Vestiges of the supremacy of Mercia in the south of England during the eighth century - T. Kerslake

[10] The genealogical relation of St. Werburgh and Æthelbald will be seen in this extract from Dr. Lappenberg’s Pedigree of the Kings of Mercia:

[11] The birth, in the West of England, of this assiduous propagator of the great mediæval embodiment of civilisation, zealous devotee of the Church, and prominent European statesman, is so important a fact in our ethnical topography as to deserve a passing, though attentive, glance. On the authority of those who personally knew him, he was born near Exeter, about the year 680; but, although no Saxon Conquest had yet extended so far westward, he bore a Saxon name, although in the midst of a Celtic people. From this, and from other circumstances also mentioned of his early life, it may be inferred that his father was a peaceful Saxon colonist, in advance of conquest, and still a pagan; and that his mother was a British Christian. He is, therefore, the earliest recorded example of that irrepressible compound of the two races that has since made so many deep and broad marks upon the outer world. This fact, of a pacific international intercourse antecedent to conquest, was so directly in conflict with evolved history, that it has provoked an ineffectual attempt to subvert the testimony of it, by questioning the undoubted reading of the name as being that of Exeter. (E. A. Freeman, Esq., in Archæol. Journal, vol. xxx., or Macmillan M., Sep. 1873, p. 474).

Another, but later, testimony gives us the name of the place near Exeter where he was born: Crediton, in a deep and most fertile valley of that middle district in Devon which is the interval between the highlands of Dartmoor and Exmoor, but rather to the south-west of that district. Here there is reason to believe Christianity had already been established at a much earlier time, by Croyde, or Creed, an Irish missionary virgin, who has left her name at other places throughout both Devon and Cornwall. The incredulity, that Crediton was the birthplace of S. Bonifatius, was vindicated by saying that it has “no ancient authority whatever.” It has not contemporary authority like that for “near Exeter,” which, however, it strongly confirms, and which, for English topography of so early a date, is almost unique in its explicitness, but it has an authority as ancient as we are obliged to be content with for nearly all we know of those times, and far more respectable than most of it. The authority is a church-service book, still preserved in Exeter Cathedral, compiled by Bp. Grandisson (died A.D. 1366), and attested by his autograph. If this had been a mere outdoor tradition, and had rested upon no more than the personal authority of this most distinguished man, it would even then have been the very highest evidence of its kind. But it does no such thing. Bp. Grandisson is not the author of the book any more than St. Osmund is the author of the Usages of Sarum. He is the codifier of the immemorial observances of the church, at which the contemporary biographer of St. Boniface attests that he received his earliest teaching; and of the very existence of which church their irreproachable attestation is by a long interval the earliest record.

But there is another evidence that this great man of his age was known, to his compatriots in his own province, as one of themselves. Of this they have left a substantial monument in the dedications of two churches still remaining in Devon, not in his ecclesiastical name, by which the rest of the world knew him, but in his birth-name of “Winfrid” by which they had remembered him. The two more distant extant dedications of Bonchurch, Isle of Wight, and Banbury, Cheshire, on the contrary, in their dedications of “St. Boniface” are mere reflections of his realised continental greatness back upon his own island.

Winfrith, near Lulworth, in Dorset, probably had a third western example of the dedication, for although the present church is of Norman structure, and with a different dedication (St. Christopher), most likely, as in many other cases, an earlier sanctuary existed in Winfrid’s name.

[12] What may be presumed to be another dedication of St. Werburgh has since been traced to its place, and may be reckoned as an eighth of those in the home kingdom, at its southern frontier. Among the land-marks (A.D. 849) of a place called “Coftun,” is Werburgh’s cross (“in Wærburge rode”) Cod. Dip. CCLXII. This has been found to be Cofton Hackett, in that north point of Worcestershire that abuts upon Staffordshire and Shropshire.

[13] Lib. v.

[14] See Warner p. 228. Collinson’s Som., vol. I. Bath, p. 53.

[15] Thomas, Worc. Cath., 1736, Append. No. 9. p. 6. It might be worth while to search for remains of it in plantations thereabout. It is distinct from the chapel of St. Blaise, and on a different eminence.