BALDRED, or BALTHERE (d. 608?), saint, was a Northumbrian anchorite of the sixth century, the details of whose life are entirely mythical. Alban Butler gives 608 as the date of his death. He is said to have been suffragan of Kentigern of Glasgow, but all the localities connected with his cultus are in Lothian. Baldred was one of the island saints more common in Celtic than in English hagiology. His favourite place of retirement was the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth. The special scenes of his teaching and miracles are reputed to be the three villages of Aldhame, Tyningham, and Prestonne; and when on his death the three churches importuned for his body, they found that Providence had supplied each place with a corpse of the holy man. Baldred's feast-day is 6 March. Another Baldred, or Baltherus, who was a hermit of Durham, flourished about a century later, and after such miracles as walking on the sea died in 756. Mr. Skene connects the two Baltheres together, and regards the later as the right date of the saint's death.
[Acta Sanctorum Ord. Benedic. 6 March ; Forbes's Kalendar of Scottish Saints; Dictionary of Christian Biography; Skene's Celtic Scotland, iii. 223.]
BALDRED (fl. 823-825), king of Kent, during the dissensions which weakened Mercia after the death of Cenwulf, endeavoured to make Kent independent of that kingdom. He seems to have been on good terms with Archbishop Wulfred, who was a Kentishman, and who had himself carried on a long dispute with the Mercian king about the rights of his church. Baldred's kingdom fell before Ecgberht. He was chased from Kent by a West-Saxon army led by Æthelwulf, the king's son, Ealhstan, the bishop of Sherborne, and the ealdorman Wulfheard, and fled 'northwards over the Thames.' At the moment of his flight he granted Mailing to Christ Church, Canterbury, in the hope, it may be, of prevailing on the archbishop to espouse his cause. After his deposition Kent was held as a sub-kingdom by æthelings of the West-Saxon house, until it was finally incorporated with the rest of the southern kingdom on the accession of Æthelberht to the throne of Wessex.
[Anglo-Saxon Chron. sub an. 823 ; Kemble's Codex Dipl. ccxl.; Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, &c., iii. 557; Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 190 n., 256.]
BALDREY, JOSHUA KIRBY (1754–1828), engraver and draftsman, practised both in London and Cambridge between 1780 and 1810, working both in the chalk and dot manners. Many of his works were printed in colours. He exhibited portraits at the Royal Academy in 1793 and 1794. Among his best works are: 'The Finding of Moses,' after Salvator Rosa, 1785; 'Diana in a Landscape,' after Carlo Maratti; 'Lady Rawdon,' after Reynolds, 1783; and some subjects after Penny and Bunbury. His chief work, however, is from the east window of King's College Chapel, Cambridge, which he drew and engraved, and then finished highly in colours. He published 'A Dissertation on the Windows of King's College Chapel, Cambridge' (Camb. 1818, 8vo), from which it appears he was engaged on an engraving of one of the south windows. Baldrey died in indigence at Hatfield Wood Side, Hertfordshire, 6 Dec. 1828, leaving a widow and eleven children totally unprovided for.
[Cooper's Annals of Cambridge, iv. 559 ; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists (1878).]
BALDWIN (d. 1098), abbot and physician, was a monk of St. Denys, and was made prior of the monastery of Liberau, a cell of St. Denys, in Alsace. When Edward the Confessor refounded the monastery of Deerhurst and gave it to St. Denys, Baldwin was appointed prior of this new possession of his house. He was well skilled in medicine, and became the king's physician. On the death of Leofstan, abbot of St. Edmund's, in 1065, Edward caused the monks to elect Baldwin as his successor. The new abbot received the benediction at Windsor, in the presence of the king, from the Archbishop of Canterbury, for his house claimed to be exempt from the jurisdiction of the bishop of Elmham, in whose diocese it lay. The king further showed his regard for the new abbot by granting him the privilege of a mint. Baldwin became one of the physicians of the Conqueror, and his skill made him a favourite with the king, who enriched his house with grants of land. He had occasion to exert his influence with the king to the utmost, for Herfast, who was made bishop of Elmham in 1070, contemplated the removal of his see to St. Edmund's, and asserted his authority over the abbey. Baldwin stoutly rejected his claim, and obtained leave from the king to lay the matter before the pope. He journeyed to Rome in 1071, taking with him some of the relics of St. Edmund. The fact that two Englishmen, one the prior and the other a chaplain of his house, accompanied Baldwin on this journey, shows that at St. Edmund's, unlike some other monasteries, the French abbot lived on friendly terms with his English monks. Alexander II received Baldwin graciously. He
