A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Quenburga, or Keneburgh
QUENBURGA,
Or Keneburgh, as it is sometimes spelled, was the wife of one of the Saxon kings who ruled in Britain during the Heptarchy; she was the daughter of Penda, King of Mercia, and was mainly instrumental, it is said, in converting that powerful monarch to Christianity. She was married to Alfred, eldest son of Oswy, and was called Queen of Deria, over which district her husband had control. Through her influence, we are told that the court of Alfred became converted into a kind of monastic school of regular discipline and Christian perfection, according to the ideas of religion then prevalent Her heart, it is said, was more set upon the kingdom of heaven than on any earthly diadem.
Alfred having died during his father's lifetime, Quenburga returned to her father's dominions, and, resolving to devote the rest of her life to religious seclusion, founded an establishment of Christian virgins at a place on the confines of Huntingdon and Northampton, called Dormund-caistor, and afterwards in her honour Kunneburg-ceastor, or the town of Quenburgh. Here she lived, and here she died, and here, when her father was killed, and heavy misfortunes fell upon her family, she received her three sisters, Keneswitba. Quendrida, and Idaburga, desirous, like her, of finding a place of rest and retirement from the troubles of life. Drayton, in his "Polyalbion," says,
"Kenebarg in this our sainted front shall stand.
To Alfred the loved wife, King of Northomberland;"
and, according to Palgrave, she was "A mirror of sanctity, so that many virgins of all ranks and degrees resorted to her monastery, to be instructed in the rules and exercises of a religious life; and while the daughters of princes reverenced her as a mistress, the poor were admitted to regard her as a companion, and both tho one and the other honoured her as a parent."