There had been amid the Saxons, Queens Regnant as well as Queens Consort. William of Malmesbury writes in admiration of Sexburga, the Queen Dowager of Cenwalch, King of the West Saxons, 672, A.D., “that there was not wanting to this woman a great spirit to discharge the duties of the kingdom. She levied new armies, kept the old ones to duty, governed her subjects with clemency, kept her enemies quiet with threats, in a word, did everything at that rate that there was no other difference between her and any King in management except her sex” (“Malmesb. Gest. Reg.,” b. i.). Ethelfleda, too, the daughter of the great Alfred, called the Lady of Mercia, ruled that kingdom after the death of her father and her husband for eight years, and completed the work that her great father had begun in finally defeating and subjugating the intruding Danes. Women landowners sat in the Shire Gemote, or held Motes of their own; women Burgesses were present at Folkmotes, or at Revemotes. In short, the privileges of women in the Saxon times were nearly equal to those they held in British times. The Abbess Hilda presided over the monastery at Streneshalh, Whitby, where was a man’s wing, and a woman’s wing, the church coming between them. Among her disciples were educated many learned bishops. An ecclesiastical synod met at her abbey (664), at which she presided, that the calm of her presence and the influence of her control might soothe excitement on the vexed questions of the day, chiefly those regarding Easter. There were delegates from Rome, from the Scots, from the Angles, and the Britons (_see_ lib. 3, c. xxv., and lib. 4, c. xxiii., xxiv.). Also Spelman’s “Concilia” (p. 145) describes “Synodis Pharensis rogatu Hildæ illic Abbatissæ celebratæ.” The earliest British writer still extant, Gildas of Alcluid (now Dumbarton), reports this fact without comment or surprise. Spelman preserves also (p. 205) “Epistola Johannis Pa. VII.,” to “Ethelredum Regem Merciorum.” “Episcopus suo more obnitentibus beatissima virgo Elfleda soror Alfridi, Abbattissa post Hildam de Streneshalh, terminum negotio fixit dicens Dimissus ambagibus testamentum fratris mei, cui præsens interfui, profero,” etc. Other women held similar positions in England, as well as St. Bridget of the Abbey of Kildare in Ireland.