St. Sexwulf.

44    SOME SAINTS OF STAFFORDSHIRE.

by only one meal a day, and her time was largely devoted to satisfying her craving for exhausting and painful prayer. She would remain in church all night and would recite daily, in addition to the usual monastic offices, the whole of the Psalter, remaining on her knees, it is said, until the labour of love was done. To my unchastened mind it seems that she might have been much more usefully employed ; but the story is probably a pious exaggeration. Were any woman to remain on her knees while she recited the whole of the Psalter, she would probably suffer from bursitis patella so acutely as to prevent her kneeling at all.

St. Werburga lived to an advanced age and then, like St. Chad and others, experienced a premonition of her end. She therefore retired to Trentham where she passed away peacefully on the third of February, 699.

Her body, at her own request, was taken to the monastery she had founded at Hanbury, where it remained until the year 708. It was then disinterred in the presence of Coelred, the King of Mercia, and was carried to Chester. In the course of time there was erected over the relics a stately church, which ultimately became the cathedral we know to-day.

In a record for the year 1180, we read of her relics being carried through Chester in order to quell a raging fire which had baffled all ordinary methods of extinction. During the reign of Henry VIII. the shrine was desecrated and the relics scattered abroad. What remained of the shrine was converted into the throne that is used by the bishops of Chester at the present day. It is adorned with sculptures of the Kings of Mercia; but probably the fabric was not erected until the close of the 15th century.

St. Sexwulf.

The year 675 was memorable in the history of the see of Lichfield. Archbishop Theodore was resolved that the unwieldy diocese, occupying the whole of Mercia, should be subdivided; Winfrid, the bishop, was resolved that things should remain as they were. Theodore was not the man to brook opposition, and in the year 675 he formally deposed Winfrid from the see. In his place ho appointed another of our Saints of Staffordshire, St. Soxwulf.

Sexwulf founded the great abbey of Medeshampstead (now Peterborough), and his extraordinary activities throughout the whole of the diocese earned for him the honour of canonisation. And, in truth, the episcopacy in those days was even less of a sinecure than it is to-day.

First and foremost, it was obligatory that many hours, both by day and night, should be spent in prayer. Again, every man trained to the priesthood was compelled to practice some kind of manual labour. This was a duty imposed on the priest while supervising his village flock, and on the bishops whilst governing a diocese more than one third the size of England. Some of the clergy, following the example of St. Paul, followed the more humble crafts; others, more cultivated, enriched their altars with chalices and patens wrought in precious metals, and added to their libraries manuscripts embellished with exquisitely finished illuminations. St. Dunstan, for example, worked in all the metals and was, moreover, a maker of church bells and organs. St. Wilfrid wrote the four Gospels in letters of gold on a purple ground, and presented them to the church at Ripon. In the days of Sexwulf, “ the dignity of labour ” was something more than a political catchword.

He spent much time in teaching and almsgiving, and more still, of course, in the administration of the diocese. Furthermore, he was an exalted member of the judiciary. To travellers of all nations and to the ecclesiastic with a grievance he was by law directed to consider himself “ a kinsman and a protector,” a phrase which exactly epitomises the revolution that Christianity had wrought in the national conscience. It was no empty phrase. When Rochester was destroyed by the Danes, the bishop of that place sought refuge with Sexwulf who at once found him a church at Hereford. He took, as I have said, an active part in the administration of the law, and diligently attended the chief courts of justice in his diocese, more especially the half-yearly shire-motes, where, by virtue of his office, he presided over the bench of ealdor-men. Here his superior education enabled him to instruct the ignorant, and his episcopal authority helped to control the passionate and prejudiced; more important still, it checked the besetting tendency of litigants to appeal to the pagan practices of their forefathers.

His sacred calling gave him power also to arbitrate over family feuds and to put an end to domestic strife. That is always a

SOME SAINTS OF STAFFORDSHIRE.St. Werburga.

42    SOME SAINTS OF STAFFORDSHIRE.

“ The things you tell me would be more likely to work faith in me if the hart were to appear in answer to your prayer.”

Then did Chad prostrate himself in prayer, and the thicket stirred, and, behold, the hart was standing before them. And the saint instructed Wulfhad, and anon baptised him.

Wulfhad betook him home and told his brother Rufin that he had become a Christian. “ I, also,” said the other, “ have long wished for baptism. I will go seek holy Chad.”

Werbode, however, had made himself privy to all that was afoot. Wherefore, he sought out the King and told him that the young men had become Christians, and were at that moment worshipping with the man called Chad.

Then the King in anger set out for the cell; but Ermenhilda implored Werbode to hasten away and warn her sons of their father’s approach. This he promised to do ; but contented himself with one glance through the window of the oratory, returning to Wulfhere to report that his sons obstinately refused to abandon their religion.

Wulfhere, pale with anger, burst into the oratory, and commanded them to renounce at once the Christ; but Wulfhad answered him that they had no wish to break the laws, or to lose the fatherly affection of one who himself had once accepted Christianity ; but that no torture that he could devise would turn them from Christ.

Upon which the King straightway struck off his head.

Rufin, who seems to have been emotional and impulsive, while lacking the moral fibre of his brother, turned and fled. His father, however, pursued him and at Burston, near Sandon, so the story says, slew him also.

The sequel is Greek tragedy. Werbode was siezed with madness on the spot, and in his raving published abroad the story of his crime. The King fell dangerously ill, and when he recovered his bodily health St. Chad alone could minister to his despondency. So, at least, urged Ermenhilda, and at last, broken and penitent, he sought out the man of God.

f St. Chad was singing the Mass, and Wulfhere dared not approach until he had been shriven by the saint. St. Chad, however, knew what the King desired, and raising the figure, prostrate at the door, heard his confession and bade him go root out idolatry from the land.

Ermenhilda caused the bodies to be buried at Stone. It has been said that the place-name commemorates the great pile of stones the Queen erected over the grave, stones that she used afterwards in the building of her nunnery at Stone. She also built, it is said, a chapel at Burston on the spot where Rufin was slain.

In after years the procurator of the nunnery at Stone obtained from the Pope the formal canonisation of the two princes, and the head of Wulfhad was enshrined in the church of St. Lawrence at Viterbo.

St. Werburga.

When King Wulfhere, broken with remorse, turned to the consolations of religion, one woman there was, in addition to Ermenhilda, ready to strengthen him in his resolve. This was St. Werburga, his daughter, who, in the end, wrung from him permission to take the veil. The rite was performed at Ely in the presence of the King himself, the royal abbess, Etheldreda, and many bishops and nobles. She was still at Ely when news was brought that her father was dead, and that her uncle, the pious Ethelred, reigned in his place.

After the lapse of several years, the king bestowed on her a sort of travelling commission to superintend all the nunneries in his kingdom. The work was congenial, for she seems to have had a liking for discipline—or, at least, for its exercise and maintenance—and before long the houses under her control became models of monastic rule.

Through the king’s liberality she founded religious houses at Trentham (in Staffordshire, and not, pace Mr. Baring Gould, in Gloucestershire), at Hanbury in the same county, and at Wecdon in Northamptonshire. And it was through her influence and initiative that Ethelred founded at Chester the collegiate church of St. John the Baptist, and presented to St. Egwin the ground for the abbey at Evesham.

If Werburga, in her capacity as spiritual adjutant-general to Mercia, was strict in exacting obedience to discipline, she by no means spared herself in the exercise of ascetic abstinence and mystic self-mortifications. Her physical hunger was appeasedWerburgh (also spelled Wærburh, Werburh or Werburga) (d. 3 February 699 at Trentham in modern-day Staffordshire) was an Anglo-Saxon princess who became the patron saint of the city of Chester in Cheshire. Her feast day is 3 February.