The life of St Alban, First Martyr of Great Britain
Living alongside the man over the days that followed, hearing him teach and pray, Alban found himself drawn to the same faith and asked for baptism.
When soldiers came searching for the fugitive, Alban put on his guest's cloak and gave himself up in the priest's place, accepting the death meant for another man. Tradition remembers the river on his way to execution parting so that he and his escort crossed without wetting their feet, a wonder that moved the soldier ordered to kill him to refuse instead, so that he himself died at Alban's side as the second Christian to be martyred in Britain.
Just when this happened has never been settled: the earliest surviving text of his Passio sets it under Septimius Severus, in the early third century, while Bede placed it a century later, under Diocletian. A church already stood at his tomb by 429, and the abbey and town that later grew up there still carry his name.
