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.