The old church must have looked down on many a wild and curious scene in the days when Scot and Englishman sought only opportunities to do each other an injury, and the river-valleys were the natural passes through which the tide of invasion, raid, and reprisal flowed.

In the beginning of the reign of Edward III., about 24,000 Scots, under Douglas and Murray, crossed the Tyne near Haydon Bridge, and rode on to plunder the richer lands that lay to the south and west.  They reached Stanhope and encamped there for a time.  The young king set out northwards with a great army to punish these marauders, and he was told by his scouts that they had hastily left Stanhope on his approach.  He and his army pushed on quickly until they reached Bardon Mill; and, crossing the Tyne, marched down to Haydon Bridge, expecting the Scots to return by the way they went.  It was miserable weather, and the feeding of so many thousands of men was no little problem.  They scoured all the country round for provisions, getting the most from the Hexham Abbey lands.  Meanwhile it rained and rained, and no Scots appeared.  After a week of waiting, Edward, in great disappointment, went to Haltwhistle, while his followers reconnoitered in all directions.  Finally, he had the mortification of learning that the Scots were still at Stanhope, but before anything more could be done, they betook themselves back to Scotland by a different route, and there was nothing left for Edward but to give up the expedition in despair.

The bridge at Haydon appears to have been the only one for some distance up and down the river in the sixteenth century, for we read of its being barred and chained, on various occasions of marauding troubles in Tynedale, to prevent the free-booters re-crossing the river.

In the days of Charles I. Colonel Lilburn marched to Haydon Bridge in command of some troops of the Roundheads, on his way to join their comrades at Hexham as a counter-move to the operations of the Royalist troops in the North.  Little more than thirty years after this, when the days of Cromwell’s power had come and gone, and Charles II. ruled at Whitehall, the old Grammar School was founded at Haydon Bridge in 1685 by a clergyman, the Rev. John Shafto.  Various changes have taken place in the school from time to time, necessitated by the gradual changes and educational needs of the passing years; and now, like the Grammar School of Queen Elizabeth at Hexham, it has been entirely re-constituted to meet modern requirements.  John Martin, the famous painter of “The Plains of Heaven,” received the beginnings of his education at this school.  He was born at East Land Ends farm in 1789.  In after years the authorities of Haydon Bridge Reading Room, wishing no doubt to afford a perfect example to future generations of the truth of the proverb concerning a prophet and his own country, refused some of Martin’s pictures, which the gifted painter himself offered to them—­an act which their successors have doubtless regretted.