Hexhamshire, 1855

HEXHAMSHIRE is an interesting district, comprising the parishes of Hexham, Allendale, and St. John Lee. It anciently constituted a regality, county palatine, or liberty, and diocese, hut was united quod civilia, to the county of Northumberland, by the act 14 Elizabeth, cap. 13. lt had been previously held, both as a regality and diocese, by the Bishops of Hexham. buring the calamitous period of the Danish invasions, the monks of St. Cuthbert, in the diocese of Durham, contrived to obtain possession of the regality aud diocese, but Henry II., afterwards seized and imprisoned Ralph Flambard, Bishop of Durham, and gave the regality of Hexham, as a barony and a spiritual jurisdiction, to the archepiscopal see of York, and although, in the reign of Henry VIII., the barony was given to the king in exchange for certain royal possessions granted to the archbishop, the ecclesiastical jurisdic· tion was still retained, so that until the ecclesiastical commissioners transferred all places within this peculiar jurisdiction from the archdiocese of York to the archdeaconry of Northumberland and diocese of Durham, Hexhamshire was within the jurisdiction of the archdiocese.