HE was of the royal blood of the Mercian kings, devoted himself to the
divine service in his youth, and succeeded O{}or in the episcopal see of
Worcester, in 692. by his zeal and severity in reproving vice, he
stirred up some of his own flock to persecute him, which gave him an
opportunity of performing a penitential pilgrimage Rome. Some legends
tell us, that setting out he put on his legs iron shackles, and threw
the key into the river Severn, others say the Avon; but found it in the
belly of a fish, some say at Rome, others in his passage from France to
England. After his return, with the assistance of Coenred or Kenred,
king of Mercia, he founded the famous abbey of Evesham, under the
invocation of the Blessed Virgin. After this he undertook a second
journey to Rome, in the company of Coenred, king of the Mercians, and of
Offa, of the East Saxons, who gave up their temporal principalities to
labor with greater earnestness to secure an eternal crown. St. Egwin
died on the 30th of December, in 717, and was buried in the monastery of
Evesham. His body was translated to a more honorable place in 1183,
probably on the 11th of January, on which day many English Martyrologies
mark his festival. See his life in Capgrave, the Annals of Worcester, in
Wharton's Anglia Sacra; Malmesbury, l. 4, de Pontif. Ang. Harpsfield.
Saec. 8, c. 15, 18, and Dr. Thomas in his History the Cathedral of
Worcester. Monast. Anglic. vol. 1, p. 144, and vol. 2, p. 851. Leland's
Collections, vol. 1, pp. 240 and 298; vol. 3, p. 160. Dr. Brown Willis,
History of Abbeys, t. 1, p. 90.