Cuthbert, an Anglo-Saxon monk in the Kingdom of Northumbria—which at this time includes, in modern terms, north east England and south east Scotland as far as the Firth of Forth—had engaged in extensive missionary activities.

Traveling the breadth of the country from Berwick to Galloway, he has reportedly worked so many healing miracles that people have begun to call him “the wonderworker of Britain.”

While living as a hermit on the Farne Islands, he had instituted special laws to protect the Eider ducks and other seabirds nesting on the islands; these may have been the first bird protection laws anywhere in the world.

Consequently, eider ducks are often called cuddy ducks (Cuthbert's ducks) in modern Northumbrian dialects.

Cuthbert had reluctantly given up his solitude in the island of Farne to be consecrated bishop of Lindisfarne in 685.

Dying two years later, Cuthbert will become one of the most important medieval saints of England, with widespread recognition in the places he had been in Scotland; he is today regarded as the patron saint of Northumbria.