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Life of St Wilfrid
Eddius Stephanus, tr. Colgrave, 1927
38. How the Chains Fell Off Him
Now this same reeve did not dare to continue his honourable treatment of our holy bishop any longer, for fear of the king, yet, dreading the anger of God on account of Wilfrid’s holiness, he preferred not to put him to any shame; so he sent messengers to the king, saying, “I adjure you by my life and your salvation not to compel me to punish this holy and innocent bishop to my perdition any longer, because I choose rather to die than to scourge him for no fault.”
When the king heard this message he angrily ordered the holy bishop to be sent to his town of Dunbar, to the reeve named Tydlin, whom he considered to be a more cruel man: he ordered that he should be kept, though so good a man and so great a bishop, bound hands and feet with fetters, in solitary confinement. So in accordance with the king’s command the reeve ordered the smiths to make iron fetters. The smiths, though they had no reason for doing so, entered upon their task with energy, measuring the limbs of our holy confessor. But God was opposing them. For the chains were always too small and narrow to go round his limbs or else they were so wide and loose that they fell free from the feet of the evangelist, the hands of the baptist. They were so terrified that they left the man of God unbound. He continued meanwhile to sing psalms and to give thanks to God, as the Apostle says to the Hebrews, “Enduring a great fight of afflictions, being made a gazing-stock by reproaches, and suffering the spoiling of all his goods,” and such sufferings had been inflicted by his fellow-countrymen. Thus they kept him in confinement against their will until the time appointed by God.