82: Bury St Edmunds Abbey

Wednesday, April 14, 2010
5:11 PM

“More like a town in itself.” That was how 17th century writer John Leland described Bury St Edmunds Abbey. It’s a ruin now – but it takes little imagination to sense its former greatness.

Anything to do with a martyred king?

Edmund, last king of independent East Anglia, was captured in battle and subsequently put to death in a gruesome manner by invading Danes in 870. After much toing and froing, his remains ended up at the Saxon town of Bedericsworth, which was henceforth forever linked to Englands then patron saint. So powerful was the pull of the saints cult during the Middle Ages that the abbey was among the most powerful in the country yet that very power made it a target and sometimes unpopular with its closest neighbours. The abbeys story is one of conflict with a string of opponents. Today the abbeys extensive ruins lie within a public park in the middle of this Suffolk market town, hinting at extinguished splendour.

A long history?

A religious house has stood here since 633, when the first Christian king of East Anglia, Sigebert, founded a monastery. Sigebert met a grisly end, killed in battle by the pagan Mercian king Penda. In these troubled times monasteries did well to survive but that at Bedericsworth endured. Two centuries later it was catapulted into the national spotlight. The cult of St Edmund the Martyr was central to Englands patriotic struggle against the Norsemen and when Edmunds remains were enshrined in the Suffolk town in 903, the abbey became a centre for pilgrimage. From then on it was a focus for kings and commoners alike; when the Vikings returned in the 1000s the relics were sent to London for safe-keeping. Sweyn of Denmark seized the crown, but met his match when he tried to bully the monks of Bury into paying taxes. Struck down with a seizure on confronting a vision of the saint, goes the legend Sweyn died. His son Canute, that canny politician, took the hint, and left the monastery alone. Round one to the monks.

Round two?

Having survived the Danes, the abbey now bested its second great opponent. The bishops of Norwich coveted the abbey, and sought jurisdiction. Following the Norman conquest of 1066, bishop Herbert Losinga, the man who built the cathedral at Norwich, flexed his muscles. But King William was one of many monarchs to be swayed by the cult of St Edmund. The abbey, he decided, was independent. It was not the first, nor the last, time the Benedictines saw off attempts to control them. As late as the 15th century they were fighting off bids by bishops to bring them into line. The abbots made hay. A great programme of building ensued. Before long the abbey dominated the town, surrounded by walls and incorporating a mass of outbuildings. The abbey complex included courts, a library, infirmary and watermill. Two churches, St Marys and St James, lay inside the walls dwarfed by the abbey church, two or three times their size.

Golden days

Historian John Leland described the abbey thus: The sun does not shine on an abbey more famous, whether we regard its endowments, size or magnificence... you would aver the abbey was a town in itself, so many gates has it... some even of bronze, so many towers and a church surpassed by none. Abbots continued to rub shoulders with kings. Abbot Samson was a close friend of Richard I, and helped raise a huge ransom when the Lionheart was imprisoned in Germany in the late 12th century. A few years later, in the autumn of 1214, a group of dissident barons met at the abbey church. Angry with King Johns arbitrary rule the group, including the earl of Norfolk, vowed to curtail his powers. Sure enough, a few months later, in 1215, John had to sign the Magna Carta.

What about the peasants? Revolting...?

The good burghers of Bury St Edmunds were getting restive. With good reason. The abbey stubbornly enforced the corvee, an annual tax on the people payable in labour forged in feudal times that the abbey maintained even as the country was slowly modernising. It caused great resentment. That, along with wardship of orphans and stewardship of the towns gates, spelled trouble. In 1327 it duly came. During a summer of riots much of the abbey was looted, several monks killed and the abbot kidnapped. The 1381 Peasants Revolt led to more bloodshed. During Jack Straws rebellion the abbot was beheaded, and land ownership documents destroyed. In the government crackdown which followed, the town was outlawed and fined 2,000 marks. An unpleasant period to live in, but architectural historians have good reason to be happy; after the destruction of 1327 the main gate to the abbey was rebuilt, resulting in the outstanding construction that survives today; part ornament, part defensive structure, it makes an impressive entry to the abbey.

Any other disasters?

Fire in 1150 proved a temporary setback to the abbeys rise, as did another blaze in 1465 when careless builders left a brazier alight with predictable results. A congregation hearing mass in 1430 had a narrow escape when part of a tower collapsed, while floods in 1439 damaged the abbey church and other buildings. Nevertheless the abbey always surmounted its problems. There was one opponent it could not see off though Henry VIII. In 1535, notorious commissioners Legh and Ap Rice arrived to serve the abbeys death sentence. Peace and harmony had broken out between town and gown in the 1500s; the abbey gave much of its profits to the poor and Henrys hatchetmen could find no evidence of wrongdoing. No problem. Clearly, they declared, it was a conspiracy of silence. In 1539, the sixth wealthiest Benedictine monastery in England surrendered and was dissolved. Sold for 413 it was used as a building quarry, although the priors comfortable house survived as a private dwelling until the 18th century.

The ruins, in the middle of Bury St Edmunds, are in the care of English Heritage, and managed by St Edmundsbury Borough Council.

Website www.english-heritage.org.uk