Simon Edge

WHO’S the patron saint of England? That’s easy, you say: everyone can name St George.True, but who’s the other patron saint of England? That’s got you, hasn’t it? I bet you didn’t know there was more than one.

If you did, chances are you hail from my part of the world, East Anglia. We’re very proud of our connection with Edmund, king and martyr, who was revered as England’s patron saint for centuries before St George entered the fray. Until outdone by St Peter’s in Rome, the great abbey dedicated to him in Bury St Edmunds was the biggest church in Christendom.

The abbey is ruined now, and Edmund’s remains went missing from his shrine nearly 500 years ago, which is why he has faded from the national memory. Archaeologists hoped to change all that with a search for his body this summer. Covid-19 got in the way, but where real life can’t deliver, fiction can. My comic novel on the subject is out next month.

Edmund was born in 841, when England was made up of seven kingdoms: East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Northumbria, Mercia, Sussex and Wessex (ruled by Alfred the Great’s father).

Young Edmund succeeded to the throne of East Anglia in 855, aged 14.We know barely anything about his reign – this part of history is called the Dark Ages because so much of it is lost to us – but we do know that his main headache was the constant threat of Viking invasion.

By instinct he was a dealmaker rather than a fighter. When a Danish army landed in 869, he persuaded its leaders to leave East Anglia alone and head north into Mercia. They took York, then doubled back to attack Nottingham, where they met unexpected resistance. They consoled themselves by returning to East Anglia and taking it anyway. The deal with Edmund was off.

THE 28-year-old king was given the chance to stay on as a client ruler. He said he would only do so if the Viking leaders converted to Christianity. They replied by tying him to a tree, bombarding him with arrows and cutting his head off.

Legend says when Edmund’s men came to recover his body, they couldn’t find his head.Then it cried out to them miraculously from the paws of the wolf that had been keeping it safe. When they brought the head back to his body, it reattached itself in a further miracle. With this story, the cult of St Edmund was born.

His remains were eventually brought to the Suffolk monastery of Beodericsworth, which was

STANDING PROUD: The memorial to St Edmund at the ruined abbey, left, where archaeologists hope his body may still lie

renamed Bury St Edmunds (“St Edmund’s town”) in his honour. There the saint apparently continued to perform miracles.

Thieves were frozen to the spot while trying to rob his shrine. An abbot was paralysed for tugging Edmund’s head to see if it really was stuck to his neck. When Danish conqueror Swein, the father of King Canute, died five weeks after being crowned King of England, the spirit of Edmund was said to have killed him.

A failed commander in life, St Edmund became a military mascot in death. A succession of warrior kings prayed at his shrine, including William the Conqueror, Richard I and Edward I.

By the end of the 11th century, he was being referred to as England’s patron saint. In the 14th century, Edward III fell in thrall to the cult of the Turkish-born St George as patron saint. But 80 years later Henry VI spent six months praying at Edmund’s shrine.

It was only when Henry VIII ordered the monasteries to be torn down, as part of his breach with Rome, that St Edmund’s influence was curtailed. His abbey was dismantled stone by stone in 1539, and his body went missing.

He has not been forgotten in East Anglia. About 15 years ago, a Radio Suffolk broadcaster led a campaign for his re-adoption as patron saint, pointing out he had never been formally dropped and noting that he was actually born here, unlike St George, who never set foot in England. Also, St George is patron saint of 12 other countries and cities, but Edmund is England’s alone.

It was a niche crusade – it got 2,500 signatures on a petition – but a faded bumper sticker for the “Edmund for England” campaign got me thinking. If St Edmund really were found under the old tennis courts in the abbey ruins, as the smart money says he will be, how might that re-energise the campaign?

I began to imagine an ambitious politician rebranding Edmund as an “inclusive” patron saint not just for England but the whole UK. To sell him to the Scots, Welsh and

Northern Irish, there would need to be Celtic connections in Edmund’s life. There aren’t any… so what if an unscrupulous researcher made them up? Fake news applied to medieval history.

The idea was gently fermenting in my head when I realised two things: first, 2020 was the millennium of Bury St Edmunds abbey, which meant there would be a lot of focus on the site, and second, the year would be marked by an archaeological survey of those tennis courts.

If I was going to publish a novel about a discovery potentially as big as Richard III under the car park in Leicester, I ought to get cracking before real life beat me to it.

I had just finished my first draft when we went into lockdown. This banjaxed the Abbey 1,000 celebrations and created added difficulties for the archaeologists, already beset with funding problems. I pressed on anyway, and Anyone For Edmund? will soon be out.

As well as following the misfortunes of the politician and her aide, my novel has a surprise up its sleeve, as it turns out that the medieval St Edmund still has a mind of his own. I won’t ruin that by saying any more, but I’m pleased to say the book is getting a great reception already.

Saga Magazine calls it “a wildly inventive romp, rich in history and bunk”, while Dr Francis Young, one of the leading academic experts on St Edmund, says it’s “gripping, funny and richly entertaining”.

Do I think Edmund ought to supplant St George once more as England’s patron saint? I don’t believe dead saints intervene to help nations, so it would create a lot of disruption for no gain. And I don’t think he should be patron saint of the whole UK, because he really was as English as can be.

For anyone who does believe in the power of saints, however, there may be a more pressing job for St Edmund. According to the Encyclopaedia of Catholic Devotions and Practices, he is also the patron saint of pandemics. I certainly didn’t see that becoming relevant when I started writing, but we live and learn, don’t we?

●●Anyone For Edmund? is published by Lightning Books on August 10, price £8.99