COMMENTS:
Voted : Yes, St Alban should be patron saint of Britain.
Why not? As long as St David is o'er them all.
Voted : No.
If you base this on Roman Britain, i.e., "before the Saxons came," that would exclude the English and Scots, right? I mean, no Angles, Saxons, and Jutes equal no English, and the Picts were still established in Scotland in the 5th century C.E. I guess St. Patrick's roughly contemporaneous with the beginnings of the Saxon invasions.
So, who is this St. Alban for, anyway, save the Welsh and perhaps the Irish? There were no English and no true Scots during the Roman era.
Before anyone in Eire takes offense, I am just discussing Northern Ireland as part of the U.K., and I don't think the rest of the island's still part of Britain.
As I cant add another option, I will instead give you a history.
Alban was a pagan, and a soldier in the Roman Army. He gave shelter to a Christian priest who was fleeing from arrest, and in the next few days the two talked at length, and Alban became a Christian. When officers came in search of the priest, Alban met them, dressed in the priest's cloak, and they mistook him for the priest and arrested him. He refused to renounce his new faith, and was beheaded. He thus became the first Christian martyr in Britain.
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