Matilda of Darenth
Overview
Date of Death12th centuryBiography
We know Matilda was an aristocrat, perhaps of royal lineage because Osbert of Clare a correspondent, refers to the splendor of her birth (“you radiate with the splendors of lineage”). The fact that the letter he sent her has several richly coloured initial capitals may also suggest that she was a person of some prestige. Otherwise all we know is that she was probably a nun in the Benedictine abbey of Malling in Kent,1 and was identified with Darenth, which the editor of Osbert’s letters, E.W. Williamson identifies as a small village on the river of that name, three miles above Dartford.
