#OTD in 1257, on the Feast of the Translation of St Edmund, and having first visited the shrine of St Edmund in Bury St Edmunds, Richard Duke of Cornwall embarked from Great Yarmouth to claim the title of King of the Romans. He was crowned at Aachen on 17 May

The significance of St Edmund's patronage to Richard's bid for the German throne was threefold; according to legend, Edmund himself came from Germany; Edmund was a patron of sea voyages; and Edmund's cult had longstanding imperial resonances

At Bury, the remains of a mausoleum rotunda still survived that was part of a pre-Conquest church housing St Edmund's shrine, based on the mausoleum of Charlemagne at Aachen

Furthermore, the prominence of a wolf in the legend of St Edmund was an imperial theme, recalling the Capitoline wolf (who was sometimes depicted on early East Anglian coinage)