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Æthelthryth (also Etheldreda, Ediltrudis, Audrey or Awdrey) The first Christian building on the site was founded by Etheldreda, daughter of the Anglo-Saxon king Anna of East Anglia, who was born in 630 at Exning near Newmarket. She acquired the land from her first husband, Tondberct, chief of the South Gyrvians, and after the end of her second marriage to Eegrfrid, a Northumbrian prince, set up and ran a monastery on the site in 673. Etheldreda knew that God had called her to the religious life. For political reasons she was forced to marry twice, but keeping her vocation in mind, she maintained her virginity which was highly prized in early Christian times. Her first husband gave her the Island of Ely. Eventually her second husband Ecgfrith, King of Northumbria (645-) released Etheldreda from her marriage vows. This step possibly led to his long quarrel with Wilfrid archbishop of York. The Northumbrian king remarried a second wife, Eormenburg, and expelled Wilfrid from his kingdom in 678. She fled to the Isle of Ely given by Tondberct where, in 673, with two faithful nuns, and managed to evade capture in part by the miraculous rising of the tide and she founded a double monastery for monks and nuns on the site of the present Cathedral and was installed as the first Abbess. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Etheldreda (or Aethelthryth, alias Audrey) founded the monastery at Ely in 673; the monastery was later destroyed in the Danish invasion of 870. When she died on 23 June 679 , a shrine was built to her memory in the Saxon church on the same site. (Incidentally, the common version of Etheldreda's name was St. Awdrey, which is the origin of the word tawdry - because cheap souvenirs were sold at fairs held in her name.) Etheldreda's sister, niece, and great-niece, all royal princesses and two of them widowed queens (of Kent and Mercia), followed her as abbesses of Ely. |