“About the year of our Lord 727, there lived in Oxford a Saxon prince named Didan, who had an only child, Frideswide (‘bond of peace’). Seeing that he had large possessions and inheritances, and that she was likely to enjoy most of them after his decease, Frideswide told her father that he could not do better than bestow them upon some religious fabric where she and her spiritual sisters might spend their days in prayers and in singing psalms and hymns to God. Wherefore the good old man built a church, and committed it wholly to the use of his daughter, purposely to exercise her devotion therein; and other edifices adjoining to the church, to serve as lodging-rooms for Frideswide and twelve virgins of noble extraction. There she became famous for her piety and for those excellent parts that nature had endowed her withal; and Algar, King of Leicester, became her adorer by way of marriage. Finding that he could not prevail with her by all the entreaties and gifts imaginable, he departed home, but sent to her ambassadors with this special and sovereign caution, that if she did not concede, to watch their opportunity and carry her away by force. Frideswide was inexorable. Wherefore at the dawning of the day the ambassadors clambered the fences of the house, and by degrees approaching her private lodging, promised to themselves nothing but surety of their prize. But she, awakening suddenly and discovering them, and finding it vain to make an escape, being so closely besieged, fervently prayed to the Almighty that He would preserve her from the violence of those wicked persons, and that He would show some special token of revenge upon them for this their bold attempt. Wherefore the ambassadors were miraculously struck blind, and like madmen ran headlong yelling about the city. But Algar was filled with rage, and intended for Oxford, breathing out nothing but fire and sword. Which thing being told to Frideswide in a dream, with her sisters the nuns Katherine and Cicely, she fled to the riverside, where there awaited her a young man with a beautiful countenance and clothed in white, who, mitigating their fear with pleasant speech, rowed them up the river to a wood ten miles distant. There the nuns sheltered in a hut, which ivy and other sprouts quickly overgrew, hiding them from sight of man. Three years Frideswide lived in Benton wood, when she came back to Binsey and afterwards to Oxford, in which place this maiden, having gained the triumph of her virginity, worked many miracles; and when her days were over and her Spouse called her, she there died.” Such is the account of her which Anthony-a-Wood drew from William of Malmesbury and Prior Philip of Oxford, both of whom unfortunately lived long after the events which they narrate.