serve sound religion and morality very uncertainly and equivocally.

A party striving for ascendancy is naturally prone to magnify those who raise its credit. If religious, it proclaims the superior morality of its more serviceable members. Anglo-Saxon efforts for extirpating paganism and establishing monachism were thus facilitated. To many devotees, conspicuous for zeal or self-denial, was attributed a saintly character, and eventually their tombs were eagerly frequented as the seats of miraculous agency. Nor did their posthumous importance fade until the Reformation. Even then long prescription, and services really rendered in some cases to religion, pleaded successfully against a total exclusion of such names from the national calendar. Others of them have escaped oblivion from local associations.

Upon several among these ancient saints sufficient notice has already been bestowed incidentally. Chad, whom Theodore displaced from York and subsequently seated at Lichfield, may be further mentioned because the homily for his day proves wheel-carriages to have been then in use. Theodore found him in the habit of undertaking pedestrian journeys far above his strength to preach the Gospel. He not only mounted him on horseback, but insisted also on his using a horse-wain occasionally'.

Another exemplary personage whom Theodore drew

1 Hine se ercebiscop mid his agenne hond on horse ahof, forthon he hine swithe haligne wer gemette: and he hine nedde that he swa hider on horse-wegen were, swa hit neod-thearfe were.-(Bibl. Bodl. MSS. Junii. 24. Hom. 1.) Him the archbishop with his own hand mounted on a horse, because

he found him a very holy man: he compelled him also to travel about in a horse-wain, if the case required. St. Chad's conveyance was, probably, a rude specimen of that kind, known latterly as the | taxed cart. Chad had a brother of the same name, who was bishop of London.

from monastic privacy to episcopal cares, was Cuthbert, the saint of Durham. Few authentic particulars respecting him are, however, extant, beyond his great reluctance to become a bishop, and his rigid perseverance, after yielding to such compulsion, in the monkish dress

Etheldred, or Audrey, Ely's great attraction, was chiefly famed for an invincible refusal to gratify either of her husbands, and an ascetic piety hardly reconcilable with strict cleanliness*. Her death seems to have

happened rather suddenly, from an operation undertaken by some empiric, as he thought, successfully; but his patient died on the third day afterwards'. Her virginity was regarded as indisputable, because her body was found undecomposed, sixteen years after death. Such a deviation from the ordinary course of nature was, indeed, regularly considered as a proof of unbroken continence*.

The memory of Frideswide yet lingers at Christchurch, pre-eminent even in Oxford, among seats and seminaries of learning and religion. She was daughter of Didan, a princely chieftain who ruled in that venerable city with some sort of delegated authority. Her claim to saintly honours appears to have rested on a

her more holy, or less cleanly, let others decide."-(FULLER, Church Hist. 91.) The homily adds to the account of her dress, that she wolde seld-hwænne hire lic bathian | butan to heah tidum, and thonne heo wolde ærest ealle tha bathian the on tham minstre wæron, and wolde him thenian mid hire thinenum, and thonne hi sylfe bathian, (Brit. Mus. MSS. Cotton, Julius. E. 7. f. 93.) would rarely bathe her body unless on high days, and then she would first have all them bathe who were in the minster, and would wait upon them with her maids, and then bathe herself.

a certain physician in the believing company, named Cynefryth, and some people told her that this physician would reduce the swelling; which he soon did, and relieved her from the pain. He thought that she might recover, but she passed out of the world with glory to God, on the third day after the ulcer was opened. The ulcerated tumour which had so fatal a result, was under the chin, and Etheldred appears to have considered it as a sort of judgment for the pleasure she had formerly taken in wearing necklaces.

2 Hit is swutol that heo was ungewemmed mæden, thonne hire lichama no mihte formolsnian on eorthan.-(Ib. f. 94.) It is manifest that she was an undefiled maiden, when her body could not decompose in the ground.

3 In one of the Bodleian MSS. (Laud. 114.) containing lives of saints, and St. Austin De Doctriná Christianá, Frideswide's father is called a subregulus. f. 132.

determination to live as a nun rather than as a distin

guished married lady'.

Edmund, king of East-Anglia, to whose admitted sanctity the Suffolk Bury owed eventually a splendid abbey, was unmercifully scourged against a tree by some Danish pirates; and, like another Sebastian, then transfixed with spears. The pagan bigotry of these

fierce invaders formed a hateful contrast with the

Christian resignation of their victim. Hence pious minds embalmed the memory of Edmund, and monastic revenue was certain to wait on his remains. His head being stricken off, was cast into a tangled thicket. There, ancient legends tell, it found protection from a hungry beast of prey. Perhaps a modern might suppose the animal to have been restrained by fear; for the same authorities that commemorate its abstinence, record another circumstance fully as remarkable. Different individuals of a party, scattered in a wood, were in the habit of calling out occasionally, "Where art thou, comrade?" To those in quest of Edmund's head the usual answer, "Here, here, here," was regularly returned from a single spot. To this all the stragglers naturally repaired, and were amazed on finding every reply to have come from no other than the object of their search, respectfully guarded within the talons of a wolf3.

1

"Migravit igitur Fritheswit- | royal residence, and slain in cha virgo ad dnm quarto decimo 870.-(ASSER, 14, 20. BATTELY, Kalendas Novembris ; anno ab Antiquitt. S. Edm. Burg. p. 15.) incarnatione dni septingentessimo He met his death at Hoxne, in vicessimo septimo."-Brit. Mus. Suffolk. The Danes were comMSS. Cotton, Nero. E. 1. f. manded by Hinguar, as the homily 363. spells his name, but it is more usually spelt without the aspirate.

2 Crowned in 856, being fifteen years of age, at Bures, St. Mary's, in Suffolk, on the Stour, then a

3 This is gravely introduced into the service for St. Edmund's day.

Among the northern saints was Oswald, king of Northumbria. He had, indeed, fairly earned respectful remembrance in that part of England. It was largely indebted to him for conversion. But he rendered this important service by means of a native church. His invitation brought Aidan from Scotland; and that missionary's dialect being ill understood in Northumbria, Oswald acted as interpreter. His charitable disposition was displayed in the surrender of an Easter dinner, and