dean and Chapter presented him in 1822 to the Rectory of Meldon (Northumberland). In 1825, he was appointed Principal Surrogate in the Consistory Court of Durham, under the Chancellor, James Baker. In 1828, he was presented by the Dean and Chapter to the Rectory of St. Mary the Less, Durham City.
Raine achieved lasting fame as an antiquary and an historian. As a young man, he was the friend of several of the most notable local historians of North Eastern England, including Robert Surtees (d. 1834), the historian of County Durham, and John Hodgson (d. 1845), the historian of Northumberland. Raine's first historical writings appeared in the 1820's; the first to achieve fame was his account of the excavations of 1827 of St. Cuthbert's Shrine in Durham Cathedral (J. Raine, St. Cuthbert: with an account of the state in which his remains were found upon the opening of his tomb in Durham Cathedral, in the year 1827 (Durham, 1828)). In and after 1834, he was the prime mover in the foundation of the Surtees Society, intended as a memorial to the historian whose name it bore. In the ensuing years, Raine edited numerous texts for publication by the Society, as well as producing further works of his own, of which the best known was his History and Antiquities of North Durham (J. Raine, his History and Antiquities of North Durham (London, 1852)).
Raine married, 28 January 1828, Margaret Peacock. They had three daughters and one son (the Revd. James Raine, the younger, Chancellor and Canon Residentiary of York, 1830-1896). The family lived at Crook Hall, just outside Durham. James Raine the elder died on 6 December 1858, was buried in the churchyard of Durham Cathedral.

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Contents

The present collection covers several aspects of Raine's life and work, at a late stage in his career when he was well known and widely respected.
The letters have been divided into six sections: five by topic and one "miscellaneous". Within each section, they are arranged in alphabetical order of correspondent, and in chronological order where more than one letter from a correspondent survives.
* An asterisk denotes a member of the Surtees Society.
A: Antiquary and Historian: nos 1-21
These letters show the wide range of Raine's activities. Nos 1-6, from the printer, Samuel Bentley, concern the production of Raine's work on Auckland Castle (Durham). Nos 7-9, from the Yorkshire antiquarian Thomas Burton, not only show Raine as friend and fellow worker with the historians of the day, but also throw light on his access to the archives of the Dean and Chapter of Durham (see section B, below). Letters 10 and 11, from John Dalton, and letter 12, from Francis Mewburn, concern Raine's dealings with the library of the late James Dalton, rector of Croft (Yorks., N.R) which was sold in 1843. It is possible that Raine may have compiled the anonymous sale catalogue. (A copy survives among the Raine MSS. in the Dean and Chapter Library (R.43), but it gives no further clue to Raine's precise interest in the matter). Francis Mewburn, senior (1785-1867), "the first Railway Solicitor in the World and the last Chief Bailiff of Darlington", (Francis Mewburn, junior, Perthshire in October 1863: the Eight Days' Tour of a Cosey Couple (printed for private circulation, ?Darlington, ?1884), frontispiece), was an enthusiastic, if somewhat allusive correspondent of Raine's. (No. 17, 30 August 1850, contains references to a forthcoming work by Raine which will throw light on medieval land cultivation and taxation. No work written or edited by Raine himself fits this description; the nearest seems to be the Surtees' Society's edition of Boldon Book, which appeared in 1852: Boldon Buke: a survey of the possessions of the See of Durham, made by order of Bishop Hugh Pudsey, in the year MCLXXXIII, ed. W. Greenwell (Surtees Society, 25, 1852)). Most of this group of his letters to Raine (nos. 12-19) deal with matters of antiquarian and local interest, but one at least asks Raine to use his familiarity with the diocesan records (the request was presumably made to Raine as Surrogate in the Consistory Court) to seek out information for Mewburn in his business capacity (no. 13). Similarly, no. 20, from a firm of Sunderland solicitors, gives a glimpse of Raine's legal researches for a case involving Trinity House, Newcastle.
B: Librarian to the Dean and Chapter of Durham
Raine held this post for over forty years (1816-1858), but there is little tangible record of his work for the Library. The “catalogue” referred to in no. 22, is not readily indentifiable: at a Chapter meeting on 23 November 1838 it had been agreed that “the Librarian be requested to prepare for publication a Classified Catalogue of the Books in the Library” for a fee of £50 and the copyright (Dean and Chapter of Durham, Act Book, 1829-1838, p.284). Of the surviving early catalogues of the Chapter Library, the only one conjecturally identifiable with this is a class index largely in the hand of an eighteenth century librarian, liberally extended in a variety of later hands, including Raine's. It is not surprising that this scrappy production was not published.
No. 25, from Richard Wellington Hodgson, refers to a collection of papers which the Dean and Chapter failed to purchase: those of Raine's old friend, the Northumberland historian, John Hodgson (1779-1845). The full story remains obscure; it appears, however, from surviving correspondence among the Raine papers, that attempts were made to purchase Hodgson's papers, between 1845 and 1848, by a group of Northumbrian gentleman headed by the solicitor William Woodman, of Morpeth, (for Woodman, see Archaeologia Aeliana, ser.2, XVIII (1896), 53-7), and subsequently by the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (Dean and Chapter Library, Durham, Raine MS. 35, letters from William Woodman to James Raine, 16 Oct. 1845, 29 Oct. 1845, 28 May 1847, 5 Feb. 1848 and 28 July 1848). Since their offer did not meet with Richard Hodgson's ideas of the value of the collection, nothing came of the negotiations; by 1853, he was prepared to offer the manuscripts for sale to the Dean and Chapter of Durham. His vexation at what he considered to be their derisory offer emerges not only from item 25 here, but also from other letters of early 1853, surviving among the Raine papers (ibid., letters from Richard Wellington Hodgson to James Raine, 22 Feb. 1853, 18 May 1853 and 23 May 1853). In the event, the Hodgson papers remained with the family until 1926, when the historian's grandson bequeathed them to the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle (Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 4 ser., II (1926), 177, 207-14). They are now deposited in Northumberland County Record Office.
Raine's position as Chapter Librarian, combined with his interest in local history, helped him to gain relatively easy access to the muniments of the Dean and Chapter, which were at that time in some disarray, but he had no official responsibility for their care: thus Thomas Burton's request to see the records (no. 7, above) must be regarded as an informal plea. Although in March 1829 the Dean appointed Raine “Deputy Keeper of the Records durante bene placito, subject to the confirmation of the Chapter”, the Chapter quashed this move in July with the comment that it “does not consider itself empowered by the Statutes to appoint or sanction the appointment of any new officer” (Dean and Chapter of Durham, Act Book 1829-1838, pp.12, 27-8).
C: Secretary of the Surtees Society
Raine's part in the establishment of this society, which was intended to honour Robert Surtees' memory by bringing into print unpublished manuscript materials relating to Northern England, has been fully chronicled elsewhere (A. Hamilton Thompson, The Surtees Society, 1834-1934 (Surtees Society, 150, 1935), especially pp.1-49). The bulk of the surviving records of his secretaryship have passed, with other secretarial matter, to each subsequent holder of that office. The two letters here deal with matters of printing and publication. No. 26 is from Samuel Bentley, the London printer whose firm printed seven volumes for the Society between 1841 and 1851 (vols. 13, 16, 17, 19, 20, 22 and 23). No. 27 is from John Gough Nichols, who was one of the first Treasurers, as well as a member of the firm of publishers and printers who were associated with the publication and printing of many volumes of the Society's publications between 1835 and 1869.
D: Rector of Meldon (Northumberland)
Raine's tenure of the living was marred by long years of legal dispute over the tithes, with the principal landowner in the parish, Isaac Cookson of Meldon Hall. This appears in only one of the five letters here: no. 31. The dispute, which was decided in Raine's favour by the House of Lords in 1846, is summarised in reports of the proceedings in Chancery and the House of Lords (Raine v Cairns, Nov. 15, 16, 17 and 25 1841: The English Reports, LXVII (London, 1906), pp.673-80; Michael Cairns and other v. Raine, June 18, 25 and 26 and Aug. 28 1846: The English Reports, VIII (London, 1901), pp.1640-44). The remaining four letters show Raine's routine dealings with the living.
E: Principal Surrogate in the Consistory Court of Durham
The two letters here illustrate Raine's activity as the deputy of James Baker, the Spiritual Chancellor of the diocese of Durham, and rector of Nuneham Courtney (Oxon). They deal mainly with routine matters of appointments, and throw little light on Raine's duties or conduct in the office.
F: Miscellaneous
Little can be said of these letters. Nos. 35 and 36 illustrate that same negligence in routine administration which disturbed Raine's years with the Surtees Society (A. Hamilton Thompson, op. cit., pp.27-9). It is possible that no. 37 was addressed to Raine as deputy to the Chancellor, but this is not certain. No. 38 probably falls into “section A” of this list, but, again, it is not certain.

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Accession details

This group of letters to James Raine was purchased by Durham University Library in March 1957, from Edward Hall, 50 Westfield Road, Surbiton, Surrey. Its earlier provenance is not recorded.
Summary catalogue of Additional Manuscripts
These letters form only a fragment of the material relating to Raine surviving in Durham. Raine's own papers, including various files of letters to him, are in the Dean and Chapter Library, Durham. Further volumes of correpondence, again mostly letters to Raine, are found amoung the early records of the Surtees Society (also deposited with Durham University Library Archives and Special Collections).

Catalogue

A. Antiquary and historian
B. Librarian to the Dean and Chapter of Durham
C. Secretary of the Surtees Society
D. Rector of Meldon
E. Principal Surrogate of the Consistory Court of Durham
F. Miscellaneous