Cuthbert Ttinstall, last Catholic Bishop of Durham, exercised an episcopate of close on thirty years, at a period most momentous in the history of the Church in England. Appointed in 1529 and reckoning his pontifical years from 25 March, 1530, he died, in house confinement at Lambeth Palace, 15 November, 1559, three months after his final deprivation.

In 1773 the four English Vicars Apostolic made detailed reports on the state of their districts to the Congregation de Propaganda Fide in Rome. A summary of tl1ese reports was published by Maziere Brady in 1877. This summary contains statistics for the number of priests and the number of Catholics in every county in England, and is valuable as providing the earliest detailed statistical picture of the English Catholic community to come from a Catholic source. It is not surprising, therefore, that it has frequently been quarried by historians.