But this breaking up of the Exning family did but scatter its members to spread far and wide the cause of the Gospel. And a splendid band they were. Not for nothing is Anna described by Bede as "a good man, and the father of an excellent family." His eldest son followed him on the throne (for Penda was slain shortly after his last victory, and the Mercian dominion fell with him), and helped St. Etheldreda in her great work at Ely; another son, St. Erconwald, became one of the most famous of all the Bishops of London; while, of the daughters, one was Abbess of Barking, another of Dereham, another of Brie, in France.[128] Yet another, Sexburga, after being Queen of Kent, succeeded Etheldreda as Abbess of Ely, and was herself succeeded by her daughter Ermenilda, who, as Queen of Penda's son Wulfhere, had taken part in St. Chad's great work of converting Mercia. Seldom has any place bred such a household of Saints as this quiet little village of Exning. A pretty village it still is; but is now fast becoming a suburb of Newmarket. The bright little stream running through it is derived partly from springs in the old market meadow already spoken of (known as "the Seven Springs"), and partly from sources in a copse some half-mile to the south, known as St. Wendred's Well. All we know of this obscure Saint is that she had a local fame in the tenth century, when her body, in a golden coffin, was brought from Ely to the great battle between Edmund Ironside and Canute at Assandun, and became the spoil of the victor. The church at March is dedicated to her. [Footnote 128: Her abbey was for generations the favourite boarding-school in France for young ladies from England.] The road from Newmarket to Ely (twelve miles) passes several places worth notice. First comes Snailwell, with the flint-built round tower of its little church rising so picturesquely above the "well," now a broad, clear pond, from which the little river Snail crawls away into the adjacent fen. At the adjoining hamlet of Landwade there was lately unearthed a Roman villa, the fine tesselated pavement of which is now in the Sedgwick Museum of Cambridge. Fordham, which we next reach, is a larger village, with a church of most unusual architectural interest. The north porch has a stone roof of no fewer than six vaulted bays, running east and west, and supporting a parvis chamber, with late Decorated windows, approached by a stone staircase from without, and, seemingly, designed for a chapel with a separate dedication to St. Mary Magdalene, the Church being St. Peter's. This development is unique. [Illustration: _Fordham Church._]