Saxon Christianity
How Britain's first Convent came about.
Eanswythe (sometimes spelt Eanswith) was born in the Dark Ages around 614AD, the daughter of Eadbald, Saxon King of Kent who reigned in the region from 616AD until 640AD.
Early British Christianity
These were turbulent times in early Christianity. Eadbald’s father Ethelbert had made Kent a Christian stronghold when St. Augustine arrived from Rome in 595AD. Ethelbert was later canonised as the first Christian King amongst the English. However Eadbald renounced Christianity and turned to Pagan beliefs following his father’s death. Yet Eadbald’s wife, Emma, remained a Christian and it is from her Eanswythe took her beliefs.
Legend has it that King Eadbald wished Eanswythe to marry a Northumbrian Prince to cement an alliance with that Kingdom but Eanswythe was unhappy with this arrangement as the Prince held Pagan beliefs and not her Christian ones. Eanswythe challenged the Prince to use his pagan prayers to lengthen a beam that was to be used in the building of a church, when he failed to do so she dropped to her knees and prayed to God and the beam was lengthened.
Eanswythe asked her father to allow her to shun the marriage and create and holy house where women to dedicate their lives to God. King Eadbald agreed and Britain’s first Convent was created in Folkestone, Kent.
Britain's First Benedictine Convent
The building of Folkestone Abbey saw another of Eanswythe’s miracles. It is said that to supply the Abbey with water her prayers diverted a steam uphill to supply water to the Abbey. Other purported miracles include curing blindness and being able to make the crows stay away from the nuns’ corn crop.
Eanswythe died young according to legend, although there is no evidence as to how young that was. The Priory was also fated to an early demise. There are two versions of how this happened, one states that the sea took the Abbey which had been built over looking the English Channel. The other story suggests that Viking raiders sacked the Abbey and razed it to the ground.
St Eanswythe Lives On
Yet St. Eanswythe has not left Folkestone. A church built in the 12th Century had Eanswythe’s relics placed in it in 1138 on the 12th of September, a date that remains dedicated to her. In the 19th century a small leaden Saxon casket was discovered in the north wall of the High Alter Sanctuary in, when work on the arcading of the chancel was being undertaken. In the early 1980’s the bones were examined and catalogued by an expert. The conclusion was that they came from one human skeleton, a young female adult aged between 18 & 25 years about 5'4"up inches in height.
The church, of St Mary and St Eanswythe still stands today on the centre of Folkestone.
St. Eanswythe may not be a well known Saint but she does deserve to be recognised as a leading light in the early Christianity, especially in the foundation of women’s worship.
St Eanswythe
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