Whitby was not only an important religious but also political centre and the abbesses took by no means a small part in controversy. At the Synod of Whitby[23] held here in 664, when the respective claims of Irish and Roman ecclesiastical discipline were discussed, Hild took the side of the Irish Church; while her successor, Aelflæd, interested herself in the doings of her brother, King Egfrith. Hild reigned thirty years at Whitby and died after many years of suffering, during which she never failed to teach her flock, both in public and in private. All that we know of her character, indicates a strong and vivid personality, a mind keenly alive to the necessities of the age, and a will vigorous enough to be successful in providing for them where opportunity occurred. She had a worthy successor in Aelflæd, a friend of the holy S. Cuthbert. Bede says of her that "she added to the lustre of her princely birth the brighter glory of exalted virtue," and that she was "inspired with much love toward Cuthbert, the holy man of God."[24]
On one occasion she had fallen seriously ill, and expressed a wish that something belonging to S. Cuthbert could be sent to her. "For then," she said, "I know I should soon be well." A linen girdle was sent from the Saint, and the abbess joyfully put it on. The next morning she could stand on her feet and the third day she was restored to perfect health. Later, a nun was cured of a headache by the same girdle, but when next it was wanted, it could nowhere be found. Bede argues quaintly that its disappearance was also an act of Divine Providence, since some of the sick who flocked to it might be unworthy, and, not being cured, might doubt its efficacy, while in reality, their own unworthiness was to blame. "Thus," he concludes, "was all matter for detraction removed from the malice of the unrighteous."
A contemporary of Hild's was Aebbe, a princess of the rival dynasty of Bernicia, and sister of the royal saint, King Oswald, and of Oswy, the reigning king. Her brother intended to give her in marriage to the king of the Scots, but she herself was opposed to the alliance. Her family had embraced the Christian religion in exile, and she determined to follow the monastic life.
Accordingly, she built a double monastery, apparently in imitation of Whitby, at Coldingham on the promontory still called S. Abb's Head. She does not seem, however, to have maintained, like Hild, the discipline and fervour of which she herself gave an example; for Bede notes here a rare example of those disorders of which there were certainly far fewer in England at this time than anywhere else.[25] Aebbe was apparently in ignorance of the relaxation of discipline in her monastery until she was warned of it by an Irish monk of her community, named Adamnan.
As he was walking with the abbess through the great and beautiful house which she had built, he lamented with tears, "All that you see here so beautiful and so grand will soon be laid in ashes!" The astonished abbess begged an explanation. "I have seen in a dream," said the monk, "an unknown one who has revealed to me all the evil done in this house and the punishment prepared for it."
And what, one naturally asks, are these crimes for which nothing short of total destruction of the splendid house is a severe enough visitation from Heaven? Adamnan continues "The unknown one has told me that he visited each cell and each bed, and found the monks, either wrapt in slothful sleep, or awake, eating irregular meals and engaged in senseless gossip; while the nuns employ their leisure in wearing garments of excessive fineness, either to attire themselves, as if they were the brides of men, or to bestow them on people outside." One must admit that here and there in the writings of the period, there are references to this worldliness in some monasteries; but whatever may have been the state of things at a later date, there does not seem to be evidence of graver misdeeds in these early years of monasticism in England. Bede uses perhaps unnecessary severity in speaking of renegade monks and nuns so-called, since he is admittedly speaking from hearsay and not about disorders which came under his own observation. Whatever the sins of Coldingham may have been, the community at a later date atoned for them, for in the C9, when the Danes invaded Northumbria, and killed the men of this monastery, among others, the nuns are said to have mutilated their faces in order to escape the marauders. The Danes, in fury at the loss of their prey, burned the monastery to the ground, and all that remains to mark the site is a small ruined chapel.
At Ely there was also a double monastery founded by Aethelthryth,[26] later known as S. Awdrey. She was the daughter of Anna, King of the East Angles, and therefore a niece of the great abbess Hild. She was married, for the second time, probably for political reasons, when over thirty years old to King Egfrith of Northumbria, then a boy of fifteen. After living with him for twelve years, she left him and went to Coldingham, where she received the veil. Whether Egfrith agreed to this or not, it is impossible to say. There are reasons for believing that he was, at any rate, unwilling; for Bede says that she had long requested the king to permit her to lay aside worldly cares and serve God in a monastery and that she at length, with great difficulty, prevailed.
She remained at Coldingham for a year and then went to Ely, the island in the fens given to her by her first husband; and there she built a monastery, of which she became abbess.
She renounced all the splendours and even ordinary comforts of her former royal life. Bede says that from the time that she entered the monastery, she wore no linen, but only woollen garments, rarely washed in a hot bath, unless just before any of the great festivals, such as Easter, Whitsuntide, and the Epiphany; and then she did it last of all, after having, with the assistance of those about her, first washed the other nuns.
After presiding over the monastery six or seven years, she died of a tumour in her throat, which she used to say was sent as a punishment for her excessive love of wearing necklaces in her youth. Hence the "tawdrey lace" of "The Winter's Tale" and elsewhere, which was a necklace bought at S. Awdrey's Fair, held on the day of her festival, October 17th. She was succeeded by her sister, Seaxburh, the widow of Erconberht, King of Kent, who had founded a double monastery at Sheppey, of which she was the first abbess. There is no mention of monks as well as nuns before her reign. Her daughter, Ermengild, succeeded her as Abbess of Sheppey, and at her mother's death, of Ely. Ermengild's daughter, Werburh (the famous S. Werburh of Chester), also became abbess of Sheppey and Ely in succession.