Eadburh of Bicester

Saint Eadburh of Bicester (also Eadburth or Edburg) was an English nun and abbess of the seventh century. She was the daughter of the pagan King Penda of Mercia, who nevertheless had several Christian children; by another view, she was the daughter of King Frithewald. She reposed around 650. She has been called a "bit of a mystery", because several Saxon saints bear the same name.

She was born, it is said, in the now-⁠deserted village of Quarrendon in Buckinghamshire and, together with her sister Edith, founded an abbey near Aylesbury, where she was probably abbess. She was the aunt of Saint Osyth and trained her in the religious life. Legends say that she and Edith found Osyth three days after she had drowned and witnessed her return to life. She may have lived at Adderbury, thirty miles from Aylesbury, which may be named for her. Her burial place is unknown.

In 850 a simple Saxon church was built at Bicester. In 1182 her relics were moved from Adderbury to Bicester. In 1536, at the Reformation, Sir Simon Harcourt, sheriff of Oxford, destroyed the Bicester Priory church but saved Eadburh's shrine and moved it to Saint Michael's Church at Stanton Harcourt; other parts of it were combined into a tomb in the Harcourt chapel. She is commemorated on 18 July as a saint of the undivided Church, by the New Calendar.