SOME SAXON SAINTS OF WIMBORNE. 201 



embrace the monastic life. She withdrew, accordingly, to 

 the celebrated convent of Barking, over which at that time the 

 aged, but wise and saintly, Hildelida presided as abbess. It 

 was to her and to her community that St. Aldhelm, the re- 

 nowned Abbot of Malmesbury, and afterwards the first Bishop 

 of Sherborne, dedicated his treatise on the " Praise of Virgin- 

 ity," which he composed first in prose and afterwards in 

 verse. In the dedication he mentions by name Queen Cuth- 

 burga and the Abbess, as well as eight other nuns, as being 

 related to him by ties of blood or of great affection. At 

 Barking Cuthburga appears to have remained until after the 

 death of her husband, which took place in 705, when, by the 

 invitation of her brother Ina, she returned to her native 

 country to found and to preside over the religious house which 

 under the Benedictine rule was to be established at Wim- 

 borne. Here she remained for the rest of her life, and her 

 monastery, to which before very long five hundred nuns were 

 attached, and the renown of which exceeded that of Barking, 

 became a place which was celebrated far and wide for its 

 literary activities and as a school for the training of 

 missionaries. 



The exact date of the foundation of the abbey at Wimborne 

 is unknown. It is variously given by the old historians as 

 713, 715, 718, 720, and even as early as 705. Cuthburga 

 dedicated the Minster which she built to the Blessed Virgin. 

 The Church and the conventual buildings were in all probabil- 

 ity destroyed during the troubles which Wessex suffered from 

 the Danish incursions a century and a-half, or two centuries, 

 later. When, a century or so later still, a community of secular 

 canons, with a dean at their head, took the place of the nuns, 

 and new buildings arose, there was a desire that the royal 

 foundress should be commemorated, and tne church was 

 dedicated to St. Cuthburga, the name which the Minster at 

 Wimborne still bears. 



St. Cuthburga died on the 31st of August, probably of the 

 year 720. It is only natural to assume that she was buried at 

 Wimborne in the Minster which owed its origin to her. It 



