CHAPTER 65: [Death of Wilfrid, 709]
CHAPTER 65
[Death of Wilfrid, 709]
ST WILFRID set off for the south and the goodwill of the whole Northumbrian people, high and low, went with him. His abbots in Mercia were overjoyed to see him. He went round the abbeys as one who has foreseen his end and is sharing out his property among his heirs. His generosity was truly heart-warming. Every community was provided for according to its needs; some got grants of land to increase their revenues, the rest were left a legacy. To a few of the abbots he confided the full details of his will. At the end of the round his company came to the monastery at Oundle where Wilfrid had once dedicated a church to St Andrew, and here he was twice overcome by sudden illness. He knew his end was nigh and contented himself with exhorting them to follow all the good advice he had previously given. (Sometime before this, as though he knew he was soon to die, he had given his kinsman Tatberht a full account of his life one day when they were out riding.) He mentioned all the grants of land he had made to his abbots and which he now left them in his will. Hexham Abbey he gave to Acca, who afterwards succeeded him in the see. He talked a little while and blessed them, just as Jacob blessed his sons, then, quietly, without any fuss or complaint, leaned back on the pillow and rested. The brethren chanted round the bed day and night, weeping as they sang. When they came to the verse of Psalm 103 which runs ‘Send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created, and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth,’ our bishop breathed his last. And the brethren heard, to their amazement, a sound in the air like a flight of birds approaching. This fact is attested to by crowds of witnesses. Wilfrid’s nominee, Acca, was accepted as abbot in his place. The depth of the love he bore his father in God can be seen in the numerous practices he instituted in his honour. Acca himself celebrated a private mass daily for the repose of his soul and had every Thursday, the day of his death, kept as a feast just like Sunday. He decided to mark every anniversary of the death by giving a tenth part of all his herds and flocks to the poor – all this over and above the charity he distributed every day for the repose of his master’s soul and the welfare of his own, always in Wilfrid’s name.