He was an English Saxon, a monk of the monastery of St. Hilda, and
was made bishop of the West-Saxons in 676. He resided first at
Dorchester near Oxford, but afterward removed his see to Winchester.
King Ceadwal going to Rome to be baptized died there, and was buried
in the church of St. Peter in 688. His kinsman Ina succeeded him in
the throne.[61] In his wise and wholesome laws, the most ancient
extant among those of our English Saxon kings, enacted by him in a
great council of bishops and ealdermen in 693, he declares that in
drawing them up he had been assisted by the counsels of St. Hedda and
St. Erconwald.[62] In these laws theft is ordained to be punished
with cutting off a hand or a foot; robbery on the highway, committed
by a band not under seven in number, with death, unless the criminal
redeem his life according to the estimation of his head. Church dues
are ordered to be paid under a penalty of forty shillings; and if any
master order a servant to do any work on a Sunday, the servant is
made free and the master amerced thirty shillings. St. Hedda governed
his church with great sanctity about thirty years, and departed to
the Lord on the 7th of July, 705. Bede[63] and William of Malmesbury
assure us, that his tomb was illustrated by many miracles. His name
is placed in the Roman Martyrology. See Solier the Bollandist, t. 2,
Julij, p. 482.