BEVERLEY- It is one of Beverley’s oldest traditions. In the year 937, King Athelstan is said to have come to Beverley, prayed at the tomb of St John in the Minster, and then marched out to win a great victory at the Battle of Brunanburh. The tale is still told today, and Athelstan’s statue greets visitors at the west door of the Minster. But what do we really know about his visit, and what does it tell us about Beverley at the time?
Athelstan, often called the first king of all England, faced the biggest test of his reign in 937 when he fought a coalition of Scots, Norsemen and Britons at Brunanburh. The battle was fierce and decisive. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records it as one of the bloodiest fights since the Saxons first came to Britain. The exact site is disputed, but the outcome was clear: Athelstan’s victory secured the unity of England for a generation.
By then, Beverley was already a place of pilgrimage. St John of Beverley had died more than two centuries earlier, and his tomb drew devotion from across the north. That a king would stop here to seek the saint’s help before battle is entirely plausible. Medieval writers later claimed that he did so, and that his victory was a sign of the saint’s intercession.’
The earliest written account of Athelstan’s visit appears not in the tenth century but in the twelfth, when a local cleric recorded the story among the miracles of St John. By then, Beverley had already woven the king into its identity. Charters later attributed to Athelstan granted sanctuary rights and privileges to the town. Modern historians are cautious: the surviving charters are later copies, and some appear to have been produced in the fourteenth century. But while the paperwork is unreliable, the tradition was deeply rooted.
Sanctuary at Beverley was certainly real by the late Middle Ages. The Minster’s frith-stool — a carved stone seat still in place today — symbolised the right of fugitives to claim protection. Three sanctuary crosses on the roads into the town marked the boundary. A fifteenth-century register lists hundreds who claimed Beverley’s protection from the law. All of this was remembered as flowing from Athelstan’s grant after Brunanburh.
So what should we make of it? On one level, the story of Athelstan at Beverley may be part history, part legend. But on another, it reflects how kings, saints and towns bound themselves together in the making of England. A king in need of divine favour, a saint with a growing cult, and a town eager to claim royal friendship — these threads combined to create a story that endured for centuries.
Whether Athelstan really prayed at the Minster before Brunanburh will never be proved. But that Beverley believed he did, and built its identity on the memory, is beyond doubt. It is a reminder that history is not only what happened but also what people chose to remember — and in Beverley, Athelstan’s visit remains part of the town’s living story.