Eadnoth the Younger

Holy Hieromartyr Eadnoth the Younger was a monk and abbot of Ramsey and then bishop of Dorchester in England. He fell in the battle of Assandun on 18 October 1016 and is venerated as a martyr. He is a saint of the undivided Church.

He was born into a family of priests in the Fens, a kinsman of Saint Oswald, bishop of Worcester and archbishop of York, the founder of Ramsey Abbey. He began as a monk at Worcester. In the 980s he is found at Ramsey supervising building works, and in 992 he became abbot. As abbot he founded two houses on his family's lands: a monastery at St Ives and a nunnery at Chatteris, whose first abbess was his sister Ælfwyn. In 1002 he translated to Ramsey the relics of Saint Ivo, found by a ploughman a year earlier.

Between 1007 and 1009 he was made bishop of Dorchester, a sprawling diocese covering much of the eastern Danelaw. Little is known of his episcopate. On 18 October 1016 he fought on the side of Edmund Ironside against the Danish invader Cnut and fell at Assandun, together with Wulfsige, his successor as abbot of Ramsey. His body was carried toward Ramsey, but the monks of Ely stopped it on the way and kept it; there he was venerated as a saint, as Eadnoth the Martyr.

He is commemorated on 19 October, the liturgical date in the Orthodox calendar (the same day number on the old and new calendars).