Book L] ST. ETHELDREDA. 



19 



place was called Etheldrede's-Stow, and a church was there 

 built in honour of this holy queen. 



After a difficult and hazardous journey, the queen and 

 her two attendants arrived safe at Ely, and was received by 

 her people with all the honours due to her character and high 

 station. On her arrival there her first design was to have 

 repaired the old church, then in ruins, and to have dedicated 

 it, as it had formerly been, to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and 

 to have built a monastery there ; but before this design had 

 proceeded too far a more commodious situation was made 

 choice of, as fitter for her purpose, and in this place the 

 foundations of her church were laid, and the monastery began 

 to be built in which both monks and nuns lived in society and 

 regular observance under the founder queen, St. Etheldreda. 

 For the maintenance and support of this monastery the 

 royal foundress settled the whole Isle of Ely, being a princi- 

 pality with temporal power and jurisdiction, and all the profits 

 arising from the government of it. And to secure this, her 

 royal foundation, the more firmly and securely to future ages, 

 she gave in charge and recommended it to the care of Bishop 

 Wilfrid, who in the year 678 was on his departure to Rome 

 to procure the Pope's confirmation of her grant, and of the 

 liberties and immunities of the place, that her congregation 

 there assembled might continue in the service of God and 

 in the regular observance of discipline, free from want and 

 from the disturbance or exaction of any officer of what 

 power, eminence, or authority whatsoever ; which confirma- 

 tion Wilfrid is said to have obtained from the Pope. But 

 before his return from Rome, the royal abbess died of an 

 epidemical disease that prevailed at that time in her monastery, 

 and had carried off several of the nuns and others of her 

 confraternity. She is said, by the spirit of prophecy, to 

 have foretold this contagious distemper, and the exact 

 number of her household that would be taken out of the 

 world by it, and herself among the rest. She died June 23, 

 A.D. 679, in the seventh year after she was made abbess, 

 in the reign of her brother Adulfus, king of East Anglia, 

 and of her nephew Lothair, king of Kent, her late husband, 



