Fremund

Saint Fremund was an English prince who lived as a hermit and was killed around 866, in the time of the Danish invasions. His relics were enshrined at Dunstable. He is venerated both at Prescote in Oxfordshire, where he is patron, and at Dunstable Priory in Bedfordshire. The Church commemorates him on 11 May.

According to the legend in the version of John of Tynemouth, Fremund was the son of the pagan king Offa and his queen Botilda; his birth was foretold by a child who died after three days. Baptized by Bishop Heswi, he worked many miracles and converted his parents. Offa gave up the kingdom to him, but after a year and a half he left the throne to serve God in a desert place, with Burchard, who later wrote his life, and one other attendant. He set sail from Caerleon-⁠on-⁠Usk and came to a small island, Ylefage, sometimes identified with Lundy, infested with demons, where he lived seven years on fruits and roots.

When Hinguar and Hubba ravaged England and put King Edmund to death, Offa sent twenty nobles to seek his son. They begged for his help, and Fremund agreed after a vision revealing that each of his companions would appear a thousand to his enemies. He defeated, says the legend, forty thousand foes at Radford Semele. While he lay prostrate in thanksgiving, Oswi, once one of Offa's commanders but now an apostate who had joined the pagans, cut off his head. Oswi begged forgiveness, and the head pronounced absolution. Fremund rose and carried his head some distance, and where a spring burst forth he washed his wound and fell asleep.

The legend has many historical inconsistencies: Offa's wife was called Cynethryth, not Botilda, and the name appears in no charter or chronicle.