From Harpsfield, Bede, Brompton, Florence of Worcester, Higden,
Langhorn's Chronicle, Leland's Collections, Powel's History of Wales,
the Saxon Chronicle, Simeon of Durham, and her curious life, written in
old English metre, from the Passionary of the monastery of Chester, by
Henry Bradshaw, a monk of that house, who died in 1521, on whom see
Wood, Athen. Oxon., vol. 1, p. 9, n. 14, and Tanner, Bibl. p. 121. This
scarce history was printed in 1521, by Richard Pynson, printer to king
Henry VIII. See her ancient life, a MS. copy of which Camden sent to F.
Rosweide, published by Henschenius, with notes, p. 386. See also the
summary of the life of St. Wereburge, with an historical account of the
images carved on her shine, (now the episcopal throne,) in the choir of
the cathedral of Chester, by William Cooper, M.D., at Chester 1749.
Seventh Age.
ST. WEREBURGE was daughter of Wulfere, king of Mercia, by St. Ermenilde,
daughter of Ercombert, king of Kent, and St. Sexburge. In her was
centred the royal blood of all the chief Saxon kings; but her glory was
the contempt of a vain world, even from her cradle, on the pure motive
of the love of God. She had three brothers, Wulfade and Rufin, who died
martyrs, and Kenred, who ended his life at Rome in the odor of sanctity.
Her father, Wulfere, resided near Stone, in Staffordshire. His eldest
brother, Peada, had begun to plant the faith in Mercia. Wulfere promised
at his marriage to extirpate the remains of idolatry, and was then a
Christian; but worldly motives made him delay the performance of his
promise. Ermenilde endeavored to soften the fierceness of his temper;
but she found it a far more easy task to dispose the minds of her tender
nursery to be faithful to divine grace; and, under her care, all her
children grew up fruitful plants in the garden of the saints. Wereburge
excelled the rest in fervor and discretion. She was humble, obedient,
and meek; never failed of assisting with her mother at the daily
performance of the whole church office; besides spending many hours on
her knees in private devotion in her closet. She eagerly listened to
every instruction and exhortation of piety. At an age in which youth is
the fondest of recreations, pleasures, and vanities, she was always
grave, reserved, and mortified. She was a stranger to any joy but that
which the purity of her conscience afforded her; and in holy compunction
bewailed before God, without ceasing, her distance from him, and her
other spiritual miseries. She trembled at the thought of the least
danger that could threaten her purity; fasting and prayer were her
delight, by which she endeavored to render her soul acceptable to her
heavenly bridegroom. Her beauty and her extraordinary qualifications,
rendered more conspicuous by the greater lustre of her virtue, drew to
her many suitors for marriage. But a mountain might sooner be moved than
her resolution shaken. The prince of the West-Saxons waited on her with
rich presents; but she refused to accept them or listen to his
proposals, saying she had chosen the Lord Jesus, the Redeemer of
mankind, for the Spouse of her {346} soul, and had devoted herself to
his service in the state of virginity. But her greatest victory was over
the insidious attempts of Werbode, a powerful, wicked knight of her
father's court. The king was greatly indebted to the valor and services
of this knight for his temporal prosperity, and entertained a particular
affection for him. The knight, sensible of this, and being passionately
fond of Wereburge, made use of all his interest with the king to obtain
his consent to marry her, which was granted, on condition he could gain
that of the royal virgin. Queen Ermenilde and her two sons, Wulfade and
Rufin, were grievously afflicted at the news. These two princes were
then upon their conversion to Christianity, and for this purpose
resorted to the cell of St. Chad, bishop of Litchfield, under pretence
of going a hunting; for the saint resided in a hermitage, situate in a
forest. By him they were instructed in the faith, and baptized. Werbode,
finding them an obstacle to his design, contrived their murder, for
which he is said to have moved the father to give an order in a fit of
passion, by showing him the young princes returning from the bishop, and
incensing him against them by slanders: for the king was passionate, and
had been likewise prevailed on by his perfidious minister to countenance
and favor idolatry. Werbode died miserably soon after, and Wulfere no
sooner heard that the murder was perpetrate but, stung with grief and
remorse, he entered into himself, did great penance, and entirely gave
himself up to the advice of his queen and St. Chad. He destroyed all the
idols, converted their temples into churches, founded the abbey of
Peterborough, and the priory of Stone, where the two martyrs were
buried, and exceedingly propagated the worship of the true God, by his
zealous endeavors and example.
Wereburge, seeing this perfect change in the disposition of her father,
was no longer afraid to disclose to him her earnest desire of
consecrating herself to God in a religious state of life. Finding him
averse, and much grieved at the proposal, she pleaded her cause with so
many tears, and urged the necessity of preparing for death in so
pathetic a manner, that her request was granted. Her father even thanked
God with great humility for so great a grace conferred on her, though
not without many tears which such a sacrifice cost him. He conducted her
in great state to Ely, attended by his whole court, and was met at the
gate of the monastery by the royal abbess St. Audry, with her whole
religious family in procession, singing holy hymns to God. Wereburge,
falling on her knees, begged to be admitted in quality of a penitent.
She obtained her request, and Te Deum was sung. She went through the
usual trials with great humility and patience, and with joy exchanged
her rich coronet, purple, silks, and gold, for a poor veil and a coarse
habit, and resigned herself into the hands of her superior, to live only
to Christ. King Wulfere, his three brothers, and Egbright, or Egbert,
king of Kent, and Adulph, king of the East-Angles, together with the
great lords of their respective states, were present at these her solemn
espousals with Christ,[1] and were entertained by Wulfere with a royal
magnificence. The virgin here devoted herself to God with new fervor in
all her actions, and made the exercises of obedience, prayer,
contemplation, humility, and penance, her whole occupation, instead of
that circle of vanities and amusements which employ the slaves of the
world. King Wulfede dying in 675, was buried at Litchfield. Kenred, his
son, being then too young to govern, his brother Ethelred succeeded him.
St. Ermenilde was no sooner at liberty, but she took the religions veil
at Ely, under her mother, St. Sexburge, at whose death she was chosen
third abbess, and honored in England among the saints on the 13th of
February. Her daughter, St. Wereburge, at her {347} uncle king
Ethelred's persuasion, left Ely to charge herself, at his request, with
the superintendency of all the houses of religious women in his kingdom,
that she might establish in them the observance of the most exact
monastic discipline. By his liberality she founded those of Trentham in
Staffordshire, of Hanbury, near Tutbury, in the county of Stafford, (not
in the county of Huntingdon, as some mistake,) and of Wedon, one of the
royal palaces in Northamptonshire. This king also founded the collegiate
church of St. John Baptist, in the suburbs of West-Chester, and gave to
St. Egwin the ground for the great abbey of Evesham; and after having
reigned twenty-nine years, embraced the monastic state in his beloved
monastery of Bardney, upon the river Witham, not far from Lincoln, of
which he was afterwards chosen abbot. He resigned his crown to Kenred,
his nephew, brother to our saint, having been chosen king only on
account of the nonage of that prince. Kenred governed his realm with
great prudence and piety, making it his study, by all the means in his
power, to prevent and root out all manner of vice, and promote the
knowledge and love of God. After a reign of five years, he recommended
his subjects to God, took leave of them, to their inexpressible grief,
left his crown to Coelred, his uncle's son, and, making a pilgrimage to
Rome, there put on the monastic habit in 708, and persevered in great
fervor till his happy death.
St. Wereburge, both by word and example, conducted to God the souls
committed to her care. She was the most perfect model of meekness,
humility, patience, and purity. Besides the church office, she recited
every day the psalter on her knees, and, after matins, remained in the
church in prayer, either prostrate on the ground or kneeling, till
daylight, and often bathed in tears. She never took more than one repast
in the day, and read with wonderful delight the lives of the fathers of
the desert. She foretold her death, visited all places under her care,
and gave her last orders and exhortations. She prepared herself for her
last hour by ardent invitations of her heavenly bridegroom, and
languishing aspirations of divine love, in which she breathed forth her
pure soul on the 3d of February, at Trentham, about the end of the
seventh century. Her body, as she had desired, was interred at Hanbury.
Nine years after, in 708, it was taken up in presence of king Coelred,
his council, and many bishops, and being found entire and uncorrupt, was
laid in a costly shrine on the 21st of June. In 875 her body was still
entire; when, for fear of the Danish pirates, who were advanced as far
as Repton, in the county of Derby, a royal seat (not Ripon, as Guthrie
mistakes) within six miles of Hanbury, (in the county of Stafford,) her
shrine was carried to West-Chester, in the reign of king Alfred, who,
marrying his daughter Elfleda to Ethelred, created him first earl of
Mercia, after the extinction of its kings. This valiant earl built, and
endowed with secular canonries, a stately church, as a repository for
the relics of St. Wereburge, which afterwards became the cathedral. His
lady rebuilt other churches, walled in the city, and fortified it with a
strong castle against the Welsh.[2] The great kings, Athelstan and
Edgar, devoutly visited and enriched the church of St. Wereburge. In the
reign of St. Edward the Confessor, Leofrick, earl of Mercia, and his
pious wife, Godithe, rebuilt many churches and monasteries in those
parts, founded the abbeys of Leonence, near Hereford, also that of
Coventry, which city this earl made free. At Chester they repaired the
collegiate church of St. John, and out of their singular devotion to St.
Wereburge, rebuilt her minster in a most stately {348} manner. William
the Conqueror gave to his kinsman and most valiant knight, Hugh Lupus,
the earldom of Chester, with the sovereign dignity of a palatinate, on
condition he should win it. After having been thrice beaten and
repulsed, he at last took the city, and divided the conquered lands of
the country among his followers. In 1093, he removed the secular canons
of St. Wereburge, and in their stead placed monks under an abbot,
brought over from Bec in Normandy. Earl Richard, son and heir to Lupus,
going in pilgrimage to St. Winefrid's at Holywell, attributed to the
intercession of St. Wereburge his preservation from an army of Welshmen,
who came with an intention to intercept him. In memory of which, his
constable, William, gave to her church the village of Newton, and
founded the abbey of Norton on the Dee, at the place where his army
miraculously forded that great river to the succor of his master, which
place is still called Constable Sondes, says Bradshaw. The same learned
author relates, from the third book of the Passionary of the Abbey, many
miraculous cures of the sick, and preservations of that city from the
assaults of the Welsh, Danes, and Scots, and, in 1180, from a terrible
fire, which threatened to consume the whole city, but was suddenly
extinguished when the monks carried in procession the shrine of the
virgin in devout prayer. Her body fell to dust soon after its
translation to Chester. These relics being scattered in the reign of
Henry VIII., her shrine was converted into the episcopal throne in the
same church, and remains in that condition to this day. This monument is
of stone, ten feet high, embellished with thirty curious antique images
of kings of Mercia and other princes, ancestors or relations of this
saint. See Cooper's remarks on each.
Footnotes:
1. Some authors in Leland's Collectanea place her religious profession
after the death of her father; but our account is supported by the
authority of Bradshaw.
2. This noble lady, heiress of the great virtues of her royal father,
rebuilt, after the death of her husband, the churches and towns of
Stafford, Warwick, Tamworth, and Shrewsbury; and founded, besides
some others, the great abbey of St. Peter's in Gloucester, which
church she enriched with the relics of St. Oswalk, king and martyr,
and in which she herself was buried. See Bradshaw, Dugdale, Launden.