As far as the evidence will allow, we must acknowledge that the religious institutions of Durham city were flourishing on the eve of the Reformation. Institutions of course are by no means everything in religious matters but there is no evidence that the people of Durham were finding them out of date or unhelpful. The voluntary aspects of religion, such as founding of masses for the dead, seem to have continued right to the end. The chantries show remarkable health, many of those still in existence at the Dissolution dating from the thirteenth century, even though new ones were not founded after about 1420. It is probable that the citizens realised that strengthening an existing chantry was more sensible than founding a new one, as well as being cheaper. The crisis for the local chantries had come in the fourteenth century rather than in the sixteenth and was apparently dealt with by Hatfield. This probably reflects the economic effects of the plague and does not seem to have inhibited the founding of further chantries.

The records show lay people making use of the church courts when they could probably have used secular ones. Quarrels over tithes seem neither frequent nor fierce. There is very little evidence of heresy nor of widespread non-attendance at (compulsory) services. The account that we can give of the clergy suggests that there was a good supply of resident lower clergy to satisfy the needs of the laity and there is not much evidence that they were conspicuously either negligent or immoral.