The church and monastery at Hexham (Hextoldesham) were founded about 673 by Wilfrid, archbishop of York, who is said to have received a grant of the whole of Hexhamshire from Æthelhryth, queen of Northumbria, and a grant of sanctuary in his church from the king. The church in 678 became the head of the new see of Bernicia, which was united to that of Lindisfarne about 821, when the bishop of Lindisfarne appears to have taken possession of the lordship which he and his successors held until it was restored to the archbishop of York by Henry II. The archbishops appear to have had almost royal power throughout the liberty, including the rights of trying all pleas of the crown in their court, of taking inquisitions and of taxation. In 1545 the archbishop exchanged Hexhamshire with the king for other property, and in 1572 all the separate privileges which had belonged to him were taken away, and the liberty was annexed to the county of Northumberland. Hexham was a borough by prescription, and governed by a bailiff at least as early as 1276, and the same form of government continued until 1853. In 1343 the men of Hexham were accused of pretending to be Scots and imprisoning many people of Northumberland and Cumberland, killing some and extorting ransoms for others. The Lancastrians were defeated in 1464 near Hexham, and legend says that it was in the woods round the town that Queen Margaret and her son hid until their escape to Flanders. In 1522 the bishop of Carlisle complained to Cardinal Wolsey, then archbishop of York, that the English thieves committed more thefts than “all the Scots of Scotland,” the men of Hexham being worst of all, and appearing 100 strong at the markets held in Hexham, so that the men whom they had robbed dared not complain or “say one word to them.” This state of affairs appears to have continued until the accession of James I., and in 1595 the bailiff and constables of Hexham were removed as being “infected with combination and toleration of thieves.” Hexham was at one time the market town of a large agricultural district. In 1227 a market on Monday and a fair on the vigil and day of St Luke the Evangelist were granted to the archbishop, and in 1320 Archbishop Melton obtained the right of holding two new fairs on the feasts of St James the Apostle lasting five days and of SS. Simon and Jude lasting six days. The market day was altered to Tuesday in 1662, and Sir William Fenwick, then lord of the manor, received a grant of a cattle market on the Tuesday after the feast of St Cuthbert in March and every Tuesday fortnight until the feast of St Martin. The market rights were purchased from Wentworth B. Beaumont, lord of the manor, in 1886. During the 17th and 18th centuries Hexham was noted for the leather trade, especially for the manufacture of gloves, but in the 19th century the trade began to decline. Coal mines which had belonged to the archbishop, were sold to Sir John Fenwick, Kt., in 1628. Hexham has never been represented in parliament, but gives its name to one of the four parliamentary divisions of the county.
See Edward Bateson and A. B. Hinds, A History of Northumberland vol. iii. (1893-1896); A. B. Wright, An Essay towards the History of Hexham (1823); James Hewitt, A Handbook to Hexham and its Antiquities (1879).
HEYDEN, JAN VAN DER (1637-1712), Dutch painter, was born at Gorcum in 1637, and died at Amsterdam on the 12th of September 1712. He was an architectural landscape painter, a contemporary of Hobbema and Jacob Ruysdael, with the advantage, which they lacked, of a certain professional versatility; for, whilst they painted admirable pictures and starved, he varied the practice of art with the study of mechanics, improved the fire engine, and died superintendent of the lighting and director of the firemen’s company at Amsterdam. Till 1672 he painted in partnership with Adrian van der Velde. After Adrian’s death, and probably because of the loss which that event entailed upon him, he accepted the offices to which allusion has just been made. At no period of artistic activity had the system of division of labour been more fully or more constantly applied to art than it was in Holland towards the close of the 17th century. Van der Heyden, who was perfect as an architectural draughtsman in so far as he painted the outside of buildings and thoroughly mastered linear perspective, seldom turned his hand to the delineation of anything but brick houses and churches in streets and squares, or rows along canals, or “moated granges,” common in his native country. He was a travelled man, had seen The Hague, Ghent and Brussels, and had ascended the Rhine past Xanten to Cologne, where he copied over and over again the tower and crane of the great cathedral. But he cared nothing for hill or vale, or stream or wood. He could reproduce the rows of bricks in a square of Dutch houses sparkling in the sun, or stunted trees and lines of dwellings varied by steeples, all in light or thrown into passing shadow by moving cloud. He had the art of painting microscopically without loss of breadth or keeping. But he could draw neither man nor beast, nor ships nor carts; and this was his disadvantage. His good genius under these circumstances was Adrian van der Velde, who enlivened his compositions with spirited figures; and the joint labour of both is a delicate, minute, transparent work, radiant with glow and atmosphere.
HEYLYN (or Heylin), PETER (1600-1662), English historian and controversialist, was born at Burford in Oxfordshire. Having made great progress in his studies, he entered Hart Hall, Oxford, in 1613, afterwards joining Magdalen College; and in 1618 he began to lecture on cosmography, being made fellow of Magdalen in the same year. His lectures, under the title of Μικρόκοσμος, were published in 1621, and many editions of this useful book, each somewhat enlarged, subsequently appeared. Having been ordained in 1624 Heylyn attracted the notice of William Laud, then bishop of Bath and Wells; and in 1628 he married Laetitia, daughter of Thomas Highgate, or Heygate, of Hayes, Middlesex; but he appears to have kept his marriage secret and did not resign his fellowship. After serving as chaplain to Danby in the Channel Islands, he became chaplain to Charles I. in 1630, and was appointed by the king to the rectory of Hemingford, Huntingdonshire. John Williams, bishop of Lincoln, however, refused to institute Heylyn to this living, owing to his friendship with Laud; and in return Charles appointed him a prebendary of Westminster, where he made himself very objectionable to Williams, who held the deanery in commendam. In 1633 he became rector of Alresford, soon afterwards vicar of South Warnborough, and he became treasurer of Westminster Abbey in 1637; but before this date he was widely known as one of the most prominent and able controversialists among the high-church party. Entering with great ardour into the religious controversies of the time he disputed with John Prideaux, regius professor of divinity at Oxford, replied to the arguments of Williams in his pamphlets, “A Coal from the Altar” and “Antidotum Lincolnense,” and was hostile to the Puritan element both within and without the Church of England. He assisted William Noy to prepare the case against Prynne for the publication of his Histriomastix, and made himself useful to the Royalist party in other ways. However, when the Long Parliament met he was allowed to retire to Alresford, where he remained until he was disturbed by Sir William Waller’s army in 1642, when he joined the king at Oxford. At Oxford Heylyn edited Mercurius Aulicus, a vivacious but virulent news-sheet, which greatly annoyed the Parliamentarians; and consequently his house at Alresford was plundered and his library dispersed. Subsequently he led for some years a wandering life of poverty, afterwards settling at Winchester and then at Minster Lovel in Oxfordshire; and he refers to his hardships in his pamphlet “Extraneus Vapulans,” the cleverest of his controversial writings, which was written in answer to Hamon l’Estrange. In 1653 he settled at Lacy’s Court, Abingdon, where he resided undisturbed by the government of the Commonwealth, and where he wrote several books and pamphlets, both against those of his own communion, like Thomas Fuller, whose opinions were less unyielding than his own, and against the Presbyterians and others, like Richard Baxter.
His works, all of which are marred by political or theological rancour, number over fifty. Among the most important are: a legendary and learned History of St. George of Cappadocia, written in 1631; Cyprianus Anglicus, or the history of the Life and Death of William Laud, a defence of Laud and a valuable authority for his life; Ecclesia restaurata, or the History of the Reformation of the Church of England (1661; ed. J. C. Robertson, Cambridge, 1849); Ecclesia vindicata, or the Church of England justified; Aërius redivivus, or History of the Presbyterians; and Help to English History, an edition of which, with additions by P. Wright, was published in 1773. In 1636 he wrote a History of the Sabbath, by order of Charles I. to answer the Puritans; and in consequence of a journey through France in 1625 he wrote A Survey of France, a work, frequently reprinted, which was termed by Southey “one of the liveliest books of travel in its lighter parts, and one of the wisest and most replete with information that was ever written by a young man.” Some verses of merit also came from his active pen, and his poetical memorial of William of Waynflete was published by the Caxton Society in 1851.
Heylyn was a diligent writer and investigator, a good ecclesiastical lawyer, and had always learning at his command. His principles, to which he was honestly attached, were defended with ability; but his efforts to uphold the church passed unrecognized at the Restoration, probably owing to his physical infirmities. His sight had been very bad for several years; yet he rejoiced that his “bad old eyes” had seen the king’s return, and upon this event he preached before a large audience in Westminster Abbey on the 29th of May 1661. He died on the 8th of May 1662 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where he had been sub-dean for some years.
Lives of Heylyn were written by his son-in-law Dr John Barnard or Bernard, and by George Vernon (1682). Bernard’s work was reprinted with Robertson’s edition of Heylyn’s History of the Reformation in 1849.