Mellitus was the first bishop of London in the Saxon period, the third Archbishop of Canterbury, and a member of the Gregorian mission sent to England to convert the Anglo-Saxons from their native paganism to Christianity. He arrived in 601 AD with a group of clergy sent to augment the mission, and was consecrated as Bishop of London in 604. Mellitus was the recipient of a famous letter from Pope Gregory I known as the Epistola ad Mellitum, preserved in a later work by the medieval chronicler Bede, which suggested the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons be undertaken gradually, integrating pagan rituals and customs. In 610, Mellitus returned to Italy to attend a council of bishops, and returned to England bearing papal letters to some of the missionaries.
Edward the Martyr was King of England from 8 July 975 until he was killed on 18 March 978. Edward was the eldest son of King Edgar. On Edgar's death, the succession to the throne was contested between Edward's supporters and those of his younger half-brother, the future King Æthelred the Unready. As they were both children, it is unlikely that they played an active role in the dispute, which was probably between rival family alliances. Edward's principal supporters were Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury and Æthelwine, Ealdorman of East Anglia, while Æthelred was backed by his mother, Queen Ælfthryth and her friend Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester. The dispute was quickly settled. Edward was chosen as king and Æthelred received the lands traditionally allocated to the king's eldest son in compensation.
St Ives is a medieval market town and civil parish in the Huntingdonshire district in Cambridgeshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) east of Huntingdon and 12 miles (19 km) north-west of Cambridge. St Ives is historically in the historic county of Huntingdonshire.
Ramsey Abbey was a Benedictine abbey in Ramsey, Huntingdonshire, England. It was founded about AD 969 and dissolved in 1539.
Honorius was a member of the Gregorian mission to Christianize the Anglo-Saxons from their native Anglo-Saxon paganism in 597 AD who later became Archbishop of Canterbury. During his archiepiscopate, he consecrated the first native English bishop of Rochester as well as helping the missionary efforts of Felix among the East Anglians. Honorius was the last to die among the Gregorian missionaries.
Oswald of Worcester was Archbishop of York from 972 to his death in 992. He was of Danish ancestry, but brought up by his uncle, Oda, who sent him to France to the abbey of Fleury to become a monk. After a number of years at Fleury, Oswald returned to England at the request of his uncle, who died before Oswald returned. With his uncle's death, Oswald needed a patron and turned to another kinsman, Oskytel, who had recently become Archbishop of York. His activity for Oskytel attracted the notice of Archbishop Dunstan who had Oswald consecrated as Bishop of Worcester in 961. In 972, Oswald was promoted to the see of York, although he continued to hold Worcester also.
Byrhtferth was a priest and monk who lived at Ramsey Abbey in Huntingdonshire in England. He had a deep impact on the intellectual life of later Anglo-Saxon England and wrote many computistic, hagiographic, and historical works. He was a leading man of science and best known as the author of many different works. His Manual (Enchiridion), a scientific textbook, is Byrhtferth's best known work.
Æthelstan Half-King was an important and influential Ealdorman of East Anglia who interacted with five kings of England, including his adopted son King Edgar the Peaceful. Many of Æthelstan's close relatives were also involved in important affairs, but soon after the death of King Eadred in 955, he left his position and became a monk at Glastonbury Abbey.
Sideman was Bishop of Crediton. He attested charters of King Edgar as abbot of Exeter from 969, and was appointed to the see of Crediton in 973. According to Byrhtferth of Ramsey, King Edward the Martyr "had been instructed in holy scripture under the tutelage of Bishop Sideman". The historian Cyril Hart describes him as a protégé of Ælfhere, ealdorman of Mercia. Sideman died on 30 April 977 at a meeting of a royal council at Kirtlington in Oxfordshire. He had expressed a wish to be buried at Crediton, but King Edward and Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, ordered that he should be conveyed to Abingdon Abbey, where he was buried on the north side of St Paul's chapel.
Æscwig was a medieval Bishop of Dorchester, when the town was seat of the united dioceses of Lindsey and Dorchester.
Eadnoth the Younger or Eadnoth I was a medieval monk and prelate, successively Abbot of Ramsey and Bishop of Dorchester. From a prominent family of priests in the Fens, he was related to Oswald, Bishop of Worcester, Archbishop of York and founder of Ramsey Abbey. Following in the footsteps of his illustrious kinsman, he initially became a monk at Worcester. He is found at Ramsey supervising construction works in the 980s, and around 992 actually became Abbot of Ramsey. As abbot, he founded two daughter houses in what is now Cambridgeshire, namely, a monastery at St Ives and a nunnery at Chatteris. At some point between 1007 and 1009, he became Bishop of Dorchester, a see that encompassed much of the eastern Danelaw. He died at the Battle of Assandun in 1016, fighting Cnut the Great.
Æthelwine was ealdorman of East Anglia and one of the leading noblemen in the kingdom of England in the later 10th century. As with his kinsmen, the principal source for his life is Byrhtferth's life of Oswald of Worcester. Æthelwine founded Ramsey Abbey in 969, and Byrhtferth and Ramsey Abbey remembered him as Dei amicus, but the monks of nearby Ely saw him as an enemy who had seized their lands.
Goscelin of Saint-Bertin was a Benedictine hagiographical writer. He was a Fleming or Brabantian by birth and became a monk of St Bertin's at Saint-Omer before travelling to England to take up a position in the household of Herman, Bishop of Ramsbury in Wiltshire (1058–78). During his time in England, he stayed at many monasteries and wherever he went collected materials for his numerous hagiographies of English saints.
Domne Eafe, also Domneva, Domne Éue, Æbbe, Ebba, was, according to the Kentish royal legend, a granddaughter of King Eadbald of Kent and the foundress of the double monastery of Minster in Thanet Priory at Minster-in-Thanet during the reign of her cousin King Ecgberht of Kent. A 1000-year-old confusion with her sister Eormenburg means she is often now known by that name. Married to Merewalh of Mercia, she had at least four children. When her two brothers, Æthelred and Æthelberht, were murdered she obtained the land in Thanet to build an abbey, from a repentant King Ecgberht. Her three daughters all went on to become abbesses and saints, the most famous of which, Mildrith, ended up with a shrine in St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury.
Botwine was a Northumbrian saint venerated at Ripon and Peterborough. He is well documented as a priest, and latter Abbot of Ripon. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recension E, recorded his death in the 780s in one of three Ripon abbatial obits derived from a chronicle of Northumbrian origin. Following the death of St Botwine in 786AD, his replacement, Ealdberht was elected and consecrated Abbot. Ealdberht died in 788AD, and was himself succeeded as Abbot by St. Sigered of Ripon.
Egwin of Evesham was a Benedictine monk and, later, the third Bishop of Worcester in England. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church.
Æthelstan Mannessune was a landowner and monastic patron in late 10th-century Anglo-Saxon England, coming from a family of secularised priests. Remembered by Ely Abbey as an enemy, he and his family endowed Ramsey Abbey and allegedly provided it with a piece of the True Cross. His children became important in their own right, one of them, Eadnoth, becoming Abbot of Ramsey and Bishop of Dorchester, and another becoming abbess of Chatteris nunnery.
Indract or Indracht was an Irish saint who, along with his companions, was venerated at Glastonbury Abbey, a monastery in the county of Somerset in south-western England. In the High Middle Ages Glastonbury tradition held that he had been an Irish pilgrim — a king's son – on his way back from Rome who was molested and killed by a local thegn after he had stopped off to visit the shrine of St Patrick. This tradition synchronised his life with that of King Ine (688–726), though historian Michael Lapidge has argued that he is most likely to represent a 9th-century abbot of Iona named Indrechtach ua Fínnachta.
Germanus was a medieval English abbot and Benedictine monk. He travelled to Rome in about 957 and became a monk at Fleury Abbey in France. Back in England by 964 he served as a monastic official before being named abbot of Winchcombe Abbey in about 970, a position he was removed from in 975. Germanus may have become abbot of Cholsey Abbey in 992.
Ælfwynn or Ælfwyn was a member of a wealthy Anglo-Saxon family in Huntingdonshire who married Æthelstan Half-King, the powerful ealdorman of East Anglia, in about 932. She is chiefly known for having been foster-mother to the future King Edgar the Peaceful following his mother's death in 944, when he was an infant. She had four sons, and the youngest, Æthelwine, became the chief secular magnate and leading supporter of the monastic reform movement. Ælfwynn donated her estates for his foundation of Ramsey Abbey in 966 and was probably buried there.
