St. Etheldreda: Twice Married and Still a Virgin

By Kim Rendfeld

The only husband East Anglian Princess Etheldreda ever wanted was Christ, but her family needed her to marry a lord and secure an alliance against the Mercians threatening her homeland. What was a seventh century lady to do?

Known today at Saint Audrey, Etheldreda was a dutiful daughter to King Anna. Politics in her world were violent. Her father had ascended to the throne around 641 after the deaths of two cousins in battle, one of whom seized the crown from a murderous usurper. She probably was 5 years old. She must have sensed that royalty was both privileged and dangerous. Very few kings died of old age or even natural causes.

Her family were devout Christians, even though they were in the Uffing clan, which claimed descent from the pagan god Wodan. Two of her sisters (who also became saints) were abbesses, and Etheldreda wanted that vocation. In Etheldreda’s case—as with all medieval aristocrats—family needs came before her heart’s desire.

Then a teenager, Etheldreda married Tonbert, ealdorman of the Southern Gyrwe in the Fens, around 652. Yet she persuaded him to respect her wish to remain a virgin, not an easy feat when conjugal relations were consider a husband’s (and wife’s) right.

Tonbert might have been much older than his bride and might have already had heirs. If that was the case, one less son to accommodate might have worked to his advantage. If he needed to sate his lust, he could do so with a whore. True, it was a sin, and he would need to confess and do penance. But in early medieval eyes, it was not that big a deal.

Tonbert’s morning gift to Etheldreda, usually bestowed after the marriage was consummated and thus deemed valid, was strategic. It was the Isle of Ely. This tract of land on the border with Mercia was surrounded by water and marshes, formidable natural defenses. In early medieval times, a morning gift would always belong to the wife, even if her husband set her aside.

Etheldreda’s marriage did not protect her father, who was killed with her brother (another saint) in a 754 battle against his longtime adversary, the pagan Mercian King Penda. Anna’s brother Athelhere ascended to the throne and recognized Penda as an overlord.

Etheldreda and Tonbert’s marriage would also be short-lived. Tonbert died around 655, the same year Athelhere and Penda died in battle against Northumbrian King Oswy, a Christian. Etheldreda retired to the Isle of Ely, a common act for early medieval widows. She might have thought she could pursue the religious life she always wanted.

From a 10th century illuminated manuscript
(public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

It was not to be. In 660, her family, probably led by her father’s brother Athelwold, arranged for her to marry Egfrith, Oswy’s heir and a former hostage in King Penda’s court. It was another strategic marriage in which Northumbria and East Anglia could form an alliance against Mercia.

Egfrith was probably 15 at the time. Etheldreda might have been 24. Again, she persuaded her husband to respect her wishes to remain a virgin.

At first, Egfrith consented and held her in high regard. For about a decade, Etheldreda lived at court, enjoying the society of learned monks and nuns and becoming friends with Bishop Wilfred. When Egfrith succeed his father in 670, he had a problem. He needed heirs born within wedlock. He could have forced himself upon his wife—although horrific to modern eyes, medieval folk would not recognize the act as rape. Or he could have asked Etheldreda to retire to an abbey and thus free him for another marriage.

Instead he asked Bishop Wilfred to persuade Etheldreda to willingly come to the marriage bed. Perhaps Egfrith feared losing his alliance with East Anglia, control of his wife’s dowry, and the connections she had made. Perhaps he thought his sons’ connections to the Uffings would help form alliances. Perhaps he truly loved Etheldreda and wanted her to be a real wife.

It would have been easier for Wilfred if he complied with the king’s request and accept the rewards Egfrith offered for the bishop and his churches. But Wilfred did just the opposite. He encouraged Etheldreda to hold fast to her vow of virginity. Maybe he believed Etheldreda’s desire to be a nun was her true calling and feared God’s anger for meddling with that more than the king’s.

Egfrith was none too happy when Etheldreda asked him for his permission to leave. At first, he reluctantly agreed, and she traveled to his aunt’s convent. Apparently, he missed her and was determined to get her back, even if she wanted no such thing.

Egfrith’s aunt advised Etheldreda to flee. Disguised as a beggar, she left with only two nuns to accompany her. The legend includes a few miracles in her escape such as a tide that rose and stayed high at just the right time and a staff that transformed into a tree.

Whatever the circumstances, she made it to Ely, where 600 families already lived, and built a double monastery. Wilfred made her abbess. (Egfrith did remarry. His second wife hated Wilfred.)

Saint Ethelreda's statue at Ely Cathedral
(photo by Jim Linwood, CC BY 2.0,
via Wikimedia Commons)

Etheldreda’s abbey thrived over the next seven years. During that time, she choose an austere lifestyle, wearing only woolen garments rather than linen near the skin. She also abstained from warm baths—not bathing was a form of penance in early medieval times—with the exception of four great festivals. Even then, other nuns had used the water first.

Shortly before she died, she had a quinsy, a painful abscess in her tonsil, which she believed to be punishment for her earlier fondest for necklaces. A surgeon cut it out, but it didn’t help. She died June 23, 679.

Sixteen years after Etheldreda’s death, her sister (a third one) and successor St. Sexburga wanted to move Etheldreda’s remains from a wooden coffin to a more fitting tomb within the church. If we are to believe legend, Etheldreda’s body was not at all corrupted—even the surgical incision had healed—proof that she had been chaste her whole life.

Sources

Bede on St Etheldreda

"St. Etheldreda" by Ewan Macpherson, The Catholic Encyclopedia.

A Dictionary of Saintly Women, Volume 1, Agnes Baillie Cunninghame Dunbar

The Mammoth Book of British Kings and Queens by Mike Ashley

The Peterborough Version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Rewriting Post-Conquest History, Volume 27 of Anglo-Saxon studies, by Malasree Home

“The Retreat of St. Etheldreda” Catholic World, Volume 62, Paulist Fathers

“Etheldreda” (Northumbria Community)

~~~~~~~~~~

Kim Rendfeld has written two novels set in early medieval times and is working on a third.

You can order The Ashes of Heaven's Pillar, about a Saxon peasant who will fight for her children after losing everything else, at Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes. Kim's first novel, The Cross and the Dragon, in which a Frankish noblewoman must contend with a jilted suitor and the fear of losing her husband, is available at Amazon, Kobo, iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, CreateSpace, and other vendors.

Connect with Kim at on her website kimrendfeld.com, her blog, Outtakes of a Historical Novelist at kimrendfeld.wordpress.com, on Facebook at facebook.com/authorkimrendfeld, or follow her on Twitter at @kimrendfeld.

Little Domesday - Norfolk

By Annie Whitehead

I’ve been spending a bit of time in my erstwhile home of Norfolk this summer and it only takes a glance to see how historic this county is. But what do we know of its origins?

Little Domesday includes Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. It is much less of a summary and includes more detail than Domesday, although it is more untidy.

Why did it remain separate from the main Domesday Book?
One suggestion is that it was begun first, and that the rest of the survey was cut down when they saw how bulky the work was becoming. Historian Vivian Hunter Galbraith suggested it might have been a local compilation made by the commission and actually posterior to Volume I. It is, apparently, nearer to the original returns, which could mean it was never sent in and condensed and that it is therefore more accurate.

The Inquisito Eliensis
This is a subsidiary source of information, relating to lands held by the abbot of Ely in Cambs, Hertford, Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Huntingdon.  There is some doubt as to how it came into existence. Galbraith: “It was the return demanded by Ranulf Flambard in 1093, when Abbot Symeon died, and the possessions of the abbey were taken into the king’s hands.” JH Round argued that it was the return of the Royal Writ of 1086 instructing Lanfranc to inquire further into Ely’s losses of lands and rights.

Ely - photograph by Dave Webster

A draft of  Little Domesday may have been revised to produce the I.E. Certainly the correspondence between the two is great and the differences are such that could have resulted from errors in copying.

Norfolk Settlements and their distribution
The total number of separate places - 731 - may not be accurate; today there are many villages bearing the same place name, and it is not always clear whether more than one existed in the eleventh-century. Great and Little Massingham were dealt with as Massingham (today, ½ mile separates them.)

Great Massingham - the pond is an old clay pit

There are places about which very little information is given. Perhaps the Domesday record is incomplete, or the relevant details are included with another village, eg: Rippon Hall is included in the measurement of the neighbouring village of Hevingham, but we are not told whether its men, ploughs, woods and meadow are included in the total for these items in Hevingham. Little Domesday is silent on Bergh Apton. Were it not an Ely manor and therefore in the I.E., we would know nothing about it.

Not all the 731 names appear on the present day map. Some remain as houses or topographical features. Bawsey was recorded as a parish - all that remains today is a church and a farm.

Bawsey Church today - taken from Bawsey Farm

Some idea of the nature of the information in the Domesday folios from Norfolk and of the form in which it is presented may be obtained from the entry for Bircham Newton (Docking):

“Bircham Newton was held by Tove, a freeman, as two carucates. Then as now 4 villeins and 3 bordars.* Then 3 serfs afterwards and now 1. Then one plough on the demesne, afterwards 2 now 3. Then and afterwards 4 ploughs belonging to the men, now 2 ½. Then as now 2 rounceys** and 10 swine. Then 220 sheep, now 540. To this manor belong 11 freemen with 1 ½ carucates and 11 ½ acres. There is 1 church with 20 acres, worth 16 pence. These freemen Eudo his predecessors had; Stigand had the soke. It was then worth 60 shillings, afterwards and now 100. The whole is half a league in length and a half in breadth, and renders 15 pence out of 20 shillings in geld.”

Bircham Newton Church is now a private dwelling

Woodland

The extent of woodland on a holding is usually indicated by the number of swine it could support - the swine fed on the acorns and the beech mast -  providing a convenient measure. Thus the normal entry is ‘wood for n swine’.

The number ranges from 1 or 2 up to 100, with a few entries at over 1000. The larger entries are usually given in round figures, but the small entries are detailed, suggesting exactness.

It may not follow that the swine were actually there - they were just used as a unit of measurement.

A Deer Park is mentioned at Costessey. (Pronounced, should you ever need to know, as Cossey!)

Norfolk Deer

Meadow

The entries are uniform:- “N acres of meadow”, varying from 1-100 and even 200. Figures above 50 though, are rare. Its distribution is concentrated around the Broadlands - winter floods meaning good crops of hay along the margins of the more permanent stretches of water. There was not as much in the Fenland as might be expected, but many of the streams that drained into the Fenland were bordered by fair quantities.

Pasture
Unlike meadow, pasture is not regularly mentioned, in fact only in 11 places, and only 5 of these mention pasture for sheep. Of those it is sometimes unclear whether sheep were actually present, eg: “At Haddisloe in Clavering there was pasture capable (my italics) of supporting a total of 170 sheep.”

Marsh
It is only mentioned in connection with three places. Two lie near to the marshes of the lower Yare and Waveney rivers; the third extends into the Nar Valley which is an extension of the Fenlands. Obviously these cannot have represented all the marsh in a county which includes part of the Fenland and the Broadland.

The pasture for sheep recorded presumably refers to marshy flats on which the sheep fed. But even with these five localities the greater part of the Norfolk marshland remains unaccounted for in the Domesday text.

Fisheries
They are recorded for 1086 in connection with 61 places in Norfolk. Only the number is mentioned - no reference is made to their value, as is the case in other  counties. There is usually one fishery in a vill, but 2,3 or even  or 7 are recorded. There are ½ fisheries, usually when two adjacent villages shared a fishery and a half is recorded for each. There are some cases where the fractions are impossible to combine. Gayton Thorpe in Freebridge had ¼ but we hear nothing of the other ¾. For the most part the fisheries lay in the west - in and near the Fenland. Elsewhere the distribution is sporadic, and quite often they are not mentioned where one would expect - for example, none is mentioned in the Broadland.

There is no mention of sea-fisheries, although we can’t be certain that those in Hunstanton and Heacham (on the West coast) were not sea-fisheries.

The famous striped cliffs on the coast at Hunstanton

Salt Pans

Here again, salt pans (mentioned in connection with 62 villages) are only referred to in number - their values are not recorded. The number ranges from under 1 to over 40. Again, fractions are mentioned, some of which are impossible to combine. At Shernborne in Docking, ½ is mentioned, with no mention of the other ½. The distribution of the salt making industry is confined to the eastern and western marshlands. The big gap separating them is broken only by Burnham on the north coast.

Burnham Overy Staithe

Some villages away from these two regions are recorded as having salt pans but as it is geographically impossible that they were situated in these places it seems that the saltpans attributed to the villages were actually in the Fenland - leaving no doubt that the main salt making activity was centred on the Fenland and Broadland regions.

Domesday entry for Rudham, where my mother now lives - note the
 mention of the salt pan, and Alain of Brittany, our purported ancestor!

Mills 
In 1086, 302 settlements had mills. In 13 other places mills had existed in 1066 but had apparently disappeared by 1086. Normally only the number was stated, varying from a fraction up to 9. Of two holdings in Bayfield (Holt) one had ¼, while the other had ¾. While it seems that neighbouring villages often shared a mill, often it impossible to piece the fractions together. (Snettisham is recorded as having 7 mills - Mill Lane exists today, running near a stream.)

Snettisham Mill - the stream runs behind the building

The mills were watermills, aligned along streams. But the distribution is not what might be expected. The areas with most arable land and the most dense population, are not the areas with the largest number or the largest cluster of mills.

Churches
Churches are mentioned in connection with 217 villages, apart from Norwich, Thetford and Yarmouth. These can’t have been the only ones in the county - Holt and Dunham were important enough to have markets, and yet no church is recorded for either place.

St Mary's Old Hunstanton - 'modern' - from the 14thc!

There are some hundreds with only one church. The I.E. records 7 places with churches not recorded in Domesday. Some had two churches and form double parishes today. Again there are untraceable fractions.

Priests are recorded where there is no church. At Hevingham a priest sang ‘three masses a week’ - likely then that there was a church. Normally the value was stated with the number of acres it held, thus at Appleton, Freebridge, “one church with 12 acres, and it is worth 12 pence.”

Livestock
Horses are frequently recorded, and groups of wild or unbroken mares were found in many parishes. The most common variety of horse was the rouncey. Donkeys are only occasionally mentioned. Goats are recorded for a number of holdings, but the flocks were much smaller than those of sheep, usually under 50, sometimes less than 10.

Cows must have been kept in considerable numbers for breeding oxen for the land, but strangely they are seldom mentioned.

Sheep are associated with the salt marshes. The largest number, 1300, was at West Walton in the Fenland. It’s possible that some sheep of the northwest hundreds pastured on the salt marshes of the coast. Numbers of sheep increased and decreased between 1066 and 1086 ith no real explanation.

Markets
There are only 3. ½ at Dunham, ¼ at Litcham, one at Holt. There is nothing to indicate why there should be one at the first two, and no trace of the missing fractions. It must be a shortlist which does not cover all the markets of Norfolk.

The old market place at Holt. Only the street sign - on the building on the left- offers a clue to its origins

Beehives
Occasionally recorded along with livestock, the number is usually under 10, although 27 are recorded at Methwold. The value is never stated. Beekeeping was important for mead, wax and sugar. The entries cannot represent all the hives in Norfolk. Occasionally a render of honey is stated where no hives are mentioned.

Little at all remains to be seen of Domesday Norfolk. But the traces of this historic county are still there to be found, and Little Domesday survives as a remarkably detailed record of what was there in the eleventh-century, and gave me plenty of clues for modern locations.


Further reading:
Domesday Studies - the Eastern Counties R Welldon-Finn
The Norman Conquest and its effects on the Economy 1066-1086 R Welldon-Finn
History from the Sources - The Domesday Book ed. J Morris
The Domesday Geography of Eastern England HC Darby
English Society in the early middle Ages - DM Stenton

*bordar - A person ranking below villeins and above serfs in the social hierarchy of a manor, holding just enough land to feed a family (about 5 acres) and required to provide labour on the demesne on specified days of the week.
**The term rouncey (also spelled rouncy or rounsey) was used during the Middle Ages to refer to an ordinary, all-purpose horse. They were used for riding, but could also be trained for war. It was not unknown for them to be used as pack horses.

[All photographs apart from Ely taken by, and copyright of, the author]

Annie Whitehead is a history graduate and prize-winning author. Her novel, To Be A Queen, is the story of Aethelflaed, daughter of Alfred the Great, who came to be known as the Lady of the Mercians. It was long-listed for the Historical Novel Society’s Indie Book of the Year 2016 and has been awarded an indieBRAG medallion. Her new release, Alvar the Kingmaker, which tells the story of Aelfhere of Mercia, a nobleman in the time of King Edgar, is available now.

Annie's Author Page

Alvar the Kingmaker

To Be A Queen

Annie's Website

Annie's Blog
Annie has also participated in the collaborative project 1066 turned Upside Down which is available now as an e-book