Etheldreda
b. circa 636, Exning, Suffolk, England; d. 679, Ely, England
Etheldreda (Aethelthryth, Audrey) was born in eastern England, the daughter of King Anna of East Anglia. She married twice and in both marriages was said to have kept a vow of virginity, to the extent that she fled to a convent when her second husband tried to force a consummation of their marriage. In 673, she founded a monastery in the city of Ely, and many of her relatives and descendants followed her as its abbesses until the monastery was destroyed by the Danes in 870.
