 |
|
|
Bury St Edmunds
No significant number of men from north of the Humber would fight at Hastings. They came from the south to join Harold for this battle. A later cleric, Wace,wrote in his "Roman de Rou" (1160-1174) that
The Abbot Baldwin at St Edmund's Bury was a French monk and a noted physician. He was royal physician to Edward the Confessor and was to perform the same function for William. Not only did William the Conqueror leave him in his post, together with all existing rights and privileges of the Abbey, but there was no Norman Castle built to dominate the town, and no disruption of the sort suffered elsewhere in Saxon England.
"14, ('Lands of St Edmund')
167
The arithmetic is 118 plus 52 plus 54 plus 43 plus 43 equals 310.
The illustration shows the old Saxon town layout as envisaged by Bernard Gauthiez before Abbot Baldwin embarked upon major construction works both at the monastery site and in the town.
The Normans brought their forms of government which we would call feudalism. The abbot became a tenant in chief of the king and a baron of the realm. Under this system he would be obliged to supply the king with 40 knights in time of war, and to meet other feudal duties to the king.
It does, however, seem likely that whatever privileges and rights were still enjoyed before 1066 by the family of Bederic in and around Bury, these would have been lost by right of the conquest. The new King took over all such rights and it appears that he would have given them to the church of St Edmund or to the abbot. In other places he would have given such rights to one of his Norman Lords who had helped with the invasion. However it is not at all clear whether Bederic's kin still had many local rights following the grants made to the church by Cnut and the pre - conquest kings.
The convent of monks retained their rights over the town of Bury, outside of the abbot's barony, and the abbot's connection with the town itself was therefore nominal. The Sacrist represented the convent and was therefore, in practice, the lord of the borough. The Cellarer was the lord of the manor of Bury, and exercised the convent's rights over the town fields and agriculture, rights to the market, and control of the digging of chalk and white clay. His job was to provide provisions for the abbey. These rights often came under dispute over the years because of their complex nature, and often obscure origins.
Most of the town now belonged in one way or another to the abbey, but the largest exception to this was the Manor of Maydewater, in the area known today as Maynewater Lane. This was made part of the Honour of Clare, and a smaller holding belonged to the Manor of Lidgate.
Thetford was a town of first rank at this time, with a population of 4,000 to 5,000. It had a monastery and a mint for which it paid the king £40. It had twelve churches, but it did not prosper after the conquest, and would decline from the 943 burgesses it had in 1066 to 720 by 1086.
Norwich was by 1066 one of the largest and most important towns of Saxon England. It had 1320 burgesses, which is thought to indicate a population of about 5,000 to 10,000 inhabitants. It was, like Thetford, a busy inland port, but much larger, with extensive river wharves and storehouses.
Gyrth, the Earl of East Anglia, had been killed at Hastings, but his title was now given, not to a Norman invader, but to Ralph the Staller, who was a high official of the conquered English court. Ralph was part Breton, and had French lands, so this may have helped his position.
At Bury we can assume that the town was safely held by Abbot Baldwin for King William for a number of reasons. Firstly Baldwin was himself a Norman, and so could negotiate freely with the King and Norman nobles. He got all the Abbey's privileges confirmed, and so could afford to sit tight. In turn the King could trust Baldwin because of his background. The monks could accept the authority of the new King because he had been properly anointed before God, and, in any case, it could be argued that Victory by Arms proved that this was God's will. Elsewhere, Abbots were disposessed, and replaced by Normans, and transition was more painful.
England still had a strong Danish presence, particularly in East Anglia, the old Danelaw. Danes were disposessed by Normans as readily as Saxons, and so there was some support for the three sons of Swein of Denmark when they attacked England in 1069.
The Danish fleet landed first at Sandwich in Kent. They sailed on to Ipswich, then Norwich, and into the Wash.
Another Danish force invaded East Anglia. Despite the remaining Roman defences at Colchester, the Danes captured and burnt the town. Finally they were defeated near Ipswich.
By the end of 1069, the attitude of King William to England had hardened considerably. He had been dragged back here several times to put down one uprising after another, and he was losing patience. He mounted a punitive expedition after Christmas 1069 which has been called the Harrying of the North.
At Lent in 1070, King William decreed that all monasteries should be plundered of the riches placed there by the local nobilities. This included Ely, which showed no willingness to co-operate, as well as at St Edmundsbury, where things had been very quiet under Abbot Baldwin, the French Benedictine, who had ruled there since before the conquest. Bury has no record of having been plundered under this ruling, but it seems likely that Baldwin must have quietly gone along with the decree.
The Anglo - Saxon Bishop of East Anglia had been Althelmaer since 1052, with his simple wooden cathedral and headquarters in the obscure and remote village of Elmham. It had been there for centuries. The post conquest Norman Archbishop Lanfranc now had carte blanche to sack him, and replace him by Herfast, or Erfast, a Norman royal favourite. Norman religious ideas were to decry simple worship, and they demanded great stone churches in the heart of the largest towns.
Archbishop Lanfranc also issued an injunction that bishoprics would now only be assigned to major towns.
For the new Bishop Herfast, this meant choosing between Thetford, Norwich, Ipswich and Bedericsworth, or St Edmund's town, as it was now thought of. Thetford was the safe bet, but Erfast had his eyes on the established and wealthy abbey at Bury.
This conflict between the Bishopric and the Abbot of St Edmunds would rumble on for several decades.
Following his raid on Peterborough in 1070, Hereward was a hunted man. He believed that he could seek refuge on the Isle of Ely, and that he would be accepted by the monks there. The monastery at Ely was very old, and was founded by St Etheldreda, or Audrey, in 673. Ely had been besieged by Norman nobles, on and off, for three years, but they had made little effective progress. By now King William had decided to strip the monasteries of their wealth and charters, together with any wealth deposited there for safe keeping by English landowners and merchants. There were no banks, and often the local abbey was the only place thought safe from banditry of any kind.
By 1071, Erfast had been consecrated as Bishop of Elmham. The diocese was due to move its headquarters to Thetford, but Erfast wanted to move in on Bury. Baldwin went to Rome to defend his abbey against this takeover. The Pope gave the abbey the privileges it sought, as well as a porphyry altar but the dispute continued. Erfast only withdrew his demand after his eye became septic and Baldwin, who had been royal physician to three kings, would only help him in return for withdrawal of his claim to Bury.
Up until this time the abbey of St Edmund had felt under the special protection of the English Crown. Its greatest privileges over the town and the area of West Suffolk had been granted by successive Kings. Now, in 1071, the Abbot felt that he needed to appeal to the Pope to defend his position. Pope Alexander II merely seems to have confirmed those privileges already granted to the Abbey by the Crown, but perhaps the Crown was by now becoming unreliable as a protector. The Pope confirmed the Abbey's exemption from episcopal authority, effectively bypassing the English Bishops and Archbishops, and giving St Edmund's a direct line to the Papacy itself.
The headquarters of the East Anglian diocese would remain at Thetford until around 1098 when it moved to Norwich.
There was now another round of land confiscations to punish those who had been in the resistance at Ely. In East Anglia this may have meant that the aftermath of the battle for Ely had a bigger impact upon the local population than did Hastings. King William was no longer in a mood to be reasonable, and he had his own men to reward for the capture of Ely. It was not just dead enemies who lost out.
We can also expect that St Edmund's Abbey also lost out during this period, to some degree, but Abbot Baldwin did not attempt to regain these by going to law, and upsetting his new neighbours. Most of Bury St Edmunds had belonged in one way or another to the abbey, but the largest exception to this was the Manor of Maydewater, in the area known today as Maynewater Lane. This was made part of the Honour of Clare, and a smaller holding belonged to the Manor of Lidgate. It may have been at this time that these exceptions came about.
Of the 10,000 men who crossed the Channel with King William, some 2,000 were rewarded with grants of land. Within a short time, ten of King William's relatives owned 30 per cent of English land. Prominent among them in Norfolk were the Bigod and Warenne families. The Bigods also had great estates in Suffolk.
The Normans could now begin to enjoy their new estates.
In 1075, King William was abroad, as he usually was from 1071 to 1075. The country was left in the hands of Archbishop Lanfranc. The absence of the King encouraged plotting. The plot seems to have begun with a wedding ceremony held at Exning, where Ralph married Emma, the daughter of William FitzOsborne, and the brother of Roger FitzOsborne, Earl of Herefordshire.
Earl Ralph's new wife, Emma, seems to have held Norwich castle for him against King William while he led East Anglia into rebellion.
It seems that Norwich castle held out for three months until Lady Emma surrendered. This was one of the longest sieges recorded at this time. Eventually she was given terms which allowed her and her garrison to flee abroad to be with her husband.
The king installed his own force of over 300 men in Norwich castle and Earl Ralph's lands were given to Count Alan of Brittany.
Along with William de Warrene, one man prominent in defeating Earl Ralph's rebellion was Richard Fitzgilbert, son of Count Gilbert de Brionne. He ended up with 170 English lordships, 95 in Suffolk. He made Clare his headquarters and his lands became known as the Honour of Clare. He would have been called Richard Fitzgilbert at first and possibly de Clare later. Certainly the family was using the name de Clare by 1120.
Another Norman, Roger Bigod, got 117 manors in Suffolk,and was made Earl after Ralph Wader. He also took charge of Norwich castle.
Robert Malet, son of William Malet ended up with 221 holdings in Suffolk based in Eye, where his father had quickly built a castle, the only one to be specifically mentioned in the Domesday Book for Suffolk.
These families had all participated in the earlier suppression of Hereward's revolt at Ely, and profited by it, but there was another large scale transfer of lands in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex in the aftermath of the Earls' Rebellion.
The King again had to stop Bishop Erfast from trying to move in on the abbey at Bury. So in 1081, William the Conqueror confirmed the freedom of the abbey of St Edmund from episcopal control. On 31st May he issued a grant of privileges to "Edmund, the Glorious King and Martyr." According to a copy reproduced in Yates's History, the Bishop's case "was altogether destitute of writings and proofs". Baldwin had produced charters from Canute and Edward in support of the claim to be free of "dominion of all Bishops of that county". William also confirmed all the charters, or precepta, of earlier Kings that "this church, and the town in which this church stands, should be free, through all ages, from the jurisdiction of Bishop Arfast, and of all succeeding Bishops."
Abbot Baldwin had successfully fought off the Bishop, and in the course of the dispute, he obtained exemption from episcopal jurisdiction, not just for the abbey, but also for the town of Bury itself. This resulted in the abbey sacrist being responsible for appointing the parochial chaplains and taking any tithes due to the churches of St James and St Mary. In practice the sacrist was the parson of both parishes, carrying out duties normally undertaken by an archdeacon of the diocese.
This ended the attempts by Bishop Erfast to turn Bury into the cathedral of his see.
So, from about this time, Abbot Baldwin and the Sacrist Thurston probably began to organise the first great re-building of St Edmund's abbey church. The old saxon town had probably been centred inside what today we would think of as the Abbey precincts, but at the time was probably thought of as a normal mix of church and commerce and residential. The Normans liked tidy streets in an orderly grid pattern, so new land was laid out in a grid and Baldwin's new streets probably included families pushed out of the abbey precincts by its expansion. It was also a process of separating the religious establishment more clearly from the townspeople.
It is not clear whether the Saxon Road directly linking Northgate Street to Southgate Street was fully deflected to the present configuration around the abbey precincts at this time, or not until Anselm's day. That part of Northgate Street from Pump Lane to Angel seems to have been called High Street in early days, which might echo the idea of it being the old main street running straight on through today's Abbey Gardens. Angel Hill itself was called The Mustowe until the seventeenth century, meaning a meeting place, and could have been Anselm's market place. The new abbey boundary was probably moated by Baldwin to give a more formal separation of abbey and town.
"14, ('Lands of St Edmund')
167
Alternative translation by Domesdaytextbase: "Besides these, there are 13 [men] on the reeve's land
who have their houses in the same town;"
under them, 5 smallholders.
This building was probably arranged in five new streets to the west of the Abbey, running north to south in a grid plan, still clearly visible today. These houses generated rents and the market generated tolls and fees for the Abbey. The convent held 400 acres of arable land within the Banleuca, or the town boundary which lasted up to the 1930's. Nothing could be built in the Banleuca without the permission of the Abbot and the Convent. The town was recorded at 2.5 miles long and the same length wide.
However, the town ditch enclosed a tighter, urban area with its South, North, East, West and Risby gates. The people living inside the ditch enjoyed more privileges than the suburban dwellers in the Banleuca outside. The town ditch was probably not replaced by a wall until about 1136.
Baldwin built St Denis's church for use by the town on the site of the chancel of the present cathedral. This was to compensate them for losing the right to worship in the abbey church.
In April, 1094, the Bishop of East Anglia, Herbert de Losinga formally moved his throne from Thetford to Norwich. Work was begun on a great new cathedral at Norwich for him, and it seems likely that a complete physical move awaited some completion of works in 1098. The dates surrounding this move are confused in many texts, as are the exact details of the wranglings over the attempted takeover of Bury by the Bishops.
King William had given the church some houses in Norwich, so that the bishopric could have a prestigious new site, and promised the Bishop the right to mint coins to provide another source of income. A huge cathedral thus began to rise in Norwich from 1094 to 1098.
The Normans also went in for town planning and Clare and Bungay were both given the grid iron layout most famously surviving today at Bury St Edmunds.
The remains of St Edmund were moved (the correct church term is 'translated') into the new stone church behind the high altar. The foundation at Bury had also acquired relics of other saints in the time of King Canute, so, at the same time the relics of St Botolph, and St Jurmin the Confessor, were also translated into the new church. Under Abbot Baldwin the ancient timber church had been levelled and foundations laid, walls built and the presbytery completed in full so the saint could be housed in more suitable surroundings. This was part of a nationwide flush of Norman stone church building, after sweeping away the old fashioned Saxon churches. Phase one of the rebuild was complete and work now seems to have stopped for seven years.
There is a question to be considered about the location of these new buildings. As William Spanton wrote in the 1920s, "The situation of the Cloisters and Monastic buildings north of the Abbey Church is unusual - The south side was commonly chosen." ('Bury St Edmunds Its History and Antiquities', page 13 footnote.)
Since the early 800s all continental Benedictine monasteries tended to follow a layout based upon a plan of St Gall, in Switzerland. Norman planners now brought these ideas more strongly into Britain. The classic layout was for the cloisters and the living quarters of the monks to be located to the south of the great church. This would place these buildings on the sunny side of the church. For some reason, at Bury the cloisters etc were placed to the north of the abbey church. We do not know if Sacrist Godfrey was following a layout already agreed under Baldwin, or whether this was his own idea.
In any case, we can speculate that there must have been a reason for this departure from established practice. One reason may have been that the topography favoured building to the north, perhaps because of soil conditions, or because of the issue of the water supply and management of drainage. Another reason may have been that the area today known as the Great Churchyard may have been occupied by townspeople's dwellings, or even by a market-place. Further investigation is needed into examination of these possibilities before reaching a conclusion.
Anselm was a nephew of St Anselm of Canterbury and was a friend of the King. He was often at Henry I's court.
Anselm and Ralph now had to plan for the completion of the great church. They wanted a magnificent approach to the planned West Front and decided upon a Great Gateway (The Norman Tower) opening upon a courtyard in front of it.
They also wanted a square in front of the gateway and it is likely that some demolition and re-development of properties was necessary at the Southern end of Angel Hill and around today's Chequers Square. The boundaries of the Abbey were probably extended again towards the town to accommodate the new building, and the roadway shifted accordingly. This probably all took the next 30 years to carry out.
In the town of Bury, the administration necessary had grown over the years and by this time it was normal for there to be two joint Town Reeves controlling the borough. They collected the rents and market tolls and enforced the law on behalf of the sacrist. The job became called Bailiff by the next century.
The money for the walls came from the town rents paid to the sacrist, and also from a levy on the free tenants of the Liberty of the Eight and a Half Hundreds of West Suffolk.
Anselm possibly also moved the Great Market from St Mary's Square to a large space inside the town wall at the top of Abbeygate Street. It is also possible that it had previously been held on Angel Hill before being moved to today's position. Burgesses paid no gate toll, so could sell at cheaper prices in the market than could outsiders.
Abbot Anselm died. By this time, under his leadership, Ralph the Sacrist, followed by Hervey the Sacrist had virtually completed the nave and west transept. The west front, with its three great arches still lacked its three towers, which were added later by Abbot Samson.
The great gateway of St James's or the Cemetery Gate which we now call the Norman Tower was built between 1120 and 1148. It was also to serve as a belfry for the church of St James. Anselm had also founded St James Church after he was forbidden to travel to St James at Campostella in Spain on pilgrimage.
Chequer Square was at this time called Paddock Pool and its swampy nature was a problem for the medieval builders.
St Mary's Church was built on its present site because the old St Mary's had to be demolished to make way for the north wing of the new transept of the great Abbey Church. The Abbey precincts were all surrounded by walls with just four gates; St James's Gate (the Norman Tower), the Court Gate (now called The Abbey Gate), Mustow Street Gate and St Margarets Gate opposite where the Manor House Museum stands today.
The west and north side of the abbey precincts also had a moat like ditch, outside the walls, with wooden bridges at the gates. This has been seen during various modern excavations for road or sewer works, and seems to run from St Mary's Church, along Crown Street and the Angel Hill, and probably fed into the river at Eastgate Bridge. It was about 15 feet wide, and is sometimes still visible in early prints or pictures of the Angel Hill. This ditch was probably necessary for drainage rather more than for defence.
Abbot Anselm had also founded St Peter's Hospital in Out Risbygate as a leper colony.
Some time between 1145 and 1154, Pope Eugenius III issued a bull which confirmed the Sacrist Elias in his possession of the Borough. Its rents were for the service of the abbey church and the assistance of the office of Sacrist. This is the first surviving written reference to the Sacrist being in practice lord of the borough, but Lobel believed that this had been the case for at least 50 years already. As effective Lord of the Town, the Sacrist collected the various feudal dues payable to a Lord. In earlier times the tenants had to provide labour services to their Lord, such as a certain number of days work at harvest time. By this time, many of these dues were commuted to cash payments.
Jocelin was later to record a debt to Benedict the Jew of Norwich which had been outstanding for fourteen years.
Abbot Hugh I ruled the abbey until 1180.
Book I, chapter 7 : "There is in the same province a place called Blythburgh in the vernacular, in which the body of the venerable King Anna is buried, and to this day is venerated by the pious devotion of faithful people. In that place, too (Blythburgh) his son Iurminus, (St Jurmin) God's chosen one, was buried, but afterwards he was translated to Bederichesworthe, which they now call, Sanctus Edmundus, and given honourable burial."
Book I chapter 23 : "There was a man who, thanks to the merit of extreme sanctity, was the steward of her (Aethelthryth) farmlands, St Algetus by name; his body rests at Bedericesworthe which is the town of the blessed martyr Edmund....."
Book II, chapter 86 : "He (Aelfwine) also, by the decree of the King himself (Cnut), for the first time brought a contingent of monks to Bedericesworthe. He established there some monks from his own church of Ely, but others from Holm, and he supplied them with subsidies in abundance."
When a monk borrowed money by pledging altar vessels to the Jew Sancto of Bury, it was Sancto who was fined 5 marks for accepting the pledge. This was a form of pawn-broking which was another occupation which Jews could follow at this time. The Jew, Bennet of Suffolk, was similarly fined 30 marks for accepting certain holy vestments as a pledge against a sum of money.
At one point even the Jews were worried about the size of the debts. Benedict of Norwich complained about it to the King's representatives, but Hugh and William had managed to cover up the position.
It was this state of affairs which Samson would attack as part of his bid to become Abbot when Abbot Hugh died.
The town of St Edmund's Bury had a Jewish community which had become bankers to the Abbey. During the troubles of 1173 their wives and children were given shelter within the convent, and relations with the Abbey were generally good. Moyse's Hall, now a museum, was a stone house possibly associated with Jewish wealth, believed to date from this period, usually dated c1180. Some historians doubt this Jewish connection because Hatter Street was the Jewish quarter and they doubt that a Jewish family would chose to live by the pig market. They attribute its name to a butcher called Mose who lived there much later.
With the abbey temporarily in the king's hands, some people thought that Samson was over-reaching his authority. The abbey's Jewish creditors naturally thought that the cash would be better spent on redeeming some of the abbey's long outstanding debts. They appealed to the King's representatives, who agreed, and Samson's cash was taken out of his hands.
But now that he was abbot, Samson was to press ahead with the great tower in the centre of the west transept of the Abbey Church.
Samson had always had it in mind to finish the Abbey church and to make the West Front even more imposing than Anselm's plan, in order to dwarf the Norman Tower. He wanted to rebuild the West Front to be 246 feet wide with a vast central tower, flanked by two smaller octagonal towers, crowned with spires. The result would be the greatest in England. It would take most of his 29 years as Abbot and most of the available cash.
There is no record of any townspeople of Bury being prosecuted for these deaths, and, indeed,
Abbot Samson's official response to this holocaust was to obtain the King's permission to expel the Jewish community from the town. This permission arrived on 9th October and was another bitter blow to the remnants of the Jewish Quarter in Hatter Street. The religious pretext was to keep the town of the Saint for St Edmund's men. The Jews lived mainly in Heathen Street, today known as Hatter Street, and many of their houses were stone built for safety.
Moyse's Hall is outside the area known to have been the Jewish ghetto in Bury, but it was in a prime place for a bank or finance house also practicing pawnbroking, who wished to deal with the wider population coming to Bury market. It is dated to around 1180, and although there is no contemporary evidence that it was a Jewish house or business, nevertheless it has been attributed to a Jewish businessman since the 17th century. Its stone construction was ideal for the protection of the large amounts of cash held by a moneylender, and also to provide safety against the outbreaks of sporadic anti-semitic violence. However, even stone was no protection once the abbot had pronounced their expulsion.
The Rabbi in Bury at this time was Yechial Sancto, and the synagogue was probably located at numbers 25 and 26 Hatter Street. Almost certainly the Jewish Synagogue was never at Moyse's Hall.
At some point around this time we know that Abbot Samson gave some stone buildings to support the abbey school, so that the school teachers could have somewhere to live. Robert Butterworth has suggested that these buildings may have been the Jewish houses in Hatter street which were forcefully purchased from the Jews. He also suggests that the old Jewish Synagogue was turned into a Chantry for Little St Robert of Bury. The King would allow them to be evicted from Bury, but not to be completely ruined financially as he still needed the cash flow the bankers could provide. Therefore the Jews were allowed to realise the value of their houses.
Around 1191 Herbert the Dean erected a windmill at the Haberden, off Southgate Street, in Bury St Edmunds. The Guinness Book of Records for 1964 claimed that this was the first recorded Post Mill in England. The post mill was built around a central column or post which allowed the mill to be turned to face into the wind whenever the wind direction changed. If this was the country's first post mill, it did not last very long. To protect his own income from the milling fees, which he charged at his own watermill, the Abbot forced him to take it down. Windmills were the latest technology at this time. Hitherto the watermill had reigned supreme, and it seems that the Abbot had a Water Mill based on the River Lark, within the Abbey precincts. Water power itself had replaced the animal power long used in earlier times to grind corn.
Building work on the great Abbey Church seems to have been at a standstill for about forty years after the time of Abbot Anselm. Samson was responsible for initiating the next phase of building development. As Sacrist from 1180 to 1182, Samson had built one extra storey on the major west tower. When Samson became abbot in 1182 he apparently embarked upon a plan to enlarge the whole west front of the church, adding towers and the octagonal structures at each side. One of these survives as 'Samson's Tower' today.
You can read the provisions of the Magna Carta in a short form in modern English, by clicking here:
A serious fire broke out in St Edmund's Bury in the summer of 1215 which was said to have destroyed a third of the town and no doubt led to much redevelopment. It is unclear where this fire was located. The Bury Chronicle only records that on 3rd June a fire broke out and burnt a great part of St Edmund's. The Chronicle "Electio Hugonis" does not mention it at all.
In August 1215, John appealed to the Pope who denounced the Great Charter, annulling it by a papal bull and excommunicating the Barons who tried to press for its clauses to be carried out. The original Magna Carta was thus in force for only two months. By September, civil war had broken out again because of this. The civil strife encouraged the French to take advantage of the country's disunity.
In the winter, Bury lay in the path of the raid by the Frenchman, Savoric de Mauleon, but like the raid by the Dauphin in the following Spring, we do not know exactly what consequences this had for the town, if any.
The Bury Chronicle recorded that many Frenchmen were killed in the battle at Lincoln on 19th June. Also that on 24th August the French fleet arriving in the Thames estuary to help Louis were sunk. Louis returned to France and about 8th September, "the great gift of peace was granted once more after two and a half years war".
Robert of Graveley had been the Sacrist of St Edmund's since the demise of William of Diss. Late in 1217 he was elected to the post of Abbot of Thorney. Robert was recorded in the 1270s Gesta Sacristarium as as efficient and active Sacrist. He had bought the Abbey's Vineyard and enclosed it with stone walls for the "comfort of the infirm and those who had been bled." This area is still known as the Vinefields in the present day. He also provided new rafters for the abbey roof, and placed a decorated canopy over the shrine of St Edmund. The account of the election of the Abbot Hugh called "Electio Hugonis", may well have been written a year or two after Robert left Bury, for it is heavily biassed against him. Robert had been the chief contender with Hugh for the post of Abbot during the election of 1213.
In 1238, Hawisia, Countess of Oxford, granted the Franciscan Friars a site in the town of Bury St Edmunds. The Manor of Maidwater around today's Maynewater Lane area was part of the Honour of Clare and the House of Clare was a supporter of the Franciscans. Nearby is Friar's Lane and they seemed to have set up an unofficial base there. The Abbot challenged this, saying that St Edmund's had a spiritual monopoly within the banleuca.
According to the Bury Chronicle, the Friars Minor voluntarily gave up their place in the town, despite the king's order. They had lived there for 5 years, 6 months and 24 days. A papal letter had been received ordering them to leave the said place.
By 1265 the Abbey finally gave the Franciscans land for a permanent home at Babwell just outside the Banleuca where today's Priory Hotel stands.
The last major addition to the fabric of the abbey was perhaps the new Lady Chapel built by Abbot Simon of Luton in 1275. The Chronicle recorded that the old chapel of St Edmund was pulled down and the Lady Chapel built on its site. Under the earth were found the walls of an ancient round church, which was much wider than the chapel of St Edmund and so built that the alter of the chapel was, as it were, in the centre. "We believe that this was the chapel first built for the service of St Edmund." It could have been the foundations of Ailwin's stone chapel of 1032, or maybe even stone foundations to the wooden church first built in 903.
In 1295 the Royal tax assessment of Bury St Edmunds was drawn up and still survives today. It is called the 1295 Rental and gives a lot of information about property use in the town at this time by tenants of the Abbey.
There were two suburbs, or areas outside the town walls, and these were called Eastgate and Risbygate. No Mans Meadows were recorded as 31 acres in the South Field, with the income going to the Cellarer. The Cellarer also held Hardwick heath. Nowton Road had two woods, Eastlee and Southlee which belonged to the Sacrist. The Sacrist also had the manor of the Haberden which now had 51½ acres and a mill. This assessment clearly shows that the Great Market was in the Cornhill and Buttermarket areas. It is still there today, but in 1327 the townspeople asked for it to be moved back to its original location, so it is unclear exactly when it moved there. It is possible that it had been held for many years on the Angel Hill, maybe ever since Anselm's town improvements in the 1130's.
Chevington Way has also been known as the Abbot's Way in its time. The Way leaves today's A143 at Chedburgh, going straight on to Chevington where today's road turns sharply right to the east at the pub. Leaving Chevington at the Church it entered what is now Ickworth Park at the Iron Gates, in the south west of the park. The Way is now represented by a modern roadway in the Park, and follows the River Linnet along its west side. Here it passed through the village of Ickworth, which was also removed in the formation of the Park. It followed the course of the River Linnet through Westley Bottom to Perry's Barn. Here it picked up what is now Abbot Road, on into Hospital Road, and thence to the West Gate on Westgate Street.
The extinction of Chevington Way, and its replacement by the route of the A143 around the east side of Ickworth Park through Horringer caused Chevington to become a village "off the beaten track" after 1814.
At a time when London held perhaps 70 to 100,000 people, Norwich was home to 25,000. Ipswich had a population of 7,000 and Bury St Edmunds had about 6,000 people. Towns like Beccles, Dunwich and Sudbury were smaller, with perhaps 2-3,000 people.
In the century 1300 to 1400 it seems that the climate was much warmer than today. On a global scale the glaciers were melting, resulting in a rise of sea level, to about half a metre higher than it was by about 1987.
Later in 1301 Thomas de Tottington was installed as abbot.
One demand was a return of the market place to its former position. The demand that the market should be returned to its old location is curious as it seems to have been on its present site in the Cornhill and Buttermarket areas since at least 1295. It seems even more curious if it really had been here since Abbot Anselm's day in the 1130's as is the traditional view. It may be that this was just a long-held grievance because change was imposed by the abbey, not because of any real desire to revert to an old site.
Next day, the 15th January, about 3,000 people stormed the Abbey gates, attacked the inhabitants and ransacked the legal archives. The Vestry and Treasury were raided and robbed. They blocked all roads to London and threw about 21 monks into jail. Amazingly it is reported that 32 out of the establishment of 80 monks were in the country at the time, on holiday.
On May 19th, a new force entered the arena in Bury. The Franciscan Friars from Babwell and the secular priests turned on the abbey. The front doors of the parish churches of St James and St Mary, inlaid and jewelled, were ripped off and carried away.
The burgesses fortified the town walls. In the country, the Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, Sir Robert Morley, was weakened by the new King's minority.
In the Autumn, de Berton again encouraged the mob to attack the abbey. More buildings were burnt including Bradfield Hall, the King's own residence inside the Abbey. The monks planned to retaliate.
On 18th October the townspeople were at prayer when the monks attempted a counter-coup. They attacked the congregation, resulting in retaliation which nearly destroyed the monastery. During this time the old Gate to the Great Court was destroyed in the rioting. The violence moved into the rest of the Banleuca and beyond. The abbey's barns were raided and the grain stolen. Cattle were rustled and most of the abbot's country estates invaded. Even St Saviour's Hospital suffered £800 in damages.
When armed soldiers arrived at Bury the town surrendered without a fight. Sheriff Robert Morley took 30 cartloads of prisoners to trial in Norwich.
In August the notorious outlaw gang of Thomas Thornham came to Bury to a hero's welcome by townsfolk against the protests of the Abbot, who, naturally, feared the worst. Thornham took over Moyse's Hall, and fought off the abbot's attempts to arrest him. The Abbot retreated to his Manor at Chevington Hall, a moated favourite place of Abbots from Bury. De Berton and Barbour came out of hiding and joined Thornham's band along with another burgess, one Richard Friosel. A
group of them marched on Chevington where they managed to kidnap Abbot Richard de Draughton from his moated country retreat. Today's Chevington Hall Farm is the site of this outrage. It is likely that the Hall was damaged in this assault. Great Horringer Hall was destroyed during the march, as were other local manor houses. After the Abbot was taken, some of the mob returned to Bury up Chevington Way and ransacked the Abbot's palace.
We must imagine that the niches on the Abbey Gate were occupied by statues of holy figures and saints. Although the Gatehouse survives today, the statues would have disappeared during the Reformation.
In January 1349 the Black Death arrived in Suffolk, perhaps first appearing at the inland port of Lakenheath, which suffered 20 deaths by February. The disease took four weeks to incubate, and death followed rapidly. Outbreaks now occurred up the Stour valley along the routes out of London. Coastal ports also introduced it into the Waveney valley.
In March the disease reached Bury St Edmunds. People started dying here in April.
By summer 1349 the Black Death was at its height in St Edmund's town. By September 1349, the Black Death had passed but the country was desolated. About 60% of all priests were dead, as were 45 to 50% of tenant farmers. Farms and stock were left to ruin as there was no skilled labour left to manage them. There was little or no normal production as employers were dead and established markets for produce were decimated. Those able to work were, for a time, able to pick and choose employers.
Mark Bailey's analysis of Suffolk subsidy returns gives us some idea of the population decline at this time. In the 1340s Suffolk had a population of about 225,000 people. By 1360 to 1365 this total was only 125,000. By 1520 the population would decrease further to only 100-110,000.
All over the country there was discontent, so that the poll tax became just the last straw.
The Prior of the Abbey, John de Cambridge, was in charge during the long dispute over the vacancy for Abbot. His town house was the first to be attacked, broken into and ransacked. Having wrecked the prior's house, next John de Cavendish's town house was also pillaged and burnt.
On 23rd June, 1381, part of the royal army arrived at Bury from London.
In 1430 Abbot Curteys made an agreement with John Arnold and Herman Redmond to burn bricks for him at Chevington. It is difficult to know whether brick was widely used yet in Bury, but this is an early record of its use.
Abbot Curteys also began to build a new library for the abbey's book collection, which by this time included about 2,000 volumes, one of the biggest collections in the country. Previously the abbey's books had been scattered around the church buildings, and many had been in the hands of individual monks, and even towns people. The location of the library is not definitely established. M R James concluded that it was probably over the Cloisters.
In 1433 King Henry VI toured Eastern England. At this time, no king had visited Bury St Edmunds for 100 years. He arrived on Christmas eve with a vast retinue along the Holeway from Cambridge, and was met at Newmarket Heath by the major figures of the abbey and town, all dressed in scarlet or red in honour of the king. The entry to the town was made through the South Gate and up Southgate Street, the main processional way at the time. They went straight into the Abbey Church for a service of thanksgiving.
By this time he owned more tenements and messuages in Bury than any other individual. He also owned property throughout West Suffolk and in London. He had been Alderman at least five times.
With the increased cloth production around Bury, it would appear that the fulling and dying of cloth were polluting the waterways of the town. At any rate the number of people in the town calling themselves fishers seems to have fallen dramatically at this time. The river and fen fishing industry became moribund.
This was particularly marked in the broad cloth area of Suffolk, between Clare, Bury St Edmunds and East Bergholt. Bury St Edmunds was the principal market outlet for the woollen cloth of the Stour Valley, as well as being a major producer in its own right. Merchants came to Bury's wool markets from London, Norwich, Kings Lynn, Great Yarmouth, the Low Countries, Germany and Italy. They were seeking the cloth from the finest fleeces in Western Europe.
By 1450 it is reckoned that about half of Bury's export trade was through Kings Lynn, by way of the Rivers Lark and Ouse.
There is no subsequent reference to any inspection of the saint's body, and in 1931 Goodwin wrote that "it seems probable that the saint's body was more or less cremated on that occasion".
St James church was also severely damaged by fire. The abbey had to raise funds as best it could for the repairs. We can see from wills made after this time by the wealthy townspeople, that the abbey was not mentione as an important beneficiary as much as it might have been two centuries earlier.
Baret also left the Feoffees 250 acres, the income of which was to go to the Poor of Bury. He also left Baret House in Chequer Square to the town.
The abbey of St Edmund, which he now ruled, was one of the grandest in Europe. W K Hardy attempted to reproduce how it may have looked in this painting from 1883. However, it would be unwise to rely too much upon the details shown, as we just do not know its full appearance.
In Bury and surrounds the Muster Roll found 6,476 men of which 2,900 were able bodied for service in the military. Robert Gottfried has assumed that the Borough's population might have been 5,438 based on an analysis of the evidence, and applying certain formulae.
Work by John Patten in 1979, would suggest that this figure was far too high. His estimate for 1525 was 3,550. In any event this made Bury the largest town in Suffolk at this time.
A new disease called Typhus first struck Bury this year. This year the outbreak was not too bad, but it would recur worse in the future.
Three generations of Thomas Springs were the main Lavenham Wool producers. Much of this cloth was sold through the market at Bury in competition with the ports of Colchester and Ipswich. The road from Lavenham to Bury, called Buryweye, was the most heavily travelled route in West Suffolk.
Bury was ranked just above Lavenham at 13th with a subsidy assessed at £405, barely any different. If Bury and Lavenham are considered together as an economic unit, they would together rank 7th in the land for combined wealth.
At this time London was first at £16,675, but Norwich was 2nd in the land at £1,704. Ipswich was 8th at £657, Kings Lynn 9th at £576, and Colchester was 12th at £426.
By now the burgesses of Bury and its surrounds were wealthy independently of the Abbey of St Edmund.
As for population, this is very hard to estimate. Work by Dr John Patten in 1979, would suggest that Gottfried's figure of 5,438 for Bury was far too high. Patten's estimate for 1524/25 is 3,550 for Bury and 3,100 for Ipswich. In any event this still made Bury the largest town in Suffolk at this time. By 1603 Bury would be overtaken in size by Ipswich.
In 1527, Thomas Chirche the bell founder, left a will in which he left 12d to every priest who bore his body to "chirche". Thomas had run the Bury bell foundry since his father died in 1498. The bell foundry now passed into the hands of Roger Reve, who owned it until 1533.
Bury itself was full of abbey tenements and holdings, many of which were in decay and even ruinous, giving a tumbledown feel to streets west of the abbey. However, many of the burgesses were wealthy and had moved to better areas of the town, maintaining prosperous lives independent of the abbey's decline. Bury would not collapse just because the abbey was in trouble.
The "little stream" does not seem to have been named the Lark until about the seventeenth century. In 1699 there was enacted "an Act for making the River Larke, alias Burn, Navigable". In 1534 it was small and shallow and could not take deep draught vessels, so only flat bottomed barges could reach the town, usually poled by men or pulled by oxen or mules.
|
