[Illustration:  THE PRIORY, TYNEMOUTH.]

When the pirate ships of the Danes swept down upon our coasts, the Priory of St. Oswin, conspicuous on its bold headland, could not hope to escape their ravages.  It was destroyed by the fierce invaders; but King Ecgfrith[1] of Northumbria restored the shattered shrine.  Again, in the year 865, it was sacked and burnt, and the poor nuns of St. Hilda, who had already fled from Hartlepool to Tynemouth hoping to find safety, were ruthlessly slain and earned the crown of martyrdom.  It was again restored; but, five years later, the destroying hands of the invaders fell on the place once more, and for two hundred years the Priory stood roofless and tenantless.  After the Norman Conquest, Waltheof, Earl of Northumberland bestowed it upon the monks of Jarrow.  The rediscovery of the tomb of St. Oswyn in 1065, had gladdened the hearts of the monks, and forthwith the monastery was reared anew over the ashes of its former self.

[Footnote 1:  Pronounced “Edge-frith.”]

Mowbray, the next Earl of Northumberland, re-endowed the building.  He had quarrelled with the Bishop of Durham, so in order to do him a displeasure, he made Tynemouth Priory subordinate to St. Albans instead of to Durham and brought monks from St. Albans to dwell there.  The new buildings were finished in 1110, and the bones of St. Oswyn enshrined within them, the right of sanctuary being extended for a mile around his resting-place.  This right, however, was already in existence, and had been appealed to in 1095 by Mowbray himself, who fled here pursued by the followers of William Rufus, against whom he had rebelled.  The King’s men disregarded the sanctuary right, captured Mowbray, and sent him prisoner to Durham[2]. [Footnote 2:  See account of Bamburgh Castle.]

In later days the queens of Edward I. and Edward II. visited Tynemouth Priory; and it was from Tynemouth that the foolish King Edward II. and his worthless favourite Piers Gaveston fled from the angry barons to Scarborough.  In the reign of Edward III., after the battle of Neville’s Cross, David of Scotland was brought here by his captors on his way to Bamburgh, from whence he was sent to the Tower.

At the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. the Priory was inhabited by eighteen monks with their Prior.  They bowed to the King’s decree and left the monastery; but the church continued to be used as the parish church until the days of Charles II., when Christ Church was built.

The Priory has many times formed the subject of pictures by famous artists, the best known being that of no less a genius than J. M. W. Turner; and its picturesque ruins are a well-known landmark to the hundreds of voyagers who pass it on their journeys, outward or homeward bound.  Within the last few years the Priory has been in some measure repaired and restored.