The town of Hexham, standing on hilly ground overlooking the Tyne, immediately below the point at which the North and South Tyne unite, and spreading from thence down to the levels all round, is one of the most ancient in the kingdom.  To write of Hexham with any measure of fulness would require much more space than can be given to it within the limits of a small book; only a mere summary can be offered here.  Britons, Romans, and Saxons, in turn, have dwelt on and around the hill which, in Saxon days, was to be crowned with Wilfrid’s beautiful Abbey, which, we read, surpassed all others in England at that time for beauty and excellence of design and workmanship; nor was there another to equal it anywhere on this side of the Alps.

The name of Hexham is generally understood to be derived from the names of two little streams, the Hextol and the Halgut, now the Cowgarth and the Cockshaw Burns, which here flow into the Tyne; or, as Mr. Bates suggests, it may have been the “ham” of “some forgotten Hagustald,” which the name perpetuates.  In any case its name was Hagustaldesham when King Ecgfrith (or Egfrid) of Northumbria gave it to his queen, Etheldreda, who wished to take the veil.  Queen Etheldreda, however, preferred to go to East Anglia, which was her home; she retired to a convent at Ely, and bestowed the land at Hagustaldesham on Wilfrid, a monk of Lindisfarne, clever, ambitious and hardworking, who had become Bishop of York, which meant Bishop of all Northumbria.

Wilfrid had been to Rome, and seen the churches of that city and of the lands through which he travelled; and, on his appointment to power, he set himself to make the churches of his diocese worthy to compare with those of older civilizations.  He did much to the cathedral of York, and built that of Ripon; but the Abbey of Hexham was his masterpiece.  He built a monastery and church, dedicating the latter to St. Andrew, for it was in the church of St. Andrew at Rome that, kneeling, he felt himself fired with enthusiasm for his work, in the same church from which Augustine had set out on his journey to Britain some fifty years before.  The year 674 is generally accepted as the date on which this noble Abbey was founded.

Wilfrid lived in great splendour at York, and ruled his immense diocese with a firm hand; in fact, he was the first of that line of great ecclesiastics who have moved with such proud, and oft-times turbulent, progress through the pages of English history.  King Ecgfrith’s second wife, Ermenburga, was jealous of the great power and magnificence of the Northumbrian prelate, and through her influence, Archbishop Theodore was induced to divide the huge diocese of Northumbria into four portions—­York, Hexham, Ripon and Withern in Galloway.  Wilfrid, naturally indignant, found all his protests disregarded, and immediately set out for Rome, to obtain a decree of restitution from the Pope.  It was given to him, but little cared the Northumbrians for that.  Wilfrid was imprisoned for nine months, and then banished from Northumbria.