HE was brother to St. Chad, bishop of Litchfield, and to St. Celin, and
Cimbert, apostolic priests, who all labored zealously in the conversion
of the English Saxons, their countrymen. St. Cedd long served God in the
monastery of Lindisfarne, founded by St. Aidan, and for his great
sanctity was promoted to the priesthood. Peada, the son of Penda, king
of Mercia, was appointed by his father king of the midland English; by
which name Bede distinguishes the inhabitants of Leicestershire, and
part of Lincolnshire and Derbyshire, from the rest of the Mercians. The
young king, with a great number of noblemen, servants, and soldiers,
went to Atwall, or Walton, the seat of Oswy, king of the Northumbers,
and was there baptized with all his attendants, by Finan, bishop of
Lindisfarne. Four priests, Saint Cedd, Adda, Betta, and Diuma, the last
a Scot, the rest English, were sent to preach the gospel to his people,
the midland English; among whom great multitudes received the word of
life with joy. King Penda himself obstructed not these missionaries in
preaching the faith in other parts of Mercia, but hated and despised
such as embraced the gospel, yet lived not up to it, saying, "Such
wretches deserved the utmost contempt, who would not obey the God in
whom they believed." St. Cedd, after laboring there some time with great
success, was called from this mission to a new harvest. Sigbercht, or
Sigebert, king of the East-Saxons, paying a visit to Oswy, in {104}
Northumberland, was persuaded by that prince to forsake his idols, and
was baptized by bishop Finan. When he was returned to his own kingdom,
he entreated king Oswy to send him some teachers, who might instruct his
people in the faith of Christ. Oswy called St. Cedd out of the province
of the midland English, and sent him with another priest to the nation
of the East-Saxons. When they had travelled over that whole province,
and gathered numerous churches to our Lord, St. Cedd returned to
Lindisfarne, to confer with bishop Finan about certain matters of
importance. That prelate ordained him bishop of the East-Saxons, having
called two other bishops to assist at his consecration. St. Cedd going
back to his province, pursued the work he had begun, built churches, and
ordained priests and deacons. Two monasteries were erected by him in
those parts, which seem afterwards to have been destroyed by the Danes,
and never restored. The first, he founded near a city, called by the
English Saxons, Ythancester, formerly Othona, seated upon the bank of
the river Pante, (now Froshwell,) which town was afterwards swallowed up
by the gradual encroaching of the sea. St. Cedd's other monastery was
built at another city called Tillaburg, now Tilbury, near the river
Thames, and here Camden supposes the saint chiefly to have resided, as
the first English bishops often chose to live in monasteries. But others
generally imagine, that London, then the seat of the king, was the
ordinary place of his residence, as it was of the ancient bishops of
that province, and of all his successors. In a journey which St. Cedd
made to his own country, Edilwald, the son of Oswald, who reigned among
the Deiri, in Yorkshire, finding him to be a wise and holy man, desired
him to accept of some possessions of land to build a monastery, to which
the king might resort to offer his prayers with those who should attend
the divine service without intermission, and where he might be buried
when he died. The king had before with him a brother of our saint,
called Celin, a priest of great piety, who administered the divine word,
and the sacraments, to him and his family. St. Cedd pitched upon a place
amidst craggy and remote mountains, which seemed fitter to be a retreat
for robbers, or a lurking place for wild beasts, than a habitation for
men. Here he resolved first to spend forty days in fasting and prayer,
to consecrate the place to God. For this purpose he retired thither in
the beginning of Lent. He ate only in the evening, except on Sundays,
and his meal consisted of an egg, and a little milk mingled with water,
with a small portion of bread, according to the custom of Lindisfarne,
derived from that of St. Columba, by which it appears that, for want of
legumes so early in the year, milk and eggs were allowed in that
northern climate, which the canons forbade in Lent. Ten days before the
end of Lent, the bishop was called to the king for certain pressing
affairs, so that he was obliged to commission his priest, Cynibil, who
was his brother, to complete it. This monastery being founded in 658,
was called Lestingay. St. Cedd placed in it monks, with a superior from
Lindisfarne; but continued to superintend the same, and afterwards made
several visits thither from London. Our saint excommunicated a certain
nobleman among the East-Saxons, for an incestuous marriage; forbidding
any Christian to enter his house, or eat with him. Notwithstanding this
prohibition, the king went to a banquet at his house. Upon his return,
the holy bishop met him, whom, as soon as the king saw, he began to
tremble, and lighting from his horse, prostrated himself at his feet,
begging pardon for his offence. The bishop touched him with the rod
which he held in his hand, and said, "O king, because thou wouldst not
refrain from the house of that wicked excommunicated person, thou
thyself shalt die in that very house." Accordingly, some time after, the
king was basely murdered, in 661. by this nobleman and another, {105}
both his own kinsmen, who alleged no other reason for their crime, than
that he was too easy in forgiving his enemies. This king was succeeded
by Suidhelm, the son of Sexbald, whom St. Cedd regenerated to Christ by
baptism. In 664, St. Cedd was present at the conference, or synod, of
Streneshalch, in which he forsook the Scottish custom, and agreed to
receive the canonical observance of the time of Easter. Soon after, a
great pestilence breaking out in England, St. Cedd died of it, in his
beloved monastery of Lestingay, in the mountainous part of Yorkshire,
since destroyed by the Danes, so that its exact situation is not known.
He was first buried in the open cemetery, but, not long after, a church
of stone being built in the same monastery, under the invocation of the
Blessed Virgin, the mother of our Lord, his body was removed, and laid
at the right hand of the altar. Thirty of the saint's religious brethren
in Essex, upon the news of his death, came to Lestingay, in the
resolution to live and die where their holy father had ended his life.
They were willingly received by their brethren, but were all carried off
by the same pestilence, except a little boy, who was afterwards found
not to have been then baptized, and being in process of time advanced to
the priesthood, lived to gain many souls to God. St. Cedd died on the
26th of October, but is commemorated in the English Martyrology on the
7th of January. See Bede, Hist. l. 3, c. 21, 22, 23. Wharton Hist.
Episc. Lond. &c.