Baring-Gould’s sources: Anciently venerated in Essex, an office for her with nine lections in MS. in the Cotton Library. Authority Bede, in his Eccl. Hist., and a life in Capgrave.] S. Ethelburga was bom in Lindsey in the village of Stalington; she was the daughter of Offa, and sister of S. Earconwald, Bishop of London. Her father was not baptized, and he resented the infantine piety of his daughter, and combated angrily her resolution to devote herself to a life of virginity. Bathed in tears after a violent outbreak of her father’s wrath, Ethelburga would steal away to the little church where she had been baptized; and Ethelburga’s path in the hottest summer is ever green, and green also in winter to this day, says her biographer.

Finding that her father was determined to marry her to a man of wealth and position, she fled to Barking in Essex, accompanied by one maid. She arrived there in harvest and was given shelter by a farmer, on condition that she should assist in reaping. She knelt, and lo! angels with sickles swept down the golden com whilst she prayed. S. Earconwald, consecrated Bishop of London in 675 by S. Theodore of Canterbury, having come into his paternal inheritance, founded a religious house at Chertsey, in Surrey, for men, and one for women at Barking, over which he placed his sister Ethelburga as first abbess. Whilst Barking Abbey was being built, a beam was brought for the roof which, when fitted, was found too short Then Earconwald took one end and Ethelburga the other, and pulled it out to the proper length.

As Barking was the first religious house for women founded in England, Earconwald sent for the holy woman, Hildelitha, who had been brought up in a French convent, to assume the direction.

A pestilence swept away the priests who ministered at the altars of the convent and carried off many of the nuns. This was in 664. Consternation fell on the survivors. But one night as the sisters went from their church, at the end of matins, to pray at the graves of the clergy who had pre- I ceded them into the other world, they saw all at once the | whole sky lighted up and cover them all as with a radiant 1 shroud. It was a flash of summer lightning which their imaginations transformed into a luminous gravecloth flung across the sky above their heads. They were so terrified that the hymn they were singing died on their lips. By this mysterious light they saw the graveyard illumined, and noticed that there was abundance of space for many graves. They understood that this flash of light showed them the place where their bodies must lie, and revealed at the same time to them the glory into which their souls would gaze. There was a nun at Barking, named Theoritgytha, who, after having been long the humble and zealous assistant of Ethelburga, was warned of the death of the abbess, her friend, by a vision, in which she saw her dear Ethelburga wrapped in a shroud which shone like the sun, and raised to heaven by golden chains, which represented her good works. Ethelburga died shortly after. Deprived of her spiritual mother, Theoritgytha lived for nine years in the most cruel sufferings, in order, says Bede [English monk and historian (d. 735)], that the furnace of this daily tribulation might consume all the imperfection that remained among her many virtues. At last paralysis assailed all her Oct. xx.] S. Julia.

members, and even her tongue. Three days before her death she recovered sight and speech; she was heard to exchange some words with an invisible visitor. It was Etheiburga, who had come to announce her deliverance to her. “ I can scarcely bear this joy ! ” said the sick woman; and the following night, freed at once from sickness and from the bondage of the flesh, she entered into everlasting blessedness. S. Ethelburga of Barking is not to be confounded with S. Ethelburga of Lyming, widow of King Edwin.