HEXHAM, a parish in the southern division of TINDALE ward, county of NORTHUMBERLAND, comprising the market-town of Hexham, and the wards of Gilligate, Hencoats, Market, and Priestpople, besides a district called Hexhamshire, in which are the townships of High Quarter, Low Quarter, Middle Quarter (North), Middle Quarter (South), and West Quarter, and containing 5436 inhabitants, of which number, 4116 are in the town of Hexham, 21 miles (W.) from Newcastle upon Tyne, and 283 (N.N.W.) from London. The origin of this place, which Camden supposes to have been the Axelodunum of the Romans, is, perhaps, with greater probability, referred to the Saxons, by whom it was called Hextoldesham and Halgustad, from the neighbouring streams Hextol andHalgut, from the former of which its present name is derived. Horsley refers the station of Axelodunum to Brough in Cumberland, and the supposition of Camden is not confirmed by any Roman relics, except a few inscribed stones, which have been obviously brought from some other place. About the year 673, Wilfrid, Archbishop of York, having obtained from Ethelreda, wife of Egfrid, King of Northumberland, a grant of the town, and a large adjoining tract, called Hexhamshire, founded a monastery and erected a church, which, according to Richard of Hexham, was the most beautiful and magnificent ecclesiastical edifice in the kingdom. Wilfrid being expelled from the see of York, in 678, that province was divided, and Hexham was erected into a see, which- continued, under a regular succession of bishops, for more than a century, till being united with Lindisfarne, it eventually became a part of the see of Durham. Tilford, the last bishop, was expelled from, his bishoprick in 821, by the Danes, who, about fifty years afterwards, destroyed the monastery and plundered the town. The monastery was restored for Augustine canons, in 1112, and Hexham, together with Holme, was appropriated to the endowment of a prebendal stall in the Cathedral Church of York. In 1138, the Scots, under David I., pillaged the monastery, and, in 1296, again attacking the town, burnt the monastery and the nave of the conventual church. In the reign of Henry VIII., the last prior of Hexham having been involved .in the insurrection called the Pilgrimage of Grace, was hanged at the gate of the monastery in 1536; at the dissolution, the revenue was £138. 1. 9. Hexham possessed all the rights and privileges of a county palatine, which, with the jura regalia, were confirmed by Edward I., during whose reign the town was again plundered by an army of forty thousand Scots, under the command of David II., who was taken prisoner by Sir John Copeland, then sheriff of Northumberland, at the battle of Nevil's Cross. In 1463, the decisive battle of Hexham was fought on the plains near the town, between the Yorkists and Lancastrians, in which the former, commanded by Lord Montacute, defeated the latter, under the Duke of Somerset, who was taken prisoner and beheaded at Hexham. A dreadful riot happened here on the 9th of March, 1761, when five thousand persons, principally miners, assembled to obstruct the magistrates, who had met to superintend a ballot for militia men. A party of the North York militia was called in to support the civil authorities, and one of their officers was murdered by some of the infuriated mob, on which, the riot act having been read, the soldiers were ordered to fire, when forty-eight persons were killed, and three hundred wounded. Several of the rioters were subsequently apprehended, and one of them was hanged at Morpeth. Hexham, with its adjoining district, coming into the possession of the Crown by an exchange with the Archbishop of York, was, in the 14th of Elizabeth, annexed to the county of Northumberland. The town, which is irregularly built, consists of several spacious streets diverging from an extensive market- place in the centre, partially paved, and indifferently lighted by subscription: the inhabitants are supplied with water conveyed from a considerable distance into two reservoirs, provincially called pants, of which one was built by subscription, and the other at the sole charge of Robert Allgood, Esq. The bridge over the river Tyne, a handsome stone structure of nine principal arches, was erected by two country masons, from a design by Mr. Robert Mylne, the architect of Blackfriars' bridge, London; on the south side are three smaller arches, to afford a speedier passage to the waters during high floods, for want of which precaution four preceding bridges have been carried away. A suspension bridge was constructed in 1826 over the South Tyne, near the western ferry, at an expense of £5000, by Capt. Samuel Brown, R.N.; the span is three hundred and ten feet, and the breadth twenty feet: the-dimensions of the piers at the base, are twenty-eight feet by fourteen, one of them being sunk nine, and the other eight, feet below the bed of the river; and a bridge of two arches has been recently erected at Gilligate, where the Cowgarth and Cockshaw burns unite their streams. A mechanics institution, with a library of three hundred and fifty volumes, was established in 1825. The principal branches of trade are the dressing of leather and the making of gloves, the town having long been in high repute for the latter; tanning is also carried on to a considerable extent, and there are two woollen factories, a manufactory for hats, and a brewery. The Vale of Hexham presents a rich landscape of picturesque scenery, being beautifully diversified with well-cultivated fields, shrubberies, and pleasure grounds, and is remarkable for producing earlier crops than the surrounding district: a considerable portion of the land belongs to the Commissioners of Greenwich Hospital. The market days are Tuesday and Saturday, the former for corn j a large cattle market is also held every alternate Tuesday, from the end of February to Midsummer, and from October to Christmas; the market-house is a neat and commodious building, with a piazza. The fairs are on August 6th and November 9th, for horses, cattle, sheep, and swine. Though the town never received a charter of incorporation, there are four trading companies, viz., weavers, shoemakers, glovers, and hatters, exercising, by a kind, of prescriptive right, .as great a control over those respective trades as is generally practised in towns regularly incorpo- rated. A bailiff, appointed by the lord of the manor, presides at the manorial courts, and holds his office generally for life. A court of record is held twice in the year, within a month after Easter and at Michaelmas, for the recovery of debts to any amount, at which the steward of the manor, who must be a barrister, presides 5 its jurisdiction extends over the whole liberty, comprising, the parishes of Hexham, Allendale, and St. John Lee, in Northumberland: a side court is also held four times in the year, or oftener, if requisite, for the recovery of debts under 40s., at which the bailiff presides; the jurisdiction of this court also extends ovey the whole liberty. Courts leet and baron are held here for the manor of Arrick-Grange, which is partly within this parish; as are also the Midsummer quarter sessions for the county, and a petty session for Tindale ward, on the first Tuesday in the month. The town-hall is an ancient edifice, formerly the court-house of the bishops and priors, in which the manor courts and quarter sessions are held, and prisoners for debt are occasionally confined: at a small distance from it is an ancient tower,- supposed to have been built for the defence of the monastery, and now used as the manor office. In Gilligate is a house of correction for the county, which was repaired, with the addition of a new wing, a few years ago. The living is a perpetual curacy with that of Whitley, in the peculiar jurisdiction of the Archbishop of York, endowed with £420 private benefaction, £400 royal bounty, and £800 parliamentary grant, and in the patronage of Colonel and Mrs. Beaumont. In 1623, the corn tithes of Erringside, which formerly belonged to the abbey, were left to the Mercers Company, by Mr. Richard Fishborne, in trust for the endowment of a lectureship. The church, dedicated to St. Andrew, is PWt of the conventual church of the monastery, built on the site of the ancient cathedral, a spacious cruciform structure, exhibiting portions in various styles of English architecture, with a tower rising from the intersection of the transepts and the choir; .the nave, burnt by the Scots in 1296, has not been rebuilt; the choir is separated from the transepts by a screen of wood richly carved in the lower part, and ornamented in the upper with an allegorical painting of the Dance of Death; the choir, of which the roof is very lofty and panelled with oak, is separated from its aisles, which are groined, by ranges of clustered columns, above which are the triforium and clerestory, the arches of the former springing from a second tier of clustered columns, and the windows of the latter separated by plain masonry. On the south side of the altar, which is lighted with a large east window of elegant tracery, but disfigured by an incongruous embellishment of Grecian architectural painting, is a gallery of oak, beautifully carved, beneath which are three stalls highly enriched with tabernacle - work, and on the north side is a shrine, or oratory, in the decorated style of English architecture, exquisitely ornamented with foliated arches, tracery, and figures, supposed to have been erected for Prior Richard, of Hexham, to whom also is attributed a recumbent figure on an altar-tomb adjacent; among the monuments is one said by Pennant and others to be that of Elfwald, a Northumbrian Icing, who was killed in 788, but its style appears to be of the thirteenth century; and on an al-1 tar-tomb is the figure of an armed knight, cross-legged, with a shield of arms identifying him as one of the baronial family of Umfraville,though the effigy is supposed by Wallis the historian to be that of the Duke of Somerset, executed at Hexham. There are places of worship for Independents and Wesleyan Methodists, besides a Scottish church and two Roman Catholic chapels, in both of which latter the altar-pieces are embellished with fine paintings of the Crucifixion. The grammar school was founded in 1599, by Queen Elizabeth, who placed it under the control of an incorporated body of governors: it has but a trifling endowment, the master being paid by the pupils. A National school, founded in 1813, in which three hundred children of both sexes are instructed, is supported by subscription. Near a spot called St. Mary's Chare are some remains of the ancient church founded by Wilfrid in 678, and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin. John, Prior of Hexham, in the twelfth century, wrote the history of the reign of Henry II.; and his successor, Richard of Hexham, was the author of several historical works. Joseph Richardson, the dramatist, who died in 1803, was a native of Hexham; and John Tweddel, born in 1769, at Threepwood, near this place, greatly distinguished himself as si classical scholar and antiquary, and died, in 1799, at Athens, while travelling to qualify himself for a diplomatic employment.