FINDING A BEGINNING to the British Helena legend is impossible, as it most probably grew in oral rather than in scribal circumstances. There is no doubt, however, that the legend was already widely known, if not wholly believed, well before the Anglo-Norman writers Henry of Huntingdon and Geoffrey of Monmouth popularised the story in the early twelfth century. There is certainly sufficient evidence to show that Henry and Geoffrey were developing rather than creating mythological narratives of a British Helena. Earlier references to Helena suggest that her legendary origins as a British princess (as well as other legendary and historical versions of her biography) had been in circulation both in England and abroad since at least the eighth century.

The British legend, which was by no means the dominant narrative, seems to have grown out of tales or perhaps a misunderstanding that Constantine was born in Britain. The advantages of claiming a connection with the first Christian emperor and the Roman Empire itself were sufficiently attractive to encourage writers and others to extrapolate elements of Helena's biography to fit with the model of a British Constantine. This claimed connection with Roman Britain, which would not have been necessarily desirable to early Anglo-Saxon writers, eventually achieved the force of tradition and credibility as the historical details receded to the more remote past.

The Cross and Helena in the North

Constantine was closely linked with York in the minds of the English from Anglo-Saxon times because his proclamation as caesar there was widely known. His involvement with the discovery of the True Cross was also accepted, at least in learned circles. This well-documented association between the first Christian emperor and York might have influenced the manner in which the cult of the Cross was deployed in Anglo-Saxon England after its importation from the Continent along with other manifestations of Christian worship with Augustine in 597.