rying his daughter Elfleda to Ethelred, created him first earl of
Mercia, after the extinction of its kings. This valiant earl built, and
endowed with secular canonries, a stately church, as a repository for
the relics of St. Wereburge, which afterwards became the cathedral. His
lady rebuilt other churches, walled in the city, and fortified it with a
strong castle against the Welsh.[2] The great kings, Athelstan and
Edgar, devoutly visited and enriched the church of St. Wereburge. In the
reign of St. Edward the Confessor, Leofrick, earl of Mercia, and his
pious wife, Godithe, rebuilt many churches and monasteries in those
parts, founded the abbeys of Leonence, near Hereford, also that of
Coventry, which city this earl made free. At Chester they repaired the
collegiate church of St. John, and out of their singular devotion to St.
Wereburge, rebuilt her minster in a most stately {348} manner. William
the Conqueror gave to his kinsman and most valiant knight, Hugh Lupus,
the earldom of Chester, with the sovereign dignity of a palatinate, on
condition he should win it. After having been thrice beaten and
repulsed, he at last took the city, and divided the conquered lands of
the country among his followers. In 1093, he removed the secular canons
of St. Wereburge, and in their stead placed monks under an abbot,
brought over from Bec in Normandy. Earl Richard, son and heir to Lupus,
going in pilgrimage to St. Winefrid's at Holywell, attributed to the
intercession of St. Wereburge his preservation from an army of Welshmen,
who came with an intention to intercept him. In memory of which, his
constable, William, gave to her church the village of Newton, and
founded the abbey of Norton on the Dee, at the place where his army
miraculously forded that great river to the succor of his master, which
place is still called Constable Sondes, says Bradshaw. The same learned
author relates, from the third book of the Passionary of the Abbey, many
miraculous cures of the sick, and preservations of that city from the
assaults of the Welsh, Danes, and Scots, and, in 1180, from a terrible
fire, which threatened to consume the whole city, but was suddenly
extinguished when the monks carried in procession the shrine of the
virgin in devout prayer. Her body fell to dust soon after its
translation to Chester. These relics being scattered in the reign of
Henry VIII., her shrine was converted into the episcopal throne in the
same church, and remains i