After studying at Lindisfarne and Rath Melsigi, he spent his life travelling among monasteries in northern Britain and around the Irish Sea.
Ecgberht vowed that if he recovered, he would become a "peregrinus" on perpetual pilgrimage from his homeland of Britain and would lead a life of penitential prayer and fasting.
[4] According to Henry Mayr-Harting, Ecgberht was one of the most famous ‘pilgrims’ of the early Middle Ages,[1] and occupied a prominent position in a political and religious culture that spanned northern Britain and the Irish Sea.
[5] Ecgberht was ordained a priest and began to organize monks in Ireland to proselytize in Frisia;[6] many other high-born notables were associated with his work: Adalbert, Swithbert, and Chad.
He, however, was dissuaded from accompanying them himself by a vision related to him by a monk who had been a disciple of Boisil (the Prior of Melrose under Abbot Eata).