168 THE MARRIAGE OF ST. CUTHBURGA. 



Ealfrith, king of Northumbria. According to this MS. she 

 persuaded her husband to release her from her vows before 

 the marriage was consummated. And she built a monastery 

 at Wimborne, over which she presided as abbess, and where 

 eventually she died and was buried. The greater portion of 

 the account in this MS. consists of a dialogue between Cuth- 

 burga and Alfrid, and of an address which she gave to her 

 nuns shortly before her death. 



This dialogue has, of course, no value from an historical 

 point of view, though the actual framework of the story is 

 accurate enough. For the life is Avritten after the Thucydi- 

 dean method, with imaginary speeches, &c. The MS., it 

 should be pointed out, was compiled, or at any rate was 

 copied, in the Fourteenth Century ; that is, its date is some six 

 hundred years after the death of St. Cuthburga. The details 

 were taken from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, or from the 

 pages of some Monkish Chronicler, who in his history embodied 

 the old tradition. But the speeches are, of course, imaginary 

 ones, and the pretended conversation between St. Cuthburga 

 and her husband is a composition in praise of virginity. 

 Such compositions were not infrequent. It may be recol- 

 lected that Freeman {History of the Norman Conquest, Vol. 

 II., pp. 46, 47, 530-535) mentions a similar conversation in 

 which Edward the Confessor and Eadgyth are the inter- 

 locutors. 



So far as I am aware, this MS. has never been printed, nor 

 have I seen or heard that it has been previously translated. 

 Hardy, however, in his " Descriptive Catalogue of MSS. 

 relating to the Early History of Great Britain " (Rolls Series), 

 Vol. I., p. 384, gives in a few lines a summar}^ of the life of 

 St. Cuthburga as described in this Lansdowne MS. , 



But amongst the Cottonian MSS. in the British Museum 

 (MS. Cott. Tiberius E. 1. ff., 234-5), there exists a vellum MS. 

 somewhat injured by fire. It contains, amongst other lives 

 of the saints, one of St. Cuthburga, which is apparently taken 

 from the same source as that in the Lansdowne MS., though 

 in an abridged form. It Avas in all probability written by 



