ST. MILBURGE was sister to St. Mildred, and daughter of Merowald, son of
Penda, king of Mercia. Having dedicated herself to God in a religious
state, she was chosen abbess of Wenlock, in Shropshire, which house she
rendered a true paradise of all virtue. The more she humbled herself,
the more she was exalted by God; and while she preferred sackcloth to
purple and diadems, she became the invisible glory of heaven. The love
of purity of heart and holy peace were the subject of her dying
exhortation to her dear sisters. She closed her mortal pilgrimage about
the end of the seventh century. Malmesbury and Harpsfield write, that
many miracles accompanied the translation of her relics, in 1101, on the
26th of May; which Capgrave and Mabillon mistake for the day of her
death: but Harpsfield, who had seen the best ancient English
manuscripts, assures us that she died on the 23d of February, which is
confirmed by all the manuscript additions to the Martyrologies of Bede
and others, in which her name occurs, which are followed by the Roman on
this day. The abbey of Wenlock was destroyed by the Danes: but a
monastery of Cluni monks was afterwards erected upon the same spot, by
whom her remains were discovered in a vault in 1101, as Malmesbury, who
wrote not long after, relates.