Saint Edith and Saint Wulfthryth

It all started with St Edith!
This Anglo-Saxon saint, also known as Eadgyth, was born in Kemsing, just down the road, around AD 963, and was the inspiration for my journey of discovery into local saints. She was the illegitimate daughter of King Edgar (called “the Peaceable” because there were no major wars in his time!) He took a fancy to a young girl, Wulfthryth (also known as Wilfrida)  who was living in Wilton Abbey, a convent just outside Salisbury which also educated and protected the daughters of the noble families of the time. She was probably in the process of becoming a nun, but had not yet taken her final vows, and Edgar either abducted or eloped with her – sources vary in their description of this. He was well known for this kind of behaviour, sadly, and even at the time was censured for it, but kings have a way of getting what they want!

When Wulfthryth became pregnant, Edgar installed her in a convent, or possibly a royal house, in Kemsing. Edith was born there and spent a few years of her early childhood in Kemsing with her mother. Edgar either couldn’t or wouldn’t marry her – or perhaps she wouldn’t marry him! -  and soon afterwards he married another woman, having allegedly killed her husband, who became his Queen. Wulfthryth and Edith chose to return to Wilton, where Wulfthryth was soon made Abbess. Edith also became a nun at the age of 14, but refused King Edgar’s offer to make her Abbess of three different abbeys, preferring to stay at Wilton. Perhaps she preferred Wilton, or felt she didn’t know how to run an Abbey – or perhaps she didn’t want to be a “political appointee”, seen as Edgar’s daughter, a man whose manipulative tendencies she knew all too well!

Wilton House, built on the site of the old Abbey

She died at the age of around 23, was buried at Wilton. She soon came to be regarded as a saint, (as was her mother, St Wulfthryth), acclaimed by the local community – it wasn’t until the 1200s that the Vatican formalised the process for making saints. People reported that they had been healed when they prayed at her tomb, and it became an important shrine and place of pilgrimage. 

I was delighted to find research  by Alison N Altstatt into the Rogationtide Processions of Wilton Abbey, which included the music which would have been sung during them During a visit to Wilton, Philip and I sang one of Edith's antiphons in one of the churches in Wilton to which the relics would have been taken. It may have been the first time this music had been sung since the Reformation.

The saint who fought back!

Edith features in this stained glass window
in St Mary's Church, Wilton

Perhaps the most memorable story about St Edith, recorded in different versions in a number of versions in ancient writings, happened not long after her death. After King Edgar died, King Cnut came to the throne. He had known Edgar and refused to believe that any daughter of his could be a saint. The only way to prove it was to dig up her body, since it was believed that the bodies of saints would not decay. Supervised by Cnut, Edith’s grave was opened, and her body dug up. Sure enough, it was as whole as the day it was buries. King Cnut leaned over the grave to get a better look, upon which Edith sat up in the grave and punched him. That seems to have been proof enough for Cnut, who made sure that she was properly respected after that! (In some stories he just fell back in awe, but I'm going with the version that makes for the best yarn!)

Back in Kemsing, a shrine was set up in the churchyard, and there were reports of miraculous healings, particularly of the eyes, at her holy well which had probably been in the grounds of the convent in which she had been born.  Lying on a route which pilgrims took to Canterbury, the shrine was a popular stopping off point, and much visited until it was destroyed at the Reformation.  An antiquary of the time, John Leland, complained that 'seelie bodies' (foolish people) would make offerings of grain to Edith's statue, but as he was trying to ingratiate himself with Henry VIII in the aftermath of the dissolution of the monasteries, he may have had a political bias! The well is still there, of course, and during the twentieth century, Edith’s feast day, September 16, has begun to be celebrated again in a variety of ways.

What has this to do with Seal?

St Mary's Church, Wilton

Until 1874, Seal Church was a daughter church of the parish of Kemsing, so Edith would have been as much “our” local saint as she was Kemsing’s. The processions which would have taken place around the parish at times like Rogationtide, carrying the relics of St Edith which Kemsing church owned, would have come to Seal Church, and it is inconceivable that she wasn’t venerated here. If the saints can be regarded as “friends in high places”, then St Edith is ours!

St Edith's Well, Kemsing On junction of St Ediths Road (on left) and High Street (behind). Stone in front reads 'St Edith's of Kemsing 961-984 This well lay within the precints of the convent where St Edith Daughter of King Edgar passed her childhood. Hallowed by her presence its waters became a source of healing.' David Anstiss: Wikimedia Commons