red
sometimes that he spent three or four nights together in that heavenly
exercise, allowing himself very little or no sleep. When St. Ebba, the
royal virgin, sister to the kings St. Oswald and Oswi, abbess of the
double monastery of Coldingham, invited him to edify that house by his
exhortations, he complied, and stayed there some days. In the night,
while others were asleep, he stole out to his devotions according to his
custom in other places. One of the monks who watched and followed him
one night, found that the saint, going down to the seashore, went into
the water up to the armpits, and there sung praises to God. In this
manner he passed the silent time of the night. Before the break of day
he came out, and having prayed awhile on the sands, returned to the
monastery, and was ready to join in morning lauds.

St. Cuthbert, foreseeing his death to approach, resigned his bishopric,
which he had held two years, and retired to his solitude in Farne
Island, to prepare himself for his last passage. Two months after he
fell sick, and permitted Herefrid, the abbot of Lindisfarne, who came to
visit him, to leave two of his monks to attend him in his last moments.
He received the viaticum of the body and blood of Christ from the hands
of the abbot Herefrid, at the hour of midnight prayer, and immediately
lifting up his eyes, and stretching out his hands, sweetly slept in
Christ on the 20th day of March, 687. He died in the island of Farne:
but, according to his desire, his body was buried in the monastery of
St. Peter in Lindisfarne, on the right side of the high altar. Bede
relates many miracles performed at his tomb; and adds, that eleven years
after his death, the monks taking up his body, instead of dust which
they expected, found it unputrefied, with the joints pliable, and the
clothes fresh and entire.[2] They put it into a new coffin, placed above
the pavement, over the former grave: and several miracles were there
wrought, even by touching the clothes which covered the coffin. William
of Malmesbury[3] writes, that the body was again found incorrupt four
hundred and fifteen years afterwards at Durham, and publicly shown. In
the Danish invasions, the monks carried it away from Lindisfarne; and,
after several removals on the continent, settled with their treasure on
a woody hill almost surrounded by the river Were, formed by nature for a
place of, defence. They built there a church of stone, which {628}
Aldhune, bisho