Æthelthryth

Æthelthryth, also known as Etheldreda or Audrey, was a 7th-century Anglo-Saxon princess and saint. She is generally regarded as the daughter of Anna, king of East Anglia, and a member of the East Anglian royal house. Through marriage she became queen of Northumbria as the wife of Ecgfrith, a union that linked East Anglia and Northumbria at a formative moment in early medieval England.

According to tradition, after Ecgfrith’s death she pursued a religious vocation rather than remarriage. She is credited with founding a monastic community at Ely, Cambridgeshire, where she served as the first abbess and helped establish a center that would become a major ecclesiastical house. Her life is known primarily from medieval hagiography and Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which blend documentary detail with legend.

Æthelthryth died circa 679 and was widely venerated as a saint in both the Catholic and Anglican traditions. Her cult contributed to the growth of monastic life in East Anglia and the eventual establishment of Ely Cathedral, with her memory enduring in place-names and churches such as St. Etheldreda’s Church in London.

Her feast day is observed on 23 June in many traditions, with some calendars listing 24 June. Modern scholarship treats her as a historic royal figure whose saintly cult reflects broader patterns of monastic foundation and veneration in early medieval England.