TWO CHESHIRE SAINTS
By the Archdeacon of Chester
WE are justified in giving this title to St. Werburgh and St. Plegmund, of whom specially this chapter will treat, since both belonged to the old kingdom of Mercia, of which Cheshire was a part.
We owe our knowledge of St. Werburgh to the metrical life of the Saint written by Henry Bradshaw, a monk of St. Werburgh’s Monastery, who died in 1513. The full title of his work (which was printed in 1521 and reprinted by the Chetham Society in 1848) is The Holy Lyfe and History of Saynt Werburge, very frutefall for all Christen people to rede. It purports to be a translation into English verse from the original Chronicle or Passionary stated by him to be preserved in the Monastery. He makes frequent allusions to the Venerable Bede (whom he styles his author), as also to “Master Alfrydus, William Malmsburge, Gyrarde, Polycronycon, and other mo(re).”
St. Werburgh was born about 650, and was the daughter of Wulfhere, King of Mercia (whose name is perpetuated in Wolverhampton) and Ermenhild his wife. She was thus descended from four royal families. Her father was the second son of Penda, King of Mercia, who claimed descent from Woden. Her mother was the daughter of Earconbert, King of Kent, and was thus a descendant both of Tytillus, King of East Anglia, and of St. Edwin, King of Northumbria. She was also connected with the kings of France, as St. Ermenhild’s grandfather and great-grandfather both married princesses of that royal house. We may say that she was of saintly as well as of royal lineage, for five of her grandfather Penda’s children (pagan though he himself was) earned the title of saints; whilst her mother’s family included the names of St. Hilda, St. Etheldreda, St. Ethelburga, and St. Sexburga (her mother).
Wulfhere and his queen chiefly lived at Stone in Staffordshire, where St. Werburgh, under the care of her good mother, grew up. Bradshaw gives a very interesting picture of her early years, in which her religious disposition, fostered no doubt by her mother’s influence and example, manifested itself in various ways. Thus:—
“First in the morning to church she would go,
Following her mother the queene every day,
With her boke and bedes, and depart not them fro,