St Bettelin, Hermit and Confessor

From Fr Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints (1756–1759)

INGULPHUS, in his history of Croyland, mentions four disciples of St. Guthlac who led penitential lives in separate cells not far from that of their director; viz. 1. Cissa, a young nobleman lately converted to the faith; 2

. Bettelin who served St. Guthlac, and was of all others most dear to him; 3. Egbert; 4. Tatwin. After the death of St. Guthlac they continued the same anchoretical life in their cells with the leave of abbot Kenulph, and died happily in the same manner of life. Their bodies were burnt with those of the monks and the church, in the ninth century, by the Danes, incensed at finding no treasure in the monastery. 1

St. Bettelin or Beccelin, patron of the town of Stafford, in which his relics were kept with great veneration, is related by Capgrave to have lived a hermit in the practice of the most austere penance, and of continual prayer, in the forest near Stafford. But the legend given us by Capgrave, which is also found in MS. before his time, is of no authority; it is not impossible but part of the relics of the disciple of St. Guthlac, might have been conveyed to Stafford before the plunder and burning of Croyland by the Danes. See Capgrave, Wilson in the first edition of his English Martyrology on the 12th of August, and in the second on the 29th of September, Molanus, and others on the ninth of September. Suysken the Bollandist on this day, p. 446.