A triumphal arch and fountain in the gardens of Wilton House, which stands on the lands of the now vanished Wilton Abbey in Wiltshire. The Abbey was destroyed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII, the keys being handed over by Abbess Cecily Bodenham on March 25th, 1539. ‘Methinks the Abbess’ wrote one nun ‘hath a faint heart and doth yield up our possessions to the spoiler with a not unwilling haste.’
SHORTLY afterwards,* this very holy man was moved to tears during the serving of the liturgy, and when his deacon asked why, his reply came with a sigh from the heart. ‘This soul beloved of the Lord,’ Dunstan said, ‘this twinkling gem, is about to be snatched up from this world of troubles into the country of the saints. This dissolute world is not worthy of the presence of such a great light. Thirty-four days from now, this dazzling star will have set.’
And so it was that, aged twenty-three, on the sixteenth of September, she departed to Christ, in the Year of our Lord 984; and was buried by St Dunstan in the church of St Denis; the holy virgin had often gone there, her mind foreboding, and said: ‘This is my resting place’, watering it with an unceasing rain of tears. In the same court of the monastery she established a hospital, in which thirteen poor persons are now supported.
On the impression Edith had made on St Dunstan, who would live only another four years himself, see St Edith’s Thumb.
