What splendour he [Ina] added to the monastery, may be collected from the short treatise which I have written about its antiquities.[56] Father Aldhelm assisted the design, and his precepts were heard with humility, nobly adopted, and joyfully carried into effect. Lastly, the king readily confirmed the privilege which Aldhelm had obtained from pope Sergius, for the immunity of his monasteries; gave much to the servants of God by his advice, and finally honoured him, though constantly refusing, with a bishopric; but an early death malignantly cut off this great man from the world. For scarcely had he discharged the offices of his bishopric four years, ere he made his soul an offering to heaven, in the year of our Lord’s incarnation 709, on the vigil of St. Augustine the apostle of the Angles, namely the eighth before the Kalends of June.[57] Some say, that he was the nephew of the king, by his brother Kenten; but I do not choose to assert for truth any thing which savours more of vague opinion, than of historic credibility; especially as I can find no ancient record of it, and the Chronicle clearly declares, that Ina had no other brother than Ingild, who died some few years before him. Aldhelm needs no support from fiction: such great things are there concerning him of indisputable truth, so many which are beyond the reach of doubt. The sisters, indeed, of Ina were Cuthburga and Cwenburga. Cuthburga was given in marriage to Alfrid, king of the Northumbrians, but the contract being soon after dissolved, she led a life dedicated to God, first at Barking,[58] under the abbess Hildelitha, and afterwards as superior of the convent at Wimborne; now a mean village, but formerly celebrated for containing a full company of virgins, dead to earthly desires, and breathing only aspirations towards heaven. She embraced the profession of holy celibacy from the perusal of Aldhelm’s books on virginity, dedicated indeed to the sisterhood of Barking, but profitable to all, who aspire to that state. Ina’s queen was Ethelburga, a woman of royal race and disposition: who perpetually urging the necessity of bidding adieu to earthly things, at least in the close of life, and the king as constantly deferring the execution of her advice, at last endeavoured to overcome him by stratagem. For, on a certain occasion, when they had been revelling at a country seat with more than usual riot and luxury, the next day, after their departure, an attendant, with the privity of the queen, defiled the palace in every possible manner, both with the excrement of cattle and heaps of filth; and lastly he put a sow, which had recently farrowed, in the very bed where they had lain. They had hardly proceeded a mile, ere she attacked her husband with the fondest conjugal endearments, entreating that they might immediately return thither, whence they had departed, saying, that his denial would be attended with dangerous consequences. Her petition being readily