700 AD. Mercia was the central Kingdom of the Anglo Saxon heptarchy
and Weedon is usually considered to be the place nearest to the centre
of England. King Wulfere had reluctantly given his only daughter
Werburgh permission to enter the convent at Ely to be trained for the
religious life, and King Ethelred, who succeeded his brother, thought
she would be just the person to oversee the nuns of all the monasteries
in the Kingdom of Mercia. He gave his niece lands at Weedon, Trentham
and Hanbury on which to build convents.
At Weedon, among the servants of the monastery, there was a herdsman
named Alnoth. According to Goscelin in his 11th Century Life of St.
Werburgh, he was a man of great piety and, although he was an unlettered
serf, he practised his religion with simple devotion. Such men tend to
attract to themselves bullying persecution by the more worldly and one
day St. Werburgh saw her steward in a violent rage beating Alnoth for
some supposed fault or neglect. She was convinced by God that the
herdsman was innocent, but instead of using the authority of her birth
and position she fell at the feet of the steward pleading with him to be
merciful and so shamed him into more Christian and just behaviour.
Alnoth led the life of a hermit in the woods of Stowe near Bugbrooke and
there in his solitude he was murdered by some robbers, who infested the
wooded country. They could not have killed Alnoth for his wealth because
he had none, and the local people were sure that it was hatred of his
faith and holiness of life that had motivated his murderers. He was
regarded as a martyr and his tomb was a place of pilgrimage for
centuries, those visiting it attesting to miracles and answered
petitions.