The city of Ely has a population approaching 8,000, and stands on the western edge of the Island of Ely, once truly an island, being an area of dry land rising from the midst of the fens, and, till their drainage, accessible only by boat or causeway. This _Island_, a true bit of natural _terra firma_, measures about eight miles by six, and lies at the southern end of a much more extensive fenland archipelago, of irregular shape, measuring approximately thirty miles by twenty, known from of old as the _Isle_ of Ely. The waters of the Fen, which, so lately as a century ago, made this wide area an archipelago indeed, have now given place to a "boundless plain" of fertile corn-land, so rich in harvests as to be often called "The Golden Plain of England." A twelfth century chronicler, the writer of the "Liber Eliensis," asserts that, within the first years of the seventh century A.D., Ethelbert, King of Kent, newly converted to Christianity, founded a monastery at Cratendune, about a mile south of Ely, and that Saint Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, consecrated it. But we cannot say that the authentic history of Ely begins till seventy years later, when we see an Anglo-Saxon lady founding a monastery on this rising ground in the midst of the Fens. The lady is Etheldreda, once Queen of Northumbria; her monastery is known to us as Ely. She is the daughter of Anna, King of East Anglia, who had reigned at Exning, almost within sight of Ely. King Anna was a devout man, who himself died a hero's death, fighting for the Cross and for his country against the overwhelming onset of Penda, the heathen King of Mercia, who made it the object of his life to stamp out English Christianity. But, though Anna fell, his cause triumphed. Penda shortly died, and his work perished with him. Not so Anna's. After his death the tide of Christian progress ran the stronger; and all over England it was through members of his family that it was specially championed.