Northumberland Yesterday and To-day

by Jean F. Terry

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.

He went southwards and dwelt in Sussex, where his genius for hard work found scope in a mission to the Saxons of the south lands, and where he built and founded more churches and monasteries. Readers of “Rewards and Fairies” will have made acquaintance with Wilfrid in his Sussex wanderings and hardships. On his recall to the North by King Aldfrith, he returned to Hexham. On the death of Aldfrith, the new King, Edwulf, banished Wilfrid once more, ordering him to leave the kingdom within six days; but the friends of Aldfrith’s young son, whom Edwulf had dispossessed, obtained the ascendancy, and Wilfrid was re-instated in his Abbeys of Hexham and Ripon.

While on his way back from Rome, on his last visit, Wilfrid had a severe illness, but was granted a vision in which he was told that he had four years more to live, and that he must build a church to the honour of the Blessed Virgin. The little church of St. Mary, which stood close to the walls of the great Abbey of Hexham, was erected in fulfilment of this command.

In the Abbey church itself, all that was known for centuries of the original work of Wilfrid was the famous crypt, which is almost unique, that of Ripon, also the work of Wilfrid, being the only one like it; but recent excavations have brought much more of the ancient cathedral to light, and laid bare, not only its original plan, but some of the walls, and part of the very pavement trodden by the feet of Wilfrid and his fellows so many centuries ago. The tomb of Wilfrid, however, is not at Hexham, but at his other foundation of Ripon.

The ancient Abbey suffered much at the hands of the Danes, and in later years from the ravages of the Scots, having been burnt several times, notably in 1296, when 40,000 Scots ravaged the North of England, plundering, burning, and laying waste wherever they went, exactly as the Danes had done four hundred years before. Some of the stones of the old Abbey yet bear traces of the fires by which the ancient building was so often nearly destroyed, and in these frequent conflagrations all records, charters, etc., of the Abbey, from which might have been compiled a complete history, not only of the Abbey but of much of the provincial and national history of the times, were lost.

The Abbey was restored and rebuilt again and again, but for varying reasons was without a nave for some hundreds of years. Within the last ten years, however, a complete restoration has been carried out, under the loving, and, what is more to the point, the capable superintendence of Canon Savage and his colleagues, in the spirit and manner, as nearly as possible, of the beautiful portions already standing; and several disfiguring so-called “restorations” of nineteenth century work, which could only detract from the beauty and dignity of the noble building, have been removed entirely. This work was completed in 1908, and all who have the honour of our famous county at heart must rejoice that its noblest church is at last more worthy of its own high rank and glorious past.

Among the many deeply interesting objects to be seen in the Abbey is the stone Sanctuary seat—the Frid Stool, or seat of peace—at which fugitives, fleeing from their enemies, might find refuge. It is believed that this was the “Cathedra” of St. Wilfrid himself. The arms and back of the chair are ornamented with a twisted knot-work pattern. The right of Sanctuary extended for a mile round the Abbey, the boundaries being marked by crosses, one at each point of the compass at that distance.