heaven, to found a monastery, and to be herself the first lady abbess of the monastery she founded. The foremost and most conspicious of all the heights in this fen country was crowned by the abbey and conventual house of Ely, around which a large town, entirely governed by the Lord Abbat, (or, in the Lord Abbat’s name, by the Cellarius of the abbey), had grown. The first conventual church was founded in the time of the Heptarchy, about the year of our Lord six hundred and seventy, by Saint Etheldreda, a queen, wife, virgin, and saint. Etheldreda[52] was wife to King Egfrid,[53] the greatest of the Saxon kings, and daughter of Anna, king of the East Angles, whose dominions included the isle of Ely, and extended over the whole of Suffolk and Norfolk. This the first abbey church was built by Saint Wilfrid, bishop of York, who, with his sainted companion, Benedict, bishop of Northumberland, had travelled in far countries to learn their arts, and had brought from Rome into England painted glass, and glaziers, and masons, and all manner of artificers. When the Church was finished, a monastery was built and attached to it by the same royal devotee. Neither the love of her husband nor any other consideration could make Etheldreda forego her fixed purpose of immuring herself in the cloisters. Many of her attached servants of both sexes, whom she had converted, followed her to Ely, and were provided with separate and appropriate lodgings. Etheldreda was the first abbess of Ely; and after many years spent in the exercise of devotion, in fasting, penitence, and prayer, she died with so strong an odour of sanctity that it could not be mistaken; and she was canonised forthwith by the pope at Rome. Some of her servants were beatified: one, the best and oldest of them all, Ovin,[54] who was said to descend from the ancient Britons,[55] and who had been minister to her husband the king, or to herself as queen, was canonised soon after his death. Huna, her chaplain, after assisting at her interment, retired to a small island in the Fens near Ely, where he spent the rest of his days as an anchorite, and died with the reputation of a saint. Many sick resorted to Huna’s grave and recovered health. Her sister Sexburga was the second abbess of Ely, and second only to herself in sanctity. She too was canonised; and so also were her successors the abbesses Ermenilda and Withburga.[56] The bodies of all the four lay in the choir of the church. The house had had many good penmen, and yet, it was said that they had failed to record all the miracles that had been wrought at these tombs. But the holiness of the place had not always secured it. In or about the year 870 the unbelieving Danes, by ascending the Ouse, got unto Ely, slew all the monks and nuns, and plundered and destroyed the abbey. And after this, Saxon kings, no better than heathens, annexed all the lands and revenues of the house to the crown, to spend among courtiers and warriors the substance which