Hilda of Whitby's Wider Network

Hilda's sister, Hereswith was already a widow when Hilda came searching for her in East Anglia in the year 647. Their father a Prince of the Kingdom of Deira had been poisoned. They came under the protection of Edwin of Northumbria; and were befriended by the widowed kings new queen,  Ethelburh of Kent, herself the daughter of a Merovingian princess, Bertha of Kent;  the girls were baptised as young women, with the whole of  Edwin's court, by St. Paulinus - who had travelled north from the Kingdom of Kent to York -  in the year 626.

In spite of their failure to meet up,  both women pursued vocations to the religious life.  Hilda, famously,  becoming Abbess of Whitby and Hereswith entering the monastery founded by St. Bathilde at Chelles. 
There are reasons to suspect Bathilds's home parish may have been Postwick, just outside Norwich. Finally, my former colleague Ray Simpson, late of the Parish of Bowthorpe, headed north to follow in Hilda's footsteps.
"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us." (Hebrews 12.1)

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