it impossible to move them. After these efforts the king took advice from his religious leaders, who recommended that he have them taken to Wakering in the Kingdom of Essex for burial, where a monastery already existed. The site was probably Great Wakering, not many miles away from the possibly royal burial-site of Prittlewell, Essex. With this new destination the bodies consented to be moved, and were venerated in their final resting-place as royal Christian martyrs. At about this time Egberht's mother Queen Seaxburh founded her own double monastery at Minster in Sheppey, on the south bank of the Thames Estuary nearly opposite Wakering. The monastery at Reculver was founded in 669. Ecgberht then founded the monastery of Minster in Thanet, to be ruled over by the sister of the murdered princes. She was the mother of Saint Mildrith, who afterwards succeeded her as abbess. Some sources also claim that another monastery was established at Eastry for the same reason, over which a sister of Mildrith's ruled as abbess. Another sister, Mildburg, remained among the Magonsaetan and governed the monastery of Much Wenlock in Shropshire. In addition to the Latin Passio (edited by David Rollason) a version of the story appears in Roger of Wendover's Flores Historiarum (Flowers of History), compiled in the early thirteenth century. Excavations at Great Wakering have recently uncovered a site of Middle Saxon occupation including a fragment of ornamented stone-sculpture, which may derive from the place named in the legend. References Sources Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, Ed. and Trans. by B. Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford 1969). J. A. Giles, Roger of Wendover's Flowers of History, Translation, Vol.1 (London 1849). S. Plunkett, Suffolk in Anglo-Saxon Times (Stroud 2005). D. W. Rollason, The Mildrith Legend. A Study of Early Medieval Hagiography in England (Leicester 1982). F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd Edition (Oxford 1971). External links and 7th-century Christian saints Anglo-Saxon royalty Kentish saints House of Kent