from it that not only isolated
monks and nuns were received into the community but sometimes whole
families. Caedmon entered "cum omnibus suis," which is generally taken
to mean that his whole family were received with him. We see from it,
too, how earnest was the desire of the superiors of the monasteries to
instruct the ignorant; how rich and poor alike in the C7 might aspire to
the monastic life, the only passport being the honest desire to serve
God in the best possible way.

Again in the latter part of the story, dealing with Caedmon's sickness
and death, there is evidence of how the aged, the sick and the dying
were tended with special care.

Whitby was not only an important religious but also political centre
and the abbesses took by no means a small part in controversy. At the
Synod of Whitby[23] held here in 664, when the respective claims of
Irish and Roman ecclesiastical discipline were discussed, Hild took the
side of the Irish Church; while her successor, Aelflaed, interested
herself in the doings of her brother, King Egfrith. Hild reigned thirty
years at Whitby and died after many years of suffering, during which she
never failed to teach her flock, both in public and in private. All that
we know of her character, indicates a strong and vivid personality, a
mind keenly alive to the necessities of the age, and a will vigorous
enough to be successful in providing for them where opportunity
occurred. She had a worthy successor in Aelflaed, a friend of the holy S.
Cuthbert. Bede says of her that "she added to the lustre of her princely
birth the brighter glory of exalted virtue," and that she was "inspired
with much love toward Cuthbert, the holy man of God."[24]

On one occasion she had fallen seriously ill, and expressed a wish that
something belonging to S. Cuthbert could be sent to her. "For then," she
said, "I know I should soon be well." A linen girdle was sent from the
Saint, and the abbess joyfully put it on. The next morning she could
stand on her feet and the third day she was restored to perfect health.
Later, a nun was cured of a headache by the same girdle, but when next
it was wanted, it could nowhere be found. Bede argues quaintly that its
disappearance was also an act of Divine Providence, since some of the
sick who flocked to it might be unworthy, and, not being cured, might
doubt its efficacy, while in reality, their own unworthiness was to
blame. "Thus," he concludes, "was all matter for d