Beorhthelm of Stafford

[5] An early-eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon litany mentions a confessor as 'Sancte Byrhthelm', while a list of saints' resting-places put together by Hugh Candidus in Peterborough in the twelfth century and is thought to have drawn on earlier sources places 'sanctus Berthelmus martyr' in 'Stefford'.

The earliest account of Beorhtelm's life is a Vita Bertellini, found in the Nova Legenda Angliae printed in 1516 by Wynkyn de Worde, but scholars agree that this is based on a lost manuscript and that the text as we have it originated around the twelfth century.

[6] This account shows the conflation with the story of Beorhthelm with that of Beccel, a minor character in the Vita sancti Guthlaci (added into the account of Bertram via a now-lost adaptation of the Vita composed by Peter of Blois in the twelfth century).

The ill-will of jealous detractors led him to relocate to Ilam, in Dovedale, Derbyshire, where he eventually died.

[7] The most unusual miracle in this vita is the following story (as translated by Lindy Brady):[5]: 5–6 Bertellin, of pious, royal, and English descent, noble in lineage and appearance, even nobler in his orthodox faith, not wanting to stain his life with the wantonness of his father, he crossed the sea.

But since for the sake of greater future penance, our Father—you who are in heaven—sometimes does not prevent some men from sinning, Bertellin was pierced by love for the king’s daughter, and he carried her off into a part of England since she was pregnant.

Lindy Brady, however, has shown that this figure is in fact St Beorhthelm himself, who was duplicated by scholarly confusion over the spelling of his name.