From the cottage of his foster-mother he went to the palaces of queens. The noble queen of Northumberland, Etheldreda, the saint and virgin, had a great friendship for Cuthbert. She overwhelmed him and his monastery with gifts from her possessions, and wishing, besides, to offer him a personal token of her close affection, she embroidered for him, with her hands (for she embroidered beautifully), a stole and maniple covered with gold and precious stones. She chose to give him such a present that he might wear this memorial of her only in the presence of God, whom they both served, and accordingly would be obliged to keep her always in mind at the holy sacrifice.
Cuthbert was on still more intimate terms with the holy princesses, who, placed at the head of great communities of nuns, and sometimes even of monks, exercised so powerful an influence upon the Anglo-Saxon race, and particularly on Northumbria. While he was still at Melrose, the increasing fame of his sanctity and eloquence brought him often into the presence of the sister of king Oswy, who then reigned over the two Northumbrian kingdoms. This princess, Ebba, was abbess of the double monastery of Coldingham, the farthest north of all the religious establishments of Northumbria. Cuthbert was the guest for several days of the royal abbess, but he did not intermit on this occasion his pious exercises, nor, above all, his austerities and long prayers by night on the sea-shore.
To the end of his life he maintained a very intimate and constant friendship with another abbess of the blood-royal of Northumbria, Elfleda, niece of S. Oswald, and of king Oswy, who, though still quite young, exercised an influence much greater than that of Ebba upon the men and the events of her time. She had the liveliest affection for the prior of Lindisfarne, and at the same time an absolute confidence in his sanctity. When she was assailed by an alarming illness, which fell into paralysis, and found no remedy from physicians, she cried, "Ah! had I but something which belonged to my dear Cuthbert, I am sure I should be cured." A short time after, her friend sent her a linen girdle, which she hastened to put on, and in three days she was healed.