(A.D. 743.)
[Some ancient martyrologies, others on July 8th. Authority:--The Ely
Chronicle, and a Life supposed to be by Goscelin, the historian of S.
Werburga.]
The royal race of the Uffings of East Anglia was remarkable for the
crowd of saints which it produced. King Anna, who married the sister
of Hilda, the celebrated abbess of Whitby, became father of three
daughters and a son. The son became in his turn the father of three
daughters, two of whom were in succession abbesses of Hackness in
Northumbria, founded by their grand-aunt S. Hilda, and the last,
Eadburga, became abbess of Repton.
The three daughters of Anna,--Etheldreda, Sexburga, and Withburga--are
all counted among the saints. Withburga was sent into the country to
be nursed, and remained there till she heard, while still quite young,
of her father's death on the battle-field. She resolved immediately
to seek a refuge for the rest of her life in claustral virginity.
She chose as her asylum a modest remnant of her father's lands at
East Dereham, in Norfolk, and there built a little monastery. But
she was so poor that she, her companions, and the masons who built
her future dwelling, had to live on dry bread alone. One day, after
she had prayed long to the blessed Virgin, she saw two does come out
of the neighbouring forest to drink at a stream whose pure current
watered the secluded spot. Their udders were heavy with milk, and they
permitted themselves to be milked by the virginal hands of Withburga's
companions, returning every day to the same place, and thus furnishing
a sufficient supply for the nourishment of the little community and its
workmen. This lasted till the ranger of the royal domains, a savage
and wicked man, who regarded with an evil eye the rising house of God,
undertook to hunt down the two helpful animals. He pursued them with
his dogs across the country, but, in attempting to leap a high hedge,
his horse was impaled on a post, and the hunter broke his neck.
Withburga ended her life in this poor and humble solitude; but the
fragrance of her gentle virtues spread far and wide. The fame of her
holiness went through all the surrounding country. The veneration given
to her by the people of Norfolk was maintained with the pertinacity
common to the Anglo-Saxon race, and went so far that, two centuries
after her death, they armed themselves to defend her relics from the
monks of Ely, who came, by the king's command, to unite them to those
of her sisters at Ely.
There still exists at East Dereham a well bearing the name of S.
Withburga. It is fed by a spring rising in the very place where the
saint's body was laid before its translation to Ely.