Barking Abbey's importance is attested in England's early recorded history, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (c. 731), written by the monk known to us as the Venerable Bede. Bede's account of the miracles witnessed at the abbey, based on a now lost Barking libellus, gives us a glimpse of its first abbess, Ethelburg (d. 675), and other notable women who were associated with the abbey's founding (c. 666) or the life of its community. Bede records that Barking was founded by Erkenwald, abbot of Chertsey (Surrey) and later bishop of London (675), for his sister Ethelburg. Bede's history not only provides one of the earliest surviving accounts of the abbey, but also sheds light on the energy that the nuns of Barking put into the creation and circulation of their establishment narratives.