Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/388

 pline as she could learn from wise men.’ Aidan and other holy men who ‘held her in high regard often visited her and gave her advice’ (ib. iv. 23). After his decisive victory over Penda of Mercia, 15 Nov. 655, Oswy, king of Northumbria, as a thankoffering, committed the care of his infant daughter Ælflæd [see under ] to Hilda, to be brought up as a nun (ib. iii. 24). About two years later (657), on having obtained possession of an estate of ten hides on the headland of Streaneshalch—renamed Whitby by the Danes—Hilda there founded a monastery for the religious of both sexes, of which she assumed the government, taking with her the royal child Ælflæd, who subsequently succeeded her as abbess (ib.) Here, in Bæda's words, she, whom all who knew her called ‘mother,’ taught her charge ‘to practise thoroughly all virtues, but especially peace and love, so that, after the pattern of the primitive church, no one there was rich and no one was poor, but all had all things in common, for nothing seemed to be the property of any individual’ (ib. iv. 23).

Hilda's new monastery speedily became the most celebrated religious house in the north-east of England, and here in the spring of 664 was held the famous conference between the adherents of the Roman and the Scotic rule as to the celebration of Easter and other matters of ritual. Hilda, Bæda informs us, had previously observed the Scotic rule, but when that practice was condemned she hastened to adopt the Roman rule. Her reputation for practical wisdom grew so that ‘not only all ordinary folk resorted to her in their necessities, but even kings and princes sought counsel of her and found it’ (ib.) Those who had been trained under her rule to a life of unanimity and unselfishness, ‘devoting their time to the study of scripture and the practice of works of justice,’ formed a school from which bishops gladly sought their candidates for holy orders. No fewer than five of the brethren (Bosa, Aetla, Oftfor, John, and Wilfrid—second of the name) became bishops, of whom three filled the see of York, and one of these, St. John of Beverley, obtained a place among canonised saints. The Anglo-Saxon poet, [q. v.], originally a farm labourer on the monastic estate, at the command of Hilda became a brother of the house. Hilda shared in the Northumbrian feeling which condemned Wilfrid when he appealed to Rome against the division of his diocese; and joined with Archbishop Theodore in sending to accuse him before Pope Agatho (, Vita Wilfridi, c. 52). During the last six years of her life, although suffering from a succession of feverish attacks, she pursued her pious work unremittingly. She died, after receiving the Eucharist, on the night of 17 Nov. 680, in the seventh year of her illness and the sixty-sixth of her age. With her last words she exhorted the ‘handmaids of Christ,’ who stood round her, to maintain the peace of the gospel with each other and with all. A celestial vision vouchsafed to a sister named Begu is said to have apprised the nuns of Hackness, where in the last year of her life Hilda had formed a small dependent house, of the death of their great mother. St. Hilda is commemorated in the Roman calendar on 17 Nov., the festival of another English saint, St. Hugh, bishop of Lincoln.

 HILDERSAM or HILDERSHAM, ARTHUR (1563–1632), puritan divine, son of Thomas Hildersam, by his second wife, Anne Pole, was born at Stetchworth, Cambridgeshire, on 6 Oct. 1563. He was of royal descent through his mother, a daughter of Sir Geoffrey Pole, brother to Cardinal Pole. His parents, who were zealous Roman catholics, designed him for the priesthood; but in preparation for the university he was sent to the grammar school of Saffron Walden, Essex, where Desborough, the master, grounded him in protestant principles. In 1576 he was entered at Christ's College, Cambridge. Two years later his father removed him to London, intending to send him to Rome; on his declining to go, or to recede from his protestant convictions, he was disinherited. At this crisis he met in London John Ireton, fellow of his college, who took him to [q. v.], his mother's second cousin. Huntingdon provided for his return to Cambridge, where after graduating M.A. he was elected fellow Oct. 1583. Barwell, the master of Christ's, refused to confirm the election, and the fellowship was given to Andrew Willet. Brook prints a very spirited protest addressed by Hildersam to Burghley, the chancellor. At Burghley's suggestion he was made divinity reader at Trinity Hall. He left the university in 1587, being appointed by Huntingdon (14 Sept.) lecturer at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, the impropriate tithes being settled on him for life. Though with-