Legends about the saint, together with a Life, probably that attributed to Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, were said in the 16th century to be preserved in a book called the 'third passionary'. The corpus of miracle stories was probably put together in the late 12th century: it comprised wonders associated with both the canons of the old minster and the monks of the new abbey, extending, it was claimed, from the reign of Edward the Elder (899-924) to 1180.
The 12th-century material included the story of Earl Richard's rescue by his constable, William fitz Niel, aided by St. Werburg's miraculous intervention, which in turn elicited from William the gift of Newton by Chester. A later episode told of fire breaking out in the city but being contained when the community took out the saint's shrine and bore it in procession, chanting litanies and prayers. That story was undoubtedly current almost immediately after the events it purported to describe, since it was also recorded by Lucian in his De Laude Cestrie, written at the abbey in the 1190s. The evidence suggests that in the 12th century the monks of St. Werburgh's were actively presenting their patroness as the special protector of the earls and their city. Lucian indeed included a long and prolix eulogy of the saint which presented her in precisely that role.
Other religious foundations followed the introduction of the Benedictines into St. Werburgh's. The most important was the Benedictine nunnery established first in Handbridge by Earl Ranulph II and later moved by him to a site near the castle. Always much poorer than St. Werburgh's, it nevertheless received a number of important privileges in the city and probably always attracted more affection from the citizens. Other foundations included the hospitals of St. John without the Northgate and St. Giles, Boughton. The former, established by Ranulph III in the 1190s to care for the poor, seems to have had a limited parochial function from an early date. It was allowed to offer the sacrament to visiting strangers, and, by permission of St. Werburgh's and St. John's, to bury the poor who died there, the brethren themselves, and those in confraternity with them. St. Giles's, probably founded in the time of Ranulph II, was for lepers. It too had a burial ground, in which the heads of Welshmen killed in battle with the earl were reputed to have been buried in 1170. Both hospitals had considerable privileges within the city, including rights to fish in the Dee and to take certain tolls. Their landed endowments came not only from the earl but from his officials and associates such as Robert the chamberlain.
In addition to the religious communities, sometimes perhaps attached to them, there were hermits. In the 12th century Chester seems to have had a reputation for them. Gerald of Wales, who accompanied Archbishop Baldwin when he went to Chester in 1188 to preach the Crusade, told of two famous personages locally reputed to have become hermits in Chester and to be buried there: King Harold and the German emperor Henry IV (or V).
The notion that Harold lived on after Hastings appeared in several stories, and a link with Chester was current by the later 12th century. It occurred in its fullest form in the Vita Haroldi, an anonymous work written c. 1200. There, Harold was said to have been taken to Winchester after the battle and nursed back to health, to undergo adventures abroad before returning as an old man to England. He eventually went to Chester, where he became a hermit in the cell of St. James, attached to St. John's church. There he died and was buried, confirming his true identity in his last hours.Despite its absurdity, the story was undoubtedly being told in late 12th-century Chester.
The author of the Vita Haroldi ascribed the tale to a priest of St. John's named Andrew, perhaps the Canon Andrew of St. John's who attested grants to St. Werburgh's in the period c. 1150-80. Probably a respected anchorite did indeed die at Chester in the later 12th century claiming to be Harold. At all events the tradition had a long life. In 1332 an incorrupt body, allegedly Harold's, was discovered in St. John's, and in the mid 14th century the story of the hermit was recounted by the local historian Ranulph Higden, together with the tale of the German emperor, by then believed to have taken the name Godescall and to have been associated with St. Werburgh's, where his tomb was certainly later displayed. Though clearly absurd, and doubted even by Higden, the stories suggest the presence of hermits in 12th-century Chester. In particular, the claim of the Vita Haroldi that Harold had both a predecessor and a successor in his cell at St. John's provides evidence that the hermitage undoubtedly associated with that church in the 14th century existed much earlier.
Besides the minsters and the later religious foundations, lesser urban churches were also emerging. By 1086 they certainly included the church (templum) of St. Peter in the market place, and the minster (monasterium) of St. Mary, which stood near St. John's, to which it was linked liturgically. It seems likely that St. Bridget's and perhaps St. Olave's and St. Michael's also existed by then. In any case, all Chester's nine medieval parish churches had been founded by c. 1150; doubt attaches only to the chapel of St. Chad, for which there is no evidence before the earlier 13th century.
The main responsibility of the lesser churches was presumably as centres for the administration of the sacraments; probably none, except St. Mary's on the Hill, with its large extramural parish, had a burial ground. How many parish boundaries within the city were already fixed is not clear; it may be in some instances that, as elsewhere, the main factor was the pattern of occupation rather than the ownership of property. Nevertheless, the city's parochial structure was probably established before 1200. The largest parish was that of St. Werburgh. Though the abbey precinct was itself extra-parochial, the parish church attached to it had responsibility not only for areas of the city within and without the walls, but for numerous rural townships as well; in part at least the remnants of the early minster territory, they also seem to have included some of the abbey's later endowments. St. John's parish was much smaller, largely confined to the bishop's estates east of the walled town, and extending to Boughton, but another large extramural area was attached to St. Mary's on the Hill, a church founded in the mid 12th century to serve the castle and the administration based there; possibly that parish was shaped by the territories attached to the castle. Of the remaining churches, St. Peter's was wholly intramural, occupying an irregular area in the centre of the city perhaps determined by the urban estate on which it seems to have been founded. To the south lay the two churches with Hiberno-Norse dedications, of which St. Bridget's with its larger and dispersed parish was probably earlier. Between the main intramural portion and the extramural Earl's Eye lay not only St. Olave's but also St. Michael's, while to the west lay St. Martin's. The origins of the last two cannot be determined, though St. Martin's at least was probably relatively late.