southwards, and crossed the Humber,
and so through Winteringham and Alftham, where she stayed a few days,
and where she is said to have built a church. This can only mean that
she arranged for its building or undertook the cost. At West Halton, the
next village to Winteringham (as Bentham has observed), the church is
dedicated to S. Etheldreda; and this place may be identified with the
Alftham of the chronicler. The party had now assumed the dress of
pilgrims, and went by unfrequented roads, so as to escape observation.
At one point of their journey a second miraculous event is recorded. The
queen had lain down to sleep while her attendants kept watch, and had
stuck her pilgrim's staff in the ground. When she awoke, this staff was
found to have taken root and already to have brought forth leaves. It
was left standing, and grew into a flourishing tree; and the place, from
the circumstance, was named Etheldrede's-Stow.[4] A church was
afterwards built and dedicated to S. Etheldreda.

In course of time the three pilgrims arrived safely at their
destination. Wilfrid, the archbishop, soon joined them. He had lost
favour with King Egfrid, being supposed to have influenced the queen in
her decision to take the veil. The king, regarding his marriage with
Etheldreda as being _de facto_ dissolved, took another wife, who was for
various reasons much opposed to Wilfrid. The archbishop also greatly
resented the action of the king and Archbishop Theodore in dividing his
diocese without his consent into four different sees, and he was at one
time banished and at another imprisoned.

Etheldreda now set to work in earnest to establish a religious house.
Her buildings were begun in 673. This year is accordingly taken as the
date of the foundation of the monastery and of the town itself. King
Ethelbert is indeed said to have built a church a short distance from
the site of the present cathedral, at a place called Cratendune[5]; but
there is much uncertainty as to the fact, and some considerable
difficulties in reconciling the different references to it. It is stated
that this church had but a short existence, being destroyed by Penda,
King of Mercia. This Ethelbert was the Bretwalda, King of Kent, husband
of the Christian queen Bertha. After his conversion he was instrumental
in furthering the spread of Christianity among the East Saxons, and also
apparently in East Anglia, one of the East Anglian kings, Redwald,
having (but only for a t