[352] Blount by Beckwith.
October 17.
St. Hedwiges, or Avoice, duchess of Poland, A. D. 1243, St. Anstrudis, or Anstru, A. D. 688. St. Andrew of Crete, A. D. 761.
St. Etheldreda.
She was daughter of Annas, king of the East Angles, and born about 630, at Ixning, formerly a town of note on the western border of Suffolk, next Cambridgeshire. At Coldingham Abbey, Yorkshire, she took the veil under Ebba, daughter of king Ethelfrida, an abbess, afterwards celebrated for having saved herself and her nuns from the outrage of the Danes by mutilating their faces; the brutal invaders enclosed them in their convent and destroyed them by fire.
Notwithstanding Etheldreda’s vow to remain a nun, she was twice forced by her parents to marry, and yet maintained her vow; hence she is styled, in the Romish breviaries, “twice a widow and always a virgin.” On the death of her first husband Tonbert, a nobleman of the East Angles, the isle of Ely became her sole property by jointure, and she founded a convent, and the convent church there; and for their maintenance endowed them with the whole island. She married her second husband Egfrid, king of Northumberland, on the death of Tonbert, in 671, but persisted in her vow, and died abbess of her convent on the 23d of June, 679. On the 17th of October, sixteen years afterwards, her relics were translated, and therefore on this day her festival is commemorated. In 870, the Danes made a descent on the isle of Ely, destroyed the convent and slaughtered the inhabitants. By abbreviation her name became corrupted to Auldrey and Audrey.[353]