She was daughter of Anna the religious king of the East-Angles, and
his devout queen Hereswide, sister to St. Hilda. A pious education
laid in her the foundation of that eminent sanctity for which she
was most conspicuous during the whole course of her life. She was
given in marriage to Ercombert, king of Kent, a prince of excellent
dispositions, which she contributed exceedingly to improve by her
counsels and example. She had a great share in all his zealous
undertakings for promoting virtue and the happiness of his people,
especially in extirpating the last remains of idolatry in his
dominions, and in enforcing the observance of Lent, and other
precepts of the Church, by wholesome laws. Her virtue commanded the
reverence, and her humility and devotion raised the admiration of
all her subjects; and her goodness and unbounded charity gained her
the love of all, especially the poor. She had a longing desire to
consecrate herself wholly to God in religious retirement, and that
others at least might attend the divine service for her night and
day without impediment, she began in her husband’s lifetime to found
a monastery of holy virgins in the isle of Sheppey, on the coast
of Kent, which she finished after his death in 664, whilst her son
Egbert sat on the throne. Here she assembled seventy-four nuns, but
hearing of the great sanctity of St. Etheldreda at Ely, and being
desirous to live in greater obscurity, and to be more at liberty to
employ all her thoughts on heaven, she left the kingdom of Kent,
and retired to Ely before the year 679, in which she was chosen to
succeed her sister St. Etheldreda, or Audry, in the government of
that house. Sixteen years after she caused the body of that saint to
be taken up, and passed herself to bliss in a good old age, on the
6th of July, toward the end of the seventh century. Her monastery in
Sheppey, called Le Mynstre in Sheppey, was destroyed by the Danes,
but rebuilt in 1130, and consecrated by William, archbishop of
Canterbury, in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Sexburgh; and
it subsisted in the hands of Benedictin nuns till the dissolution of
abbeys. St. Ermenilda, daughter of king Ercombert and St. Sexburgh,
was married to Wulpher, king of Mercia, but after his death retired
to Ely, near her mother and her two aunts St. Audry and St. Withburg,
three daughters of king Anna. St. Wereburgh, daughter of St.
Ermenilda and king Wulpher, was a nun at Hearburgh (which seems to
have been near Stanford or Croyland). Her relics were venerated at
Hearburgh, till in the ninth century they were removed to Leicester.
See the life of St. Sexburgh in Capgrave; also Bede and Narratio de
Sanctis qui in Anglia quiescunt, in Hickes, Diss. Epistol. p. 117.
Thesaur. t. 1, and Monast. Anglic. t. 1, p. 88, et 152. Weever’s
Funeral Monuments, p. 283, and Kalendarium in quo annotantur dies
obitûs Sororum Monasterii de Sheppey. MS. Bibliot. Cotton.