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.

The British Medical Association

who are the bma

Two leading health unions are calling on the home secretary to make the NHS exempt from a new charge which will be payable on overseas doctors and nurses.

The British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing say the Immigration Skills Charge, coming into effect in April, threatens NHS budgets.

It will mean the NHS must pay £1,000 per year for any worker coming to the UK from outside the European Union.

The government has said it is committed to building home-grown skills.

Nurses remain on an official list of occupations of which the UK has a shortage.

Recruitment drive

The unions have written to Home Secretary Amber Rudd, saying they are "deeply concerned" about the effects of the new charge.

They fear current staffing problems could be made worse when the Immigration Skills Charge begins.

In the letter, seen by the BBC, the unions say the government has suggested funds raised from the charge would be reinvested back into the UK health system. But the unions say they have been given "no guarantees".

The £1,000 charge for workers on Tier 2 visas, payable upfront, will add a significant amount to the bill for any hospital planning an overseas recruitment drive.

An example given on the BMA website says that if a hospital wanted to employ a doctor on a Tier 2 visa for five years, the hospital trust would need to pay £5,000 upfront when applying to UK Visas and Immigration for a certificate of sponsorship.

The unions say diverting funding away from frontline budgets "cannot be appropriate" and they want health and social care staff to be exempt from the charge.

The charge is aimed at cutting down on the number of businesses taking on migrant workers and incentivising the training of British people to fill those jobs.

However, the unions have said the NHS will continue to be reliant on doctors from the EU and overseas because of the length of time it takes to train a senior doctor.

They added that there were limited places at UK medical schools and on nursing degree courses to build the workforce that the government wants.

But the government insists the charge would help to encourage investment in training.

There is a reduced rate of £364 per worker for "small and charitable" sponsors.

It will also not apply to those in PhD-level jobs and international students switching from student visas to working visas.

The unions said it would be "unfair" to penalise employers for recruiting people on Tier 2 visas when checks are already in place to make sure jobs are offered to UK and EU nationals first.

ogham inscriptions,

Transcribed ogham inscriptions, which lack a letter for /p/, show Primitive Irish to be similar in morphology and inflections to Gaulish, Latin, Classical Greek and Sanskrit. Many of the characteristics of modern (and medieval) Irish, such as initial mutations, distinct "broad" and "slender" consonants and consonant clusters, are not yet apparent.
More than 300 ogham inscriptions are known in Ireland, including 121 in County Kerry and 81 in County Cork, and more than 75 found outside Ireland in western Britain and the Isle of Man, including more than 40 in Wales, where Irish colonists settled in the 3rd century, and about 30 in Scotland, although some of these are in Pictish. Many of the British inscriptions are bilingual in Irish and Latin, but none show any sign of the influence of Christianity or Christian epigraphic tradition, suggesting they date before 391, when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire; only about a dozen of the Irish inscriptions show any such sign.
The majority of ogham inscriptions are memorials, consisting of the name of the deceased in the genitive case, followed by MAQI, MAQQI, "of the son" (Modern Irish mic), and the name of his father, or AVI, AVVI, "of the grandson", (Modern Irish uí) and the name of his grandfather: for example DALAGNI MAQI DALI, "[the stone] of Dalagnos son of Dalos". Sometimes the phrase MAQQI MUCOI, "of the son of the tribe", is used to show tribal affiliation. Some inscriptions appear to be border markers.^[
Old Irish, written from the 6th century on, has most of the distinctive characteristics of Irish, including "broad" and "slender" consonants, initial mutations, loss of inflectional endings, and consonant clusters created by the loss of unstressed syllables, along with a number of significant vowel and consonant changes including the presence of the letter p.
As an example, a 5th-century king of Leinster, whose name is recorded in Old Irish king-lists and annals as Mac Caírthinn Uí Enechglaiss, is memorialised on an ogham stone near where he died. This gives the late Primitive Irish version of his name (in the genitive case), as MAQI CAIRATINI AVI INEQUAGLAS.^[4] Similarly, the Corcu Duibne, a people of County Kerry known from Old Irish sources, are memorialised on a number of stones in their territory as DOVINIAS.^[5] Old Irish filed, "poet (gen.)", appears in ogham as VELITAS.^[6] In each case the development of Primitive to Old Irish shows the loss of unstressed syllables and certain consonant changes.

These changes, traced by historical linguistics, are not unusual in the development of languages but appear to have taken place unusually quickly in Irish. According to one theory given by John T. Koch,^[4] these changes coincide with the conversion to Christianity and the introduction of Latin learning. All languages have various registers or levels of formality, the most formal of which, usually that of learning and religion, changes slowly while the most informal registers change much more quickly, but in most cases are prevented from developing into mutually unintelligible dialects by the existence of the more formal register. Koch argues that in pre-Christian Ireland the most formal register of the language would have been that used by the learned and religious class, the druids, for their ceremonies and teaching. After the conversion to Christianity the druids lost their influence, and formal Primitive Irish was replaced by the then Upper Class Irish of the nobility and Latin, the language of the new learned class, the Christian monks. The vernacular forms of Irish, i.e. the ordinary Irish spoken by the upper classes (formerly 'hidden' by the conservative influence of the formal register) came to the surface, giving the impression of having changed rapidly; a new written standard, Old Irish, established itself.

A.D. 56 - c. 120

Name: Cornelius Tacitus                   Dates: c. A.D. 56 - c. 120
Occupation: Historian
Importance: Source on Imperial Rome, Roman Britain, and Germanic TribesTacitus Quote "It is the rare fortune of these days that a man may think what he likes and say what he thinks.

"Histories
 I.1Tacitus

 Quotes

Biography

Little is known for certain about the origins of Tacitus, although he is believed to have been born, around A.D. 56, into a provincial aristocratic family in Gaul (modern France) or nearby, in the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul. We don't even know if his name was "Publius" or "Gaius Cornelius" Tacitus. He had a successful political course, becoming senator, consul, and eventually governor of the Roman province of Asia. He probably lived and wrote into Hadrian's reign (117-38) and may have died in A.D. 120.

Despite a political situation that had provided for his personal success, Tacitus was unhappy with the status quo. He lamented the previous century's reduction of aristocratic power, which was the price of having a princeps 'emperor'