Virgin Saints and Martyrs

by S. Baring-Gould

Now the new King Alcfrid had brought with him from Iona attachment to the order of the Church of SS. Columba and Aidan. Elfleda inherited the same reverence and love for these usages. But on the other side there were strong political reasons which led men to think it would be well to come to an arrangement with Canterbury and Rome. It was awkward to have these differences, this cleavage, even in the royal palace. It was unadvisable that the Angles of the North and of the Midlands should have to apply to the Scots and Britons, their hereditary enemies, for their bishops. If the Angles and Saxons could but agree in ecclesiastical matters, they would be a more compact body to oppose Britons and Scots; and, further still, it would be an element conducive to the much desired unity of the English people. This ecclesiastical unity would be the first step to the cessation of that internecine war between Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex, which tore the island in pieces and soaked its fertile soil with blood.

Hoping that Wilfrid, now an aged man, would be softened by adversity, he was suffered to return. To the new king, as well as to his sister, S. Elfleda, Abbess of Whitby, Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury wrote, to exhort them to receive Wilfrid with unreserved kindness. They consented, and in 687 he reappeared at York; but it was to excite new storms in his diocese, and he was again exiled in 691.

Alcfrid died in 705, and the Northumbrian crown passed to a prince named Eadwulf. Wilfrid had taken advantage of the death of Alcfrid to return, but was ordered to leave the country in six days. But Eadwulf was dethroned, and Osred, a son of Alcfrid, aged eight, became King of Bernicia. By some unexplained means Wilfrid was now, all at once, master of the situation. Archbishop Berthwald of Canterbury had convoked a synod that was to settle the disputes, and it met on the banks of the Nidd. It was attended by the northern Bishops of York, Lindisfarne, and Witherne, by Elfleda also, the Abbess of Whitby, and by Berchtfrid, the regent of the kingdom during the minority of Osred. Archbishop Berthwald read the letters of the pope on the points in dispute. But the bishops were very unwilling to make way for so turbulent a person as Wilfrid. Then it was that Elfleda stood forward, and in a voice which was listened to as an utterance from heaven, she described the last illness of her half-brother Alcfrid, and his death, and assured all that he had then resolved to accept the papal decrees, which hitherto, when his mind was clear, he had so vigorously rejected. “This,” said she, “was the last will of Alcfrid the King. I attest the truth of it before Christ.”

Nevertheless the three bishops would not yield; they retired from the assembly to confer among themselves, and with the Archbishop, and, above all, with the sagacious Elfleda. It was due to her that a compromise was effected. The monasteries of Ripon and Hexham were restored to Wilfrid and with that he was to be content.

Shortly before his death, S. Cuthbert went to see Elfleda in the neighbourhood of the great monastery of Whitby, to consecrate a church she had built there. They dined together; and during the meal, seeing the knife drop from the trembling hand of the old bishop, in the abstraction of his far-away thoughts, she asked him what he thought about, and he told her that he had had a glimpse of the future. She urged him to eat more.

“I cannot be eating all day long,” he replied. “You must allow me a little rest.”

On the death of Oswy, as already related, Elfleda’s mother had come to Whitby and placed herself under the rule of her own daughter, and Elfleda closed her eyes. She herself died in 716, at the age of sixty-four. No account of her last illness has been transmitted to us.

Elfleda certainly played an important conciliatory part when minds were heated with controversy. She was right undoubtedly. It was a mistake for the Church in North England to hold to a usage that was founded on a blunder. It was a mistake to persist in keeping Wilfrid, canonically bishop of York, for many years out of his see. It was a political necessity that all Englishmen should be united, at all events, in their religious observances. That paved the way to future political unity.

Pedigree of S. Hilda and S. Elfleda.