Seaxburh of Ely

Seaxburh, also recorded as Sexburga or Sexburh, was a seventh-century East Anglian princess who became queen of Kent and later abbess of Ely, and who was venerated as a saint in the medieval English church. She was a daughter of Anna, king of the East Angles, a ruler whom Bede praised for his Christian devotion. Bede names among Anna’s children several women who entered the monastic life: Seaxburh herself; Æthelthryth, foundress of the monastery at Ely; and Æthelburh, who became a nun at Faremoutiers in Francia, together with Anna’s stepdaughter Sæthryth. Later Ely tradition also numbered Wihtburh of Dereham among Seaxburh’s sisters, though she does not appear in Bede. The family belonged to the Wuffingas dynasty and stood at the centre of East Anglian Christianity in the mid-seventh century.

Seaxburh married Eorcenberht, king of Kent, whose reign is dated from 640 to 664. Bede records that Eorcenberht was the first English king to command the destruction of pagan idols throughout his kingdom and to enforce the keeping of Lent by royal authority. The marriage linked the Christian royal houses of Kent and East Anglia. Seaxburh and Eorcenberht had children who occupied leading positions in both church and state. Their sons Ecgberht and Hlothhere each became king of Kent. Their daughter Eormenhild married Wulfhere, king of Mercia, and after his death took the veil, eventually serving as abbess; another daughter, Eorcengota, entered the monastery of Faremoutiers and was commemorated as a saint.

Following Eorcenberht’s death in 664, Seaxburh remained in Kent as a widow of royal standing. She founded a monastery for women at Minster-in-Sheppey on the Isle of Sheppey and ruled it as abbess. Kentish and later hagiographical tradition held that she was succeeded in that office by her daughter Eormenhild. Seaxburh afterwards left Kent for Ely, where her sister Æthelthryth had established a double monastery. Upon Æthelthryth’s death in 679, Seaxburh succeeded her as abbess of Ely, combining the leadership of her sister’s foundation with her own earlier monastic experience in Kent.

As abbess of Ely she is particularly associated with the translation of Æthelthryth’s remains in 695, sixteen years after her sister’s death. Bede describes how the body was found incorrupt and was placed in a marble sarcophagus brought from the nearby Roman site at Grantchester, an episode that became central to Ely’s cult of its foundress. Seaxburh died at Ely and was buried in the monastery; later medieval sources assign her death to the year 699. She was honoured as a saint, with her principal feast kept on 6 July. Her cult, together with those of Æthelthryth, Eormenhild, and (in later tradition) Wihtburh, was promoted at Ely and is documented in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, in the so-called Kentish Royal Legend, and in the twelfth-century Liber Eliensis.