Æthelthryth (or Æðelþryð) (c. 636 – June 23, 679) is the proper name for the popular Anglo-Saxon saint often known, particularly in a religious context, as Etheldreda or by the pet form of Audrey (or variations). She was an East Anglian princess, a Fenland queen and Abbess of Ely in the English county of Cambridgeshire.

Life[link]

Æthelthryth was probably born in Exning, near Newmarket in Suffolk. She was one of four daughters of King Anna of East Anglia (killed c.653), all of whom eventually retired from secular life and founded abbeys.

Æthelthryth made an early first marriage (c. 652) to Tondberct, chief or prince of the South Gyrvians, or "fenmen" (gyr, Old English "fen") (d. 655). However, she managed to persuade her husband to respect her vow of perpetual virginity that she had made prior to their marriage. Upon his death in 655, Æthelthryth retired to the Isle of Ely, given to her as her morning gift by Tondberct.

Æthelthryth subsequently remarried in 660, this time to Ecgfrith, King of Northumbria again for political reasons. Shortly after Ecgfrith's accession to the throne [670 AD], Æthelthryth became a nun. This step possibly led to Ecgfrith's long quarrel with Wilfrid bishop of York. One account holds that while Ecgfrith initially agreed that Æthelthryth should continue to remain a virgin, in about 672 he wished to consummate their marriage and even attempted to bribe Wilfrid to use his influence on the queen to convince her. This tactic failing, the king tried to take his queen from the cloister by force. Æthelthryth fled to Ely with two faithful nuns and managed to evade capture thanks, in part, to the miraculous rising of the tide. Some versions of the legend relate that she halted on the journey at "Stow" and sheltered under a miraculously growing ash tree which came from her staff planted in the ground. Stow came to be known as "St Etheldred's Stow" when a church was built to commemorate this. (It is more likely that this refers to another Stow,^[1][2] near Threekingham.)^[3][4] Ecgfrith later married a second wife, Eormenburg, and expelled Wilfrid from his kingdom in 678. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Æthelthryth founded the monastery at Ely in 673; the monastery was later destroyed in the Danish invasion of 870.

Legacy[link]

Bede tells how after her death, Æthelthryth's bones were disinterred by her sister and successor, Abbess Seaxburh of Ely, and buried in a white, marble coffin from Cambridge. The sister, Æthelthryth's niece, and great-niece, all royal princesses and two of them widowed queens (of Kent and Mercia), followed her as abbesses of Ely. In Ely Place, Holborn, London, there is a church dedicated to St Etheldreda. It was originally part of the palace of the Bishops of Ely. After the English Reformation, the palace was used by the Spanish Ambassadors, enabling Roman Catholic worship to continue in the church.

The common version of Æthelthryth's name was St. Awdrey, which is the origin of the word tawdry, which derived from the fact that her admirers bought modestly concealing lace goods at an annual fair held in her name in Ely. As years passed, this lacework came to be seen as old-fashioned or cheap and poor quality goods. This was particularly so in the 17th century when some Puritans in eastern England looked down on any form of lacy dressiness.^[5]

See also[link]

Saint Etheldreda's statue in Ely Cathedral

• Wuffing dynasty family tree
• Incorruptibility
• The hymn 'Aethelthryth' by the Venerable Bede^[6]
• Stow Fair in South Kesteven, alternative location for the miracle.

References[link]

• Virginia Blanton (2007) Signs of Devotion: the cult of St Aethelthryth in medieval England, 695-1615. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press ISBN 0-271-02984-6^[7]
• McCash, June Hall & Judith Clark Barban, ed. and trans. (2006) The Life of Saint Audrey; a text by Marie de France. Jefferson, NC: McFarland ISBN 0-7864-2653-5
• M. Dockray-Miller (2009) Saints Edith and Æthelthryth: Princesses, Miracle Workers, and their Late Medieval Audience; the Wilton Chronicle and the Wilton Life of St Æthelthryth, Turnhout: Brepols Publishers ISBN 978-2-503-52836-6.
• Maccarron, Máirín, "The Adornment of Virgins: Æthelthryth and Her Necklaces," in Elizabeth Mullins and Diarmuid Scully (eds), Listen, O Isles, unto me: Studies in Medieval Word and Image in honour of Jennifer O’Reilly (Cork, 2011), 142-155.

Footnotes

External links[link]

• Richard John King, 1862. Handbook of the Cathedrals of England (Oxford) (On-line text)
•  "St. Etheldreda". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. 
• The Life of St. Aethelthryth by Ælfric

Dr Arthur Wills OBE (born 1926) is a musician, composer, and professor. He was Director of Music at Ely Cathedral from 1958 to 1990, and also held a Professorship at the Royal Academy of Music in London from 1964 until 1992. He has toured extensively as a recitalist in Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong, and has broadcast, appeared on TV and made many recordings, both as a soloist and with the Ely Choir.

Works[link]

He has composed prolifically for the organ and choir. His ensemble works include a Concerto with Strings and Timpani, a Concerto for Guitar and Organ, and a Symphonic Suite: "The Fenlands" for Brass Band and Organ.

His Choral Concerto, "The Gods of Music" for Organ, Chorus and Brass with Percussion Ensemble was commissioned for the Biannual Keyboard Festival of the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia in 1992.

His secular music includes seven song cycles, and an opera, Winston and Julia, based on the George Orwell novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

His book, Organ, appeared in the Menuhin Music Guide Series in 1984, with a second edition in 1993 and a third reprint in 1997.

The Ely Choir has recorded a CD (HAVPCD 197) of his choral and organ music from 1955 to 1990 on Herald AV Publications. In May 1999 Hyperion Records reissued two recordings from the early 1980s on one CD (CDH55003): his Symphonic Suite: "The Fenlands" for Organ and Brass Band, including also music by Elgar and Walton, together with his transcription of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition for solo Organ.

His recording Full Stops, was first issued in 1978. It includes his Variations on "Amazing Grace". It was issued on CD (84305) in 1995 by Meridian.

In celebration of Wills' 75th birthday in 2001, Jeremy Filsell recorded a CD of his organ music on the organ of Tonbridge School Chapel. Wills is the voice of the narrator in his Variations on a Theme of Henry Purcell, "Wondrous Machine" (Guild GMCD 7225).

Novello published Will's transcription for organ of three movements from Gustav Holst's The Planets Suite: Mars, Venus and Jupiter. These were recordings of Joseph Nolan at the organ of Ripon Cathedral on Herald AV Publications (HAVPCD 274).

Robert Crowley studied with Dr. Wills at the RAM and has recorded Icons (LAMM168D), a CD of Dr. Wills' organ music on the rebuilt organ of Ely Cathedral. The CD's record label, Lammas, is headed by Lance Andrews who was a chorister at Ely Cathedral in the early 1950s when Dr. Wills was Assistant Organist.

Arthur Wills' memoirs, Full with Wills (ISBN 1905203896), were published by Pen Press in 2006.

Awards[link]

Arthur Wills was appointed OBE in 1990.

External links[link]

• Herald AV Publications - HAVPCD197: The Praises of the Trinity
• Herald AV Publications - HAVPCD274: SuperNova

Armorials of Bishop of Ely: Gules, three ducal coronets or^[1]

The Bishop of Ely is the Ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Ely in the Province of Canterbury. The diocese roughly covers the county of Cambridgeshire (with the exception of the Soke of Peterborough), together with a section of north-west Norfolk and has its see in the City of Ely, Cambridgeshire, where the seat is located at the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity. The current bishop is the Rt Revd Stephen Conway, the 69th Lord Bishop of Ely, who signs +Stephen Elien: (abbreviation of the Latin Eliensis, genetive case, meaning "of Ely"). The Bishops of Ely now reside in the Bishop's House, Ely, the former Cathedral Deanery. Bishop Conway became Bishop of Ely in 2010, translated from the Diocese of Salisbury, where he was Bishop of Ramsbury.^[2]

The roots of the diocese of Ely are ancient and the area of Ely was part of the patrimony of Saint Etheldreda. Prior to the elevation of Ely Cathedral as the seat of the diocese, it existed as first as a convent of religious sisters and later as a monastery. It was led by first by an abbess and later by an abbot. The convent was founded in the city in 673. After St Etheldreda's death in 679 she was buried outside the church. Her remains were later translated inside, the foundress being commemorated as a great Anglican saint. The monastery, and much of the city of Ely, were destroyed in the Danish invasions that began in 869 or 870. A new Benedictine monastery was built and endowed on the site by Saint Athelwold, Bishop of Winchester, in 970, in a wave of monastic refoundations which also included Peterborough and Ramsey.^[3] In the Domesday Book in 1086, the Bishop of Ely is referenced as a landholder of Foxehola. This became a cathedral in 1109, after a new Diocese of Ely was created out of land taken from the Diocese of Lincoln. From that time, the line of bishops begins.

History[link]

The earliest historical notice of Ely is given by the Venerable Bede who writes (Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, IV, xix):

"Ely is in the province of the East Angles, a country of about six hundred families, in the nature of an island, enclosed either with marshes or waters, and therefore it has its name from the great abundance of eels which are taken in those marshes."

This district was assigned in 649 to saint Æthelthryth, daughter of Anna, king of the East Angles, as a dowry in her marriage with Tonbert of the South Girvii. After her second marriage to Ecgfrith of Northumbria, she became a nun, and in 673 returned to Ely and founded a monastery on the site of the present cathedral. As endowment she gave it her entire principality of the isle, from which subsequent Bishops of Ely derived their temporal power. Æthelthryth died in 679, and her shrine became a place of pilgrimage. In 870 the monastery was destroyed by the Danes, having already given to the Church four sainted abbesses, Saints Æthelthryth, her sister Seaxburgh, the latter's daughter Ermenilda, and Ermenilda's daughter Werburgh. Probably under their rule there was a community of monks as well as a convent of nuns, but when in 970 the monastery was restored by King Edgar and Bishop Ethelwold it was a foundation for monks only.

For more than a century the monastery flourished, and about the year 1105 Abbot Richard suggested the creation of the See of Ely, to relieve the enormous Diocese of Lincoln. The pope's brief erecting the new bishopric was issued 21 November 1108, and on 17 October 1109 King Henry I granted his charter, the first bishop being Hervé le Breton, or Harvey (1109–1131), former Bishop of Bangor. The monastery church thus became one of the "conventual" cathedrals. Of this building the transepts and two bays of the nave already existed, and in 1170 the nave as it stands to-day (a complete and perfect specimen of late Norman work) was finished. As the bishops succeeded to the principality of St Etheldreda they enjoyed palatine power and great resources.

The Bishops of Ely frequently held high office in the State and the roll includes many names of famous statesmen, including eight Lord Chancellors and six Lord Treasurers. The Bishops of Ely spent much of their wealth on their cathedral, with the result that Ely can show examples of gothic architecture of many periods. They also had a London residence called Ely Place.

Among the bishops Geoffry Riddell (1174–1189) built the nave and began the west tower, Eustace (1198–1215) the West Porch, while Hugh de Northwold (1229–1254) rebuilt the Norman choir and John Hotham (1316–1337) rebuilt the collapsed central tower – the famous Octagon. Bishop Hugh (or Hugo) de Balsham (1258–1286) founded Peterhouse, the first college at the University of Cambridge, while Bishop John Alcock (1486–1500) was the founder of Jesus College.

Bishop Goodrich was a reformer and during his episcopate the monastery was dissolved. The last bishop in communion with the see of Rome was Thomas Thirlby. Since the Reformation, notable bishops have included Lancelot Andrewes, Matthew Wren, Peter Gunning and Simon Patrick.

List of abbesses and abbots[link]

Convent of sisters (673–870)[link]

• Etheldreda (673–679)
• Seaxburh (sister of Etheldreda) (679–c.699)
• Ermenilda (daughter of Seaxburh and Eorcenberht of Kent) (c.699–c.700)
• Werburh (born c.675, daughter of Ermenilda and Wulfhere of Mercia)
• ?

Benedictine monastery (970–1109)[link]

• Brythnoth (970—)
• Thurstan (—1072) — the last Saxon abbot
• Theodwin (secular governor)
• Godfrey (secular governor)
• Simeon (1082–1094) — began building the cathedral
• [vacancy]
• Richard FitzRichard de Clare (1100–1107) — the last abbot

List of bishops (1109—)[link]

From then on, Ely was under the bishop of Ely.

Notes[link]

References[link]

• British History Online Bishops of Ely 1066-1300 accessed on October 25, 2007
• Fryde, E. B.; Greenway, D. E.; Porter, S.; Roy, I. (1996). Handbook of British Chronology (Third revised ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 244–246. ISBN 0-521-56350-X. 

Further reading[link]

Peter Meadows, ed., Ely: Diocese and Bishops, 1109-2009 (The Boydell Press, 2010).

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