Baring-Gould’s sources: Galilean. Belgian, and Anglican Martyrologies. Authoriiies The legend in Capgrave.] Domneva, or Ermenburga, was the daughter of Ermenred and Oslava, and grand-daughter of Eadbald, king of Kent, and Emma, daughter of Clothair II., king of Austrasia. She was sister to Ethelred and Ethelbrith, murdered by their cousin Egbert, and venerated as martyrs (Oct. 17th), and of SS. Ermenburga, Etheldreda, and Ermengytha. She was married to Merewald, prince of the Mercians, and by her had [July ij.
…three saintly daughters, Milburga, Mildred, and Milgitha. Merewald was the son of the Man of Fire, the ferocious heathen Pend a. S. Milburga was abbess of Wenlock; S. Milgitha nun at Canterbury. Domneva sent her daughter Mildred to the monastery of Chelles, in France, for her education. Like hei sisters, she felt drawn to a religious life; but the abbess, who wished her to marry one of her own relations, endeavoured, but ineffectually, to dissuade her therefrom, having recourse for that purpose, when entreaty and advice failed, to every kind of threat and illusage.
Mildred returned to England on the death of her mother, to supply her place as abbess of the monastery she had founded at Minster, in the Isle of Thanet, and govern therein seventy nuns.
Very few details of her life have been preserved, which makes it the more extraordinary that she should have enjoyed such prolonged popularity, were it not evident, by numerous other instances, that the interest attaching to a life has little to do with after veneration. The memory of some of the Saints, whose lives are rich in the most exquisite incidents and moral lessons, has been allowed by freakish popular piety to grow dead and cold, whilst that of others, whose history is a blank, has enjoyed the most ardent popularity. The devotion to the memory of S.* Mildred eclipsed that of S. Augustine, even in the district which he first won to the faith, and to such a point, that a rock impressed, according to popular superstition, with the first footstep of the Apostle of the English, and which lies a little to the east of Minster, took, and retains, the name of S. Mildred’s Rock.
The relics [the bodily remains of a saint, or objects they used, kept with honor] of S. Mildred were translated to CanterJoiy 13O •S’. Mildred. bury, and thence, it is asserted in the Low Countries, to Deventer, where she received veneration; but they disappeared at the Reformation.
