have died in, or possibly immediately before that year. Her death is, however, said by her biographer (Acta SS. Bolland.) to have taken place in 683, and Canon Raine considers that it happened after the fire at Coldingham. This, however, is contrary to the express words of Bæda (Hist. Eccl. iv. 25), whose authority is final. It seems probable that the belief that Æbbe lived to some date after 679 may have arisen from a confusion between her and the other abbess of the same name mentioned by Eddi. Her day, sometimes stated as 29 Aug., is correctly 25 Aug. She was buried in her monastery. In later days, probably after the destruction of Coldingham by the Danes in the ninth century, her grave was discovered by some shepherds, and her body was translated and laid in the church on the south side of the altar. In the eleventh century a priest of Durham named Alfred stole her bones, or some part of them, and deposited them along with other relics of the same kind in the tomb of St. Cuthberht (Symeon). Besides the life of the saint by John of Tinmouth in manuscript in the British Museum and the Bodleian Library, which was printed in Capgrave's ‘Aurea Legenda’ and thence in ‘Acta SS.,’ there are manuscript lives of little value in the British Museum, Lansdowne 436, and the Bodleian, Fairfax 6.
Another Ebba is said, in the compilation used by Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris, to have been abbess of Coldingham when the house was destroyed by the Danes about 870. The compiler records that she and her nuns cut off their noses and upper lips in order to preserve their chastity. No early writer mentions this story, and it is therefore not to be accepted as historical (Wendover, i. 301, Engl. Hist. Soc.; Paris, i. 391, Rolls Ser.).
[Bædæ Hist. Eccl. iii. 6, iv. 19, 25; Vita S. Cudbercti, c. 10 (Engl. Hist. Soc.); Eddi's Vita Wilfridi, c. 37, 39; Historians of York, i. 53, 55 (Rolls Ser.); Symeon of Durham's Hist. Dunelm. Eccl. ii. 7, iii; 7 (Rolls Ser.); Acta SS. Bolland. Aug v. 194–9; Forbes's Kalendars of Scottish Saints, p. 330: Surtees's Hist. of Durham, ii. 300–1; Dict. Christian Biog. art. ‘Ebba,’ by Canon Raine; Hardy's Cat. of MSS. i. 288–90.]
EBDON, THOMAS (1738–1811), organist and musical composer, was born at Durham in 1738. His name and the date 1755 are found carved on an oak screen in the cathedral, and it is inferred from this that he was a chorister there, and afterwards an articled pupil of James Heseltine, the organist, whom he succeeded in 1763. Heseltine had been appointed in 1710, and as Ebdon lived until 1811, the post of cathedral organist was held by two men for a period of 101 years. Ebdon died at South Bailey, Durham, 23 Sept. 1811, and was buried in St. Oswald's churchyard. An anthem, taken from Psalm xvi. 9–11, was sung at his funeral. It does not appear whether it was his own composition or not, as it is not among his published works; it may well have been by him, however, and is possibly one of the anthems left by him in manuscript. Of the music published in his lifetime, his ‘Morning, Communion, and Evening Service in C,’ which, together with five anthems and some responses and chants, makes up the volume of sacred music issued about 1790, is still occasionally heard. Another volume of sacred music was published in 1810, containing sixteen anthems, two Kyries, and six double chants. Two harpsichord sonatas, six glees for three voices, published about 1780, ‘The Scotch Shepherd,’ a song, and a march for the installation of W. H. Lambton as grand provincial master of Freemasons for the county of Durham, published in score, complete the list of his works.
[Compositions, as above; Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 27691; Gent. Mag. lxxxi. pt. ii. p. 591; Grove's Dict. of Music, i. 479; Brown's Biog. Dict. of Musicians.]
EBERS, JOHN (1785?–1830?), operatic manager, the son of German parents, was born in London about 1785. He became a bookseller at 27 Old Bond Street, and seems to have been commercially successful, as he is described, at the beginning of his career as a manager, as ‘an opulent bookseller in Bond Street, who has been largely engaged in the interests of the holders of property-boxes for some years’ (Quarterly Musical Magazine, iii. 253). From this it would seem that he had acted as a kind of ticket agent. In 1820 the Italian Opera had reached a degree of commercial and artistic depression that was extraordinary, even for this most disastrous of speculations. The season had come to a premature end, and there seemed to be no prospect of an opera for the ensuing season. The secret of Ebers's apparent self-sacrifice is no doubt to be found in the circumstance of his being ‘engaged in the interests of the box-holders.’ He seems to have gone into the undertaking with his eyes open, but to have relied on his musical director to bring matters into a more satisfactory state. Ayrton, who had not acted in this capacity since the season of 1817 [see Ayrton, William], was evidently the right person for musical director, as he seems to have conducted an extremely successful season, and to have excited a good deal of sympathy in the musical public on the occasion of his
