Bells Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely | Page 4

went by unfrequented roads, so as to escape observation. At one point of their journey a second miraculous event is recorded. The queen had lain down to sleep while her attendants kept watch, and had stuck her pilgrim's staff in the ground. When she awoke, this staff was found to have taken root and already to have brought forth leaves. It was left standing, and grew into a flourishing tree; and the place, from the circumstance, was named Etheldrede's-Stow.[4] A church was afterwards built and dedicated to S. Etheldreda.
In course of time the three pilgrims arrived safely at their destination. Wilfrid, the archbishop, soon joined them. He had lost favour with King Egfrid, being supposed to have influenced the queen in her decision to take the veil. The king, regarding his marriage with Etheldreda as being de facto dissolved, took another wife, who was for various reasons much opposed to Wilfrid. The archbishop also greatly resented the action of the king and Archbishop Theodore in dividing his diocese without his consent into four different sees, and he was at one time banished and at another imprisoned.
Etheldreda now set to work in earnest to establish a religious house. Her buildings were begun in 673. This year is accordingly taken as the date of the foundation of the monastery and of the town itself. King Ethelbert is indeed said to have built a church a short distance from the site of the present cathedral, at a place called Cratendune[5]; but there is much uncertainty as to the fact, and some considerable difficulties in reconciling the different references to it. It is stated that this church had but a short existence, being destroyed by Penda, King of Mercia. This Ethelbert was the Bretwalda, King of Kent, husband of the Christian queen Bertha. After his conversion he was instrumental in furthering the spread of Christianity among the East Saxons, and also apparently in East Anglia, one of the East Anglian kings, Redwald, having (but only for a time) given his adherence to the Christian religion. As the building of this church near Ely is stated to have been undertaken on the advice of Augustine, who died in 604, we have an approximate date for it, since Augustine only arrived in England in 597. Whether this church was so built by Ethelbert or not, it seems clear there was some church in a state of partial decay standing in 673, because it is recorded that at first Etheldreda designed to restore it and to make it the centre of her religious work; but the present site was judged to be more suitable, and there she began to build. The few remaining inhabitants of Cratendune soon abandoned their dwellings, and came to live near the rising buildings of the monastery.
Upon the death of King Anna, who fell in battle against Penda, King of the Mercians, he was succeeded in turn by his brothers Adelbert and Ethelwold, and the kingdom then went to Adulphus, Anna's son and Etheldreda's brother. He greatly assisted his sister in raising the buildings of her monastery, contributing considerably to the cost; but the plans and arrangements are thought to have been designed by Wilfrid, who is known to have spent much time at Ely. It was he who gave his benediction when Etheldreda was formally instituted as abbess, and who admitted the earliest members of the house. As was not unusual, the society included monks as well as nuns. In later times the Benedictine rule was adopted. In the very year of the foundation, possibly on account of its royal foundress and the support of the king, her brother, the special privilege of exemption from interference, either by king or bishop, was assigned to it in a national assembly. This at least seems to be the meaning of the decree, as given in "Liber Eliensis," that with respect to the Isle of Ely, now dedicated to God's service, "Non de Rege nec de Episcopo libertas loci diminueretur, vel in posterum confringeretur."
To endow and provide for her monastery, the foundress assigned her entire principality of the isle. In this way the temporal power, which was afterwards so peculiar a feature in the privileges of the bishops, was acquired. In about five years Wilfrid went to Rome to obtain the Papal confirmation of the grants and liberties of the new foundation; but Etheldreda did not live to see his return. She died of some contagious disease, June 23, 679, in the seventh year after she had become abbess. She was buried, by her own directions, not in the church, but in the nuns' graveyard. She was certainly not fifty years of age at the time of her death. As will be seen hereafter, her body was removed into the church in the time of