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May that mercy be still vouchsafed us! King of England. 1066. William I. In the fen country of Lincolnshire, there lived, in the reign of Edward the Confessor, a wealthy Saxon franklin named Leofric, Lord of Bourn. He was related to the great Earls of Mercia, and his brother Brand was Abbot of Peterborough, so that he, and his wife Ediva, were persons of consideration in their own neighborhood.
No sooner did he receive this intelligence, than he set off with his wife, and, arriving in Lincolnshire, communicated in secret with his old friends at Bourn, collected a small band, attacked the Norman, drove him away, and re-instated Ediva in his paternal home. But this exploit only exposed him to further perils.
But the larger bones, with the remaining dust, were collected in a leaden coffer, and deposited at the altar of St. Martin." Queen Ediva, as we learn from the same authority, "who before the fire reposed under a gilted feretrum in nearly the middle of the south cross, was now deposited at the altar of St. Martin, under the feretrum of Living," an archbishop who died in 1020.
Martin is represented in a medallion of ancient glass preserved in the modern window, as dividing his coat with a beggar. Scratched on the walls are the names "Lanfrancus" and "Ediva Regina;" the bodies of Lanfranc and Queen Ediva were removed to this transept after the fire.
Such a neighbor as this was not likely to allow the re-instated Ediva to remain at Bourn in peace, and Hereward found that he must continue in arms, for her protection and his own.
Ediva, the wife of Edward the Elder, and a generous benefactress to the cathedral, died about 960. From an early list of the subjects represented in the windows of the cathedral, it appears that the north windows of the north-east transept depicted the Parable of the Sower.
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