The “Life of St Botolph” begins with a preface, and ends with an account of the movement of the relics of various saints to Thorney Island during the period of the Danish raids. But in MS British Library Harley 3097 (12th c.), folios 64v-65v (online here), in between the “Life” of Botolph, and the “Translatio” of the relics, there is another text, about three hermits of Thorney Abbey. These were Thancred (or Tancred), his brother Torhtred, and their sister Tova. I don’t know of any other manuscript that contains it.
The text is headed, “De Sanctis Thancredo et Torhtredo”, “Concerning Sts Thancred and Torhtred”, and ends with the explicit: “Explicit De Sanctis Thancredo et Torhtredo et eorum sorore Christi virgine Sancta Tova.”
The Latin text was published long ago in W. Birch, Liber Vitae: Register and Martyrology of New Minster and Hyde Abbey, Winchester, London (1892), appendix F, pp.284-286. This is online at Archive.org here.
Unfortunately these saints are not listed in the Bollandists’ Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina. Not much seems to be known about these three, except that their relics were preserved at Thorney Abbey, and venerated there before 1000 AD, as I learn from the Oxford Dictionary of Saints:
Tancred, Torthred, and Tova (870). Hermits of Thorney (Cambs.), killed by the Danes in 870.
The first two were men, the third a woman, but nothing is known of them. The story of their martyrdom rests on the chronicle of Pseudo-Ingulph, which may include sources older than the 12th century. They were, however, venerated in their Thorney shrine by the year 1000, witnessed by R. P. S. and were among the many saints whose bodies were translated by Ethelwold, but whose names William of Malmesbury was unwilling to write because they sounded so barbarous. Their feast was on 30 September at Thorney and Deeping.
R.P.S. and C.S.P.; William of Malmesbury, G.P., pp. 327–9; E.B.K. after 1100, i. 129–44.
It does not seem that the author of these couple of pages in BL Harley 3097 knew much more. All he can tell us is material from the notes of Aethelwold, founder of Thorney Abbey, and all the latter knew was that they were hermits killed by the Danes.
Here is a draft translation of the text as given by Birch, slightly corrected against the manuscript.
The saints and elect of God, rejecting the world in its fragility through inward contemplation of the soul, with single intent fixed the gaze of their hearts upon earning that joy of future blessedness. But if anything contrary to this holy purpose appeared, they cast it aside with firm deliberation, and with the clearer sight of the mind they freely conceded renunciations, lest the ancient enemy should imagine that he could triumph over them with his usual trickery.
Hence it happened, by the blessing of God, that the holy confessors of the Lord, Thancred and Torhtred, who are venerated in today’s celebration, after despising the world, having been divinely raised to such a height of virtue, were strengthened in godly contemplation, that in the wilderness of Thorney they sought out the enemy of the human race in single combat, and at the same time, while supported by the grace of God, that they triumphed with a wonderful cry (of victory) over the one shamelessly deceiving, although no history recommends to us and no page of ancient narrative reveals the birth of these flowers of sanctity, or the manner of living of their lives. But seeing the almighty grace of God, justifying those who fear him in every nation, we will not allow the little which we have learned about them to remain hidden from our descendants.
They lived in the aforementioned wilderness in dwellings not far separate from each other, brother from brother, likewise priest from priest, having a remote cell in which they spent their entire bodily life in meditation on the heavenly commandments. Who can measure, who can relate their labours in such a great solitude, their vigils, fastings, patience of soul, discomfort of body, the glorious tears and pious longings of a soul sighing constantly for God?
During the holy praise of these two holy brothers, a transparent pearl of the splendour of God cannot lie hidden, namely their sister and glorious partner in Christ, the virgin Tova. She, as the blessed bishop of Christ, both the first builder of the same place, and its most holy abbot, Ethelwold, attests in his writings, was not only the sister of so many saints by blood, but also by diligent imitation of their virtues. And so she had chosen for herself with a manly spirit a solitary cottage in the woods, further away and about a mile more distant, in order to obtain divine aid more closely, having left earthly comfort and society far away. Triumphing over the tyrant of the world in that struggle, she, having become a member of Christ, deserved to have Christ as her head, to whom she was united in the framework of the body of the Church, that is, in that heavenly communion of the saints.
Fittingly do we proclaim the saints, in their contempt for the world yet exalted in the world, and nothing prevents us from proclaiming those who, despising such things for the love of God , sought the peace of solitude, in order to pour out all their attention in the single-minded pursuit of divine things. For, exiled from the doings of this world, they stood as if in a constant line of battle against the assault of the devil, and they won the right to be honoured by the Lord, not with the martyrdom of a single day, month, or even a long year, but rather with the triumph of their whole lives.
Nor did their temporal gladiator lack a crown, because the same piratical plague, which is said to have depopulated England in the time of the blessed Edmund, king and martyr, troubling many locations in many places, also came to the same wilderness, and there made the blessed bishop of Christ Thancred into a martyr, having found him in his cell, and after some time adorned the struggle of a longer wrestling-match with a glorious end.
But his brother Torhtred, equally a bishop of the Lord, as the aforementioned pontiff of God Ethelwold teaches in his writings, conquering the foe and the world in the glory of confession,[1] departed to Christ in his sleep, and was buried in the same wilderness with his brother the martyr and his sister the virgin.
There, to this day, resting in their tombs, to the honour of the Holy Trinity, they are venerated by faithful Christians, who, with the support of their assistance, are freed from the burden of oppressive sins, and as the strength of their faith grows, they rejoice, to the honour and praise of the same God and our almighty Lord, who lives and reigns for ever and ever, Amen.
It sounds as if the Danes found Thancred in his cell in the woods, tortured him, no doubt in hopes of money, and then killed him. They also tortured his brother Torhtred, but did not kill him. The virgin Tova was a mile deeper in the woods, and perhaps went unnoticed.
- [1]I.e. he was a “confessor”; presumably captured by the Danes and tortured, but not killed.↩