The Four Andrews of the Marsh

17th September marks the feast of the Four Andrews of the Marsh, celebrated in secret during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, by those loyal to the memory of the eponymous martyrs of London put to death by William the Conqueror’s troops in the years following the Norman invasion of 1066.

The Four Andrews (in Anglo Norman ‘les quatres andres de mareis’) belong to a tradition of holy fools that traces its origins to Diogenes the Cynic and Socrates in fifth and fourth century BC Greece, through Simeon Stylites in fourth century AD Syria, to the hermits of northern Europe in the middle ages. The only near-contemporary record, the Anglo-Norman Geste des Andres tells of how the early attempts by the Norman conquerors to bring London and its surrounds under administrative control was repeatedly thwarted by an old mystic named Andrew, who held them in check with elaborate conundrums delivered in the form of prayers. Eventually, William I ordered his arrest, only to discover another, nearly identical Andrew persisted with the same exploits. Only once four arrests had been made were William’s men able to go about their business unchecked. By this time, however, the Andrews had become local folk heroes, and the Andrews, now incarcerated in the newly-built Tower of London, were the subject of popular riots.

William may have felt backed into a corner by his administrators on the one hand and the public on the other. It may have simply been a lone soldier seeking promotion. One morning in 1082, the jailer of the Tower found all four Andrews murdered in their cells, each in an attitude of prayer. Fearing further public outcry, William had their bodies dumped in the Thames estuary. But the story was not over. For many years, sightings of the revenant Andrews were reported in London, always connected with the thwarting of bureaucratic interference in the lives of londoners.

Though the Four Andrews of the Marsh never achieved canonical status, they are recalled today in the French name of the city that was their charge. Maps made by Norman bureaucrats keen to warn their colleagues often mark the area ‘Les Andres’, and as the Norman tongue - and memory of the Andrews - faded in successive centuries, this often came to be written as L’Andres or L’Ondres. To this day, the French still know London by this name.