This book is a study of the parishes and their religious life in a medium-sized city in the middle ages. When I embarked on it I thought that the majority of the work would have been done by others, since the Durham archives are so incomparably good, but I was almost completely wrong. There is no history of the life of the medieval lay Christians in the city and their parishes. The history provided by Margaret Bonney in her Lordship and the Urban Community is immensely useful for understanding the secular organisation of the city and its secular life. I have relied on it very heavily and have used the thesis on which it was based, especially the maps of the tenements and the lists of their successive holders. But it almost ignored the religious side of lay life and did not use many of the sources which would have explored it. Barrie Dobson's excellent Durham Priory was intended to be a history of the monastic community and its concerns. Though it succeeds in being much more, it was never intended to consider the life of the city parishes, several of which in any case were not owned and managed by the monks. So instead of being a synthesiser I found myself often being a pioneer.