The Isle of Ely came to Ethelreda (Aethelthryth), a daughter of King Anna of the East Angles, from her first husband Tondberht, prince of the South Gyrwe, a people who lived in the Fens. She was married to him young (c.652) but remained a virgin. Three years after the wedding, Tondberht died and Etheldreda retured to Ely, her ‘morning gift’ or marriage jointure.
Then, in 660, for political reasons, she was married to King Ecgfrith of Northumbria, who at the time was only 15. According to the Venerable Bede, although she lived with him for 12 years, she managed to preserve her chastity, ‘which fact is absolutely vouched for by Bishop Wilfrid of blessed memory, of whim I made enquiry when some people doubted it’. Biship Wilfrid is St. Wilfrid of Ripon, c. 633-709.
By the end of this time, Ecgfrith was a grown man and no longer wished to live with her as brother and sister, but as man and wife. Etheldreda refused, and, encouraged by Wilfrid, withdrew to the convent of Coldingham, ruled by St. Ebbe, Ecgfrith’s aunt. There she took the veil and a year or two later returned again to Ely. Tradition says that she did so because Ecgfrith had changed his mind about letting her go, and she fled from Coldingham towards Ely to escape him. On the way, she took refuge from his men on what is now St. Abb’s Head. This was miraculously cut off from the mainland for a week by very high seas, and Ecgfrith finally let her go on her way.
Ethedreda returned to the Fens and in 673 founded a double monastery (monks and nuns) at Ely. Here she ruled as abbess until her death, caused by a tumour on the neck, the pain of which she accepted as a penance for her girlhood love of jewelry.
According to tradition, the necklaces she loved in youth were commemorated by the cheap sild-lace collars much worn by women in the 16th and 17th centuries and sold at St. Audrey’s Fair (Audrey being the medieval corruption of Etheldreda) held at Ely each year on 17 October. They were known as St Audrey’s Lace, eventually run together as ‘tawdry lace’, hence tawdry meaning something showy or gaudy.
In about 685, the abbess Sexburga, Etheldreda’s sister and successor, decided to translate Etheldreda’s bones from their common wooden coffin in the cemetery to a more suitable shrine. She sent some monks by boat to ‘a small ruined city not far distant which the English call Grantchester’ (the Romano-British settlement site). There, near the walls, they found a white marble sarcophagus of beautiful workmanship which they took back to Ely. On 17 October 695, the body of the saint, found to be miraculously incorrupt, was transferred to this sarcophagus, which fitter her ‘in a marvelous way’, as if it had been made for her. The sarcophagus was placed inside the abbey church, and greatly venerated.
Ely became such a popular resort of pilgrims that later the saint’s bones were moved again into a tomb surround by those of her family: her sister Sexburga and her nieces St. Erminilda and St. Werburga. St. Etheldreda’s shrine was destroyed at the reformation, but fragments of it are contained in the tomb-like structure in the retrochoir. A series of medieval carvings showing scenes of her life fortunately escaped mutilation – carved on a capital in the octagon is the miracle of St. Abb’s Head – and what is said to be her hand is preserved as a relic in the Roman Catholic church of St. Etheldreda.
Because of the tumour that killed her, and the story of the necklaces, St. Etheldreda was invoked for diseases of the throat. She is still remembered in this connection: the ceremony of Blessing the Throats still takes place on 3 February every year in the Roman Catholic church of St. Etheldreda, Ely Place, Holborn, London, though it is now performed in the name of St. Blaise, the official patron saint of people with sore throats. During the service, two long candles are blessed and tied together for form a cross They are lit and the priest calls participants forward. He places the cross under their chins (the burning ends safely to either side) and says, ‘May the Lord deliver you from the evil of the throat, and from every other evil’. Not only people with throat complaints but anyone who wishes to receive this blessing now take part.