St. George's career in England since his advent as the national patron in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries has been varied. The sixteenth century saw the first major shift in that career on account of the English Reformation, which simultaneously denigrated traditional Catholic religion, and strengthened English national identity. Since St. George was a figure of both, it is no surprise that people no longer prayed to him, dedicated churches to him, or commissioned statuary of him for votive purposes. He endured, however, as a figure of chivalry and romance, one that still reflected well on the English. The advent of “Britain” and of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century diminished his appeal, but he came back into fashion in the nineteenth as a result of neo-medievalism and Imperial pride. Falling out of favor again in the twentieth century, he has enjoyed a modest recent revival as political devolution in the United Kingdom has forced the recovery of a specifically English identity, and its attendant symbolism. For the time being, his English future looks bright.

Renaissance humanism, and the Protestant Reformation that it inspired, were not kind to St. George. The fact that the saint made no appearance in the Bible, now judged to be the chief arbiter of Christian practice, did not help – even worse was the absence of any proper primary source attesting to his origins and career. Worst of all was the fantastic and sentimental story of the dragon, which encapsulated everything humanists and Reformers despised about medieval piety. In 1509, Erasmus of Rotterdam, in his famous polemic Praise of Folly, mocked those who believed that gazing upon an image of St. Christopher would protect them from death, or that accosting a statue of St. Barbara with the proper words would allow them to return from battle unharmed. In George, such simpletons have “discovered a new Hercules … They all but worship George's horse, most religiously decked out in breastplates and bosses, and from time to time oblige him with some little gift. To swear by his bronze helmet is thought to be an oath fit for a king.”