Norham, Council At

Norham, Council At was convened by Roger, archbishop of York and papal legate, in 1154, to determine the relation of the Scottish ecclesiastics to the English archiepiscopal see over which Roger presided. It will be remembered that when pope Gregory divided the whole British island into two ecclesiastical provinces, he confided to the archbishop of York all the dioceses north of the Trent and the Humber, and that there were no episcopal sees in the country now called Scotland, if we except Galloway and Glasgow, and both of these were uniformly admitted to belong to the province of York, as being part of the Cumbrian or ancient British Church. By the middle of the 12th century, however, the Scottish Church had so largely developed that its ecclesiastics sought independence from the English metropolitan; and the Council of Norham was convened to determine, if possible, the question of York's supremacy over the Scotch dioceses. The council failing to agree, the case was carried to Rome and settled by a formal bull, which declared the Church of Scotland exempt from all jurisdiction but that of the apostolic see itself. The bishopric of Glasgow, the most important of all Scotland, was also filled by the pope about this time. See Russell, Hist. of the Ch. in Scotland, 1:107 sq. SEE SCOTLAND.