The waits were suppressed in 1831 by the Corporation. They used to last from Martinmas to January, and Mr. Tate remembers the criers perambulating the town at night with a “Good morrow, masters all! half-past three on a frosty morning;” and once or twice a week altering their apostrophe to the name of a householder, “Good morrow, Mistress Turner! half-past two on a cloudy morning.” Singular as such customs may seem now, it is only a comparatively few years since constables used to perambulate the city at night time in Liverpool and other large towns, using almost similar language. Fortunately the establishment of new police has deprived them of the power of paying off some old grudge against any particular inhabitant who might be supposed to require information about the time of night and the state of the weather; and the watchman with his lantern has now become a thing of the past,—more so even than mail-coaches with their rumbles and horns, which, indeed, have not even yet disappeared from some of the more remote parts of the island.
Hexham is a very imposing-looking town, as it is approached from the railway. The Moot Hall and the Abbey Church occupy commanding features in the landscape. The Abbey Church was at one time a cathedral, dedicated to St. Andrew. Every building in Hexham that can boast of any antiquity bears testimony to the disturbed state of the old times. This is the case also with Haltwhistle, on the left bank of the Tyne, and other Northumbrian towns. Those who are in the habit of spending time in amateur gardening may be interested to know that the gloves called “Hexham tans” are manufactured here, and sent into the country to be sold at exactly double the price they bring in Hexham. Formerly hats like the Monmouth caps were made here, but, as in Monmouth, all the factories are now closed. Hexham has produced two remarkable chroniclers—John of Hexham and Prior Richard.
The Black Gate at Newcastle-on-Tyne is a singular example of the architecture of the period we have been describing. Gloomy and forbidding it looks, as if really every man’s hand was against his neighbour, and his neighbour’s against him. It has been recently destroyed, but the engraving is taken from a photograph that was fortunately made before. Of course the windows are modern in comparison with the rest of the building. This gate was built at an enormous cost in the reign of Henry III., and, as a recent chronicler has said, “it is apt to convey a gloomy impression of Norman character and times, in passing under the low and narrow arch. Louring and characteristic is the effect of its great depth, thirty-six feet, and suggestive of thoughts of the awful dungeons of the mighty barons, and the deeds of cruelty too often perpetrated in them.” The older fortifications were quite inadequate for the defence of Newcastle against the Scots, who seem to have ravaged it at will. Part of them remained until very recently behind the priory of Black Friars.
The history of the walls is very illustrative of the times. On one of the inroads of the Scots, after they had exhausted the old programme of plunder and fire, they carried off a wealthy citizen with them to Scotland, and held him for ransom. This was not long in coming, and on his return to his town he resolved to protect the city with walls in order to prevent similar accidents. In this he was assisted by the inhabitants and the King, and he was enabled to build a wall of twelve feet high and eight feet thick, strongly resembling, it is said, the walls of Avignon. This wall measured about a mile and three quarters in circuit, and was surrounded with a ditch of more than twenty yards in breadth. There were said to be seven gates in these walls, and seventeen round towers, and effigies of men cut in stone to represent watchers. All these works were completed in the fourteenth century.
A description of Durham would hardly be complete without some reference to St. Cuthbert, to whom the See owes its origin. He was originally a cowherd, but believing that he had a calling for holy orders he left his sheep in the wilderness and soon obtained admission. His piety and austere life at once marked him out for high office, and he ultimately became Bishop of Lindisfarne. This office was no sinecure in his day, and it required all the efforts of the ecclesiastics and their see to preserve any of their property from the ravages of the Danish invasions, which seem to have occurred as often as it was supposed there was anything worth plundering, and they could collect sufficient men to plunder, with the necessary ships and arms.
Lindisfarne Island is the part most exposed to any incursions of the Danes, and the ecclesiastics finally grew tired of the wearisome and unequal contest and determined to remove to safer quarters; and after various wanderings, in which they carried with them the body of St. Cuthbert, they finally rested at