Hexham Abbey does not stand alone as a religious house owing its origin to the self-sacrifice and piety of a woman. Queen Etheldreda, the wife of Ecgfrid, King of Northumbria, gave land, which formed part of her dower (including the parishes of Hexham, Allendale, and St John Lee), to St Wilfrid. A monastery was founded in 674, and a church built, which, according to Richard, prior of Hexham, must have been one of the largest and most sumptuously equipped in England at that time. Hexham came, after nearly a century and a half, under the jurisdiction of York, and its church attained the dignity of a cathedral with right of sanctuary. The sanctuary extended for a mile in all directions--one boundary being in mid-stream. Discreditable stories are told of a certain Walter Biwell, chaplain to Bernard de Baliol, who made attacks on people and their property while crossing the river. Subsequently, and owing to these depredations, the boundary was placed on the northern bank of the stream. After the destruction of the cathedral by the Danes (about the year 821) and until after the Norman Conquest, only a shattered fragment of the building remained. Poverty was for years the lot of the canons regular of St Augustine, or Black Canons as they were called. In time, however, they acquired wealth, land, and many privileges, until at the close of the 13th century, Hexham was among the most important of the monastic houses in the Borderland. The story of the surrender of Hexham to Henry VIII. is full of dramatic and romantic happenings. An appeal from Archbishop Lee to Mr Secretary Cromwell on the plea that the abbey served as a house of call and entertainment for north-bound travellers proved of no avail. Four commissioners were empowered to suppress the abbey, but before reaching Hexham they received tidings of the determination of the canons to garrison the abbey and to resist to the last. Two commissioners decided to remain behind while the two more venturous rode on to find the town full of people, many of them armed, the gates of the abbey shut, and the canons in warlike array standing on the steeple and on the leads of the church. From their point of vantage, the canons defied the commissioners to the death, but were advised by them to take counsel together. After consulting for some time in the abbey they once more refused to surrender, upon which the commissioners returned to Corbridge. The canons had a wily and unscrupulous adviser in John Heron, sometimes called Little John, a Border robber, who persuaded them to maintain their defiant position, hoping by this means to bring about a general rising in the northern counties and to profit in the consequent plunder and robbery. His infamous scheme was attended with success, and shortly afterwards the prior of Hexham and six of the canons were hanged at Tyburn, while the site of the abbey was granted to Sir Richard Carnaby, a devoted royalist, who died without an heir in 1843.