Ine of Wessex & Queen Ethelburga

Ine was King of Wessex from 689 to 726 and is venerated, together with his queen Ethelburga (Æthelburg), among the pre-schism Western saints of the English Church. He is remembered as a lawgiver and a patron of churches who, late in life, abdicated his throne and went with his wife on pilgrimage to Rome, where both ended their days. The pair are commemorated on September 8.

Ine's reign of some thirty-seven years was one of the longest among the early West Saxon kings. Around 694 he issued a written code of laws, the first promulgated by an Anglo-Saxon king outside Kent; it dealt with Christian observance, civil and legal matters, and the organization of agriculture, and is noted as the earliest documentary evidence for an open-field farming system in England. He was associated with the building of churches in Wessex, among them Wells, built around 705 at the suggestion of Bishop Aldhelm, and the minster at Glastonbury, which he built or rebuilt on the site of an older British monastery.

His later years were marked by warfare and dynastic difficulty. The sources record campaigns against Geraint of Dumnonia in 710, a battle at Woden's Barrow in Wiltshire in 715, and invasions of Sussex in 722 and 725. His queen Ethelburg is recorded as having destroyed the fortress of Taunton in 722 during one of his absences. In 726 Ine abdicated, leaving no clear heir, and travelled to Rome with Ethelburg; both died there. The tradition credits Ine with founding the Schola Saxonum, a hospice in Rome for English pilgrims, which a later chronicler dates to 727.