If there's one thing the people of Howden know about its history in the middleages, it's that there was a connection with Durham Cathedral. However, the relationship between Durham and Howden (and York) was complex and tends to be misunderstood.
The early history of Howden and Howdenshire isn't part of these pages, so I'll be looking at the situation when it had become settled - by 1350 if not earlier.
Howden had been granted to Durham Cathedral in around 1080. Before the reformation Durham was a monastery, with a Prior and between 60-90 monks, rather than a Dean and chapter. Durham was of course also the seat of the Bishop of Durham, and therefore the centre of the diocese.
There was no division in the grant between the prior and the bishop, so a decision had to be made on how to divide the income from the manor, and the spiritual and worldly authority.
After some arguments, a solution was found. The Bishop was the lord of the manor, and received the rents from the tenants. He had no ecclesiastical power at all - the Bishop of Durham was not Howden's bishop. He had more rights than than the normal lord of the manor - his steward held the sheriff courts, for example - but he had far less power in Howden than in Durham. Howden was not part of the County Palatine of Durham.
The Prior received the tithes, and the spiritual lordship. However, this was complicated by the fact that Howden wasn't in diocese of Durham but in the diocese of York. The Archbishop of York also had to be taken into account. The problem was resolved by York retaining the spiritualties - basically the authority to appoint a priest to a benefice with the cure of souls - while the prior was in charge of the temporalities - the income which supported the benefice. The prior of Durham was therefore the Archdeacon of Howden. In practice, York was prepared to have a purely nominal jurisdiction, always appointing whoever the Prior of Durham wanted.