In the church is buried Sir Adam de Athol, Lord of Jesmond, and Mary, his wife.  It is supposed that this Sir Adam gave the Town Moor to the people of Newcastle, though this has been disputed.  A fine picture of the “Last Supper,” by Giordano, presented by Major Anderson in 1804, hangs in the church.

St. John’s Church ranks next to St. Andrew’s in point of age; there are fragments of Norman work in the building, and it is known to have been standing in 1297.  To-day the venerable pile, with its age worn stones, stands out in sharper contrast to its environment than does any other building in the town, surrounded as it is by modern shops and offices.  The memories it evokes, and the past for which it stands, are such as the citizens of Newcastle will not willingly let die; and when, a few years ago, a proposal was made for its removal, the proposition aroused such a storm of popular feeling against it that it was incontinently abandoned.

All Saints’ Church was built in 1789, on the site of an older building which was in existence in 1296, and which became very unsafe.  Here is kept one of the most interesting monuments in the city—­the monumental brass which once covered the tomb of Roger Thornton, a wealthy merchant of Newcastle, and a great benefactor to all the churches.  He died in 1429.  He gave to St. Nicholas’ Church its great east window; but, on its needing repair in 1860, it was removed entirely, and the present one, in memory of Dr. Ions, inserted; and the only fragment left of Thornton’s window is a small circular piece inset in a plain glass window in the Cathedral.  He gave much money to Hexham Abbey also.

Besides the famous men already mentioned in connection with the town, Newcastle possesses other well-known names not a few.  In the Middle Ages, Duns Scotus, the man whose skill in argument earned for him the title of “Doctor Subtilis,” owned Northumberland as his home, and received his education in the monastery of the Grey Friars, which stood near the head of the present Grey Street.  He returned to this monastery after some years of study at Oxford; in 1304 he was teaching divinity in Paris.

Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London in the reign of Edward VI., whose Northumbrian birthplace at Willimoteswick has already been noted, received his early education at the Grammar School in Newcastle, and on going to Cambridge was a student at Pembroke.  We are told he was the ablest man among the Reformers for piety, learning and judgment.  As is well known, he died at the stake in 1555.

William and Elizabeth Elstob, who lived in Newcastle at the end of the seventeenth century, were learned Saxon scholars, but were so greatly in advance of the education of their times that they met with little encouragement or sympathy in their labours.

Charles Avison, the musician and composer, was organist of St. John’s in 1736, and afterwards of St. Nicholas’.

It was he to whom Browning referred in the lines—­