He is one of a small group of 12th-century English unofficial saints of strikingly similar characteristics: they were all young boys, all mysteriously found dead and all hailed as martyrs to alleged anti-Christian practices among Jews.
[5] According to Anna Sapir Abulafia, the local Benedictine monks used the discovery to claim that "the child had been spirited away by the Jews on the 21st February for them to torture him to death on the night of 16th March".
[7] There is no evidence that any Jews were ever arrested or charged with a crime, which suggests that the claims began as no more than speculation after the missing local child's body was found.
The accusation helped to convince Gloucester Jews to lend money to finance Richard de Clare, known as "Strongbow", in his conquest of Ireland.
For the first time an unexplained child death occurring near the Easter festival was arbitrarily linked to Jews in the vicinity by local Christian churchmen: "they established a pattern quickly taken up elsewhere.