Abstract There [Tavistock] the holy bishop Rumon lies and is venerated, and is endowed with a beautiful shrine, although no written evidence attests to his legend. You will find this not merely there but in many places in England: only the bare names of saints are known, and whatever miracles they may still perform. All evidence for their doings has been obliterated, I believe, by the violence of enemy attacks. On the face of it, William of Malmesbury’s comment seems more appropriate to Celtic regions than to England. The plethora of obscure local cults in Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany is often thought to reflect a type of Christian organization fundamentally different from the more centralized and hierarchical church of the early English. The operations of the typical Welsh saint were small-scale, producing a pattern of very restricted, sometimes unique place-names and dedications which suggest, in How Pryce’s words, ‘intensely localized lay devotion’. In England, by contrast, the spotlight has been on a small number of major figures whose lives, or at least legends, are well recorded and well known: important prelates and abbesses, or politically significant royal martyrs.