These miracles are said to have so much
impressed the judge that he ordered the persecution to cease. The
traditional site of the martyrdom is covered by the north arm of the
transept of the present church, and this site is in accordance with
Beda's account, which states that St. Alban was martyred about five
hundred paces from the summit of the hill. When persecution had entirely
ceased, a few years after Alban's death, a church was built over the
spot hallowed by his blood. Beda, writing at the beginning of the eighth
century, speaks of the original church as existing, and describes it as
being a church of wonderful workmanship and worthy of the martrydom it
commemorated. But in all probability the church standing in Beda's time
was not the original one; this no doubt had been swept away during the
time of the English invasion of Britain, when, as Matthew Paris tells
us, the body of Alban was moved for safety from within the church to
some other spot, whence it was afterwards brought back and replaced in
the original grave.
[1] It must be remembered that June 22 in the year 303 A.D.
would be, as now, close to the longest day, as the alteration of
the calendar known as the new style simply made the equinox
occur on the same day of the month as in 325 A.
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