A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



household or college of clerks, to whom the duty 

 of guarding the shrine was assigned, consisted of 

 six persons, four priests and two deacons. Her- 

 man supplies their names. 1 



In the year I OIO Ailwin, the chief guardian 

 of the shrine, hearing that the Danes had landed, 

 took up the body of the saint, and passing through 

 Essex in search of a place of greater security 

 eventually reached London, where the relics 

 remained for three years. On the return of 

 tranquillity, notwithstanding the opposition of 

 the Bishop of London and his flock (who are 

 said to have been miraculously baffled), Ailwin 

 returned with the relics to their former resting- 

 place." 



In 1020 iElfwine, bishop of Elmham, formerly 

 a monk of Ely, removed the seculars in charge 

 of the shrine, and twenty monks, headed by 

 Uvius, prior of Holme, were installed at Beodrics- 

 worth. Uvius was consecrated the first abbot 

 of Bury St. Edmunds by the Bishop of London, 

 and a new stone church was begun by the order 

 of Cnut. 3 In 1020 Cnut granted an ample 

 charter of endowment and liberties. The 

 fundus or farm of St. Edmunds was to be for 

 ever in the hands of the Benedictine monks 

 of the abbey, and they were to be exempt 

 from episcopal jurisdiction. At any time when 

 the English might be called upon to pay 

 danegeld for the support of the Danish fleet 

 and army of occupation, the tenants of the 

 abbey were to be taxed at a like rate for the 

 benefit of the monastery. Regal rights in 

 their fisheries were made over to the monks, 

 and by the same charter there were assigned, 

 as a gift from Queen Emma, four thousand 

 eels yearly from Lakenheath. Finally, full juris- 

 diction in all their townships was granted to 

 the abbot. 4 



The first stone church was consecrated by 

 ./Ethelnoth, archbishop of Canterbury, on 1 8 Oc- 

 tober, 1032, and dedicated to the honour of 

 Christ, St. Mary and St. Edmund. 6 



In 1035 Hardicanute confirmed and extended 

 the privileges of the monks of St. Edmunds, 

 imposing the impossible fine of thirty talents of 

 gold on anyone found guilty of infringing the 

 franchises of the abbey. 6 Edward the Confessor 

 first visited St. Edmunds in 1044, and of his great 

 devotion granted to the abbey the manor of 

 Mildenhall, full freedom to elect their own abbot, 

 and jurisdiction over eight and a half hundreds ; 



1 Herman, ' De Miraculis S. Edm.' (Tib. B. ii) ; 

 Arnold (op. cit.), i, 30. 



2 Herman, loc. cit. ; Arnold, Mem. (Rolls Ser.), i, 

 4.2-5. 



3 Arnold, Mem. i, p. xxvii ; Clarke, Chron. ofjocelyn, 

 259. 



4 Dugdale, Mott. iii, I 37-8. 



5 Arnold, Mem. i, pp. xxvii, 348 ; Matt. Westm. 

 Hist. Flares sub ann. 



6 Nov. Leg. Angl. ii, 607. 



that is to say, over about a third of the wide- 

 spread county of Suffolk. 7 



In the same year Uvius died, and was succeeded 

 as abbot by Leofstan, one of the monks who had 

 accompanied Uvius from Holme. 



The rule of Leofstan (1044-65) nearly coin- 

 cided with the reign of the Confessor. It is said 

 by Herman to have been a period of sloth and 

 torpor at the abbey, from which the monks were 

 roused by the entreaties and reproaches of 

 iElfgeth, a Winchester woman, who had been 

 cured of a congenital dumbness at the shrine. 

 At her instigation, the resting-place of the saint 

 was restored. On the death of Leofstan in 

 1065, the influence of the Confessor caused the 

 choice of the monks to fall on the king's French 

 physician, Baldwin, a monk of St. Denis, a native 

 of Chartres. The Confessor in that year granted 

 a mint to the abbey. 8 This seems to be the first 

 time that Beodricsworth was styled St. Edmunds- 

 bury or Bury St. Edmunds (Seynt Edmunds Bin'). 9 



In 1 07 1 Abbot Baldwin visited Rome, where 

 Pope Alexander II received him with peculiar 

 honour, and gave him a crozier, a ring, and a 

 precious altar of porphyry. His chief object in 

 undertaking the journey was to oppose the claim 

 of Herfast, bishop of Thetford, to remove the 

 seat of the East Anglian bishopric to Bury St. 

 Edmunds. In this he was successful, the pope 

 taking the monks of St. Edmund under the 

 special protection of the holy see, and forbidding 

 that a bishop's see should ever be there estab- 

 lished. William the Conqueror also granted a 

 charter to the like effect, and confirmed their 

 exemption from episcopal jurisdiction. 10 



Towards the end of his abbacy Baldwin found 

 the wealth of the house, through fresh bene- 



r Dugdale, Mon. iii, 100, 138. These eight hun- 

 dreds were those of Thingoe, Thedwastre, Blackburne, 

 Bradbourn, Bradmere, Lackford, Risbridge, and Ba- 

 bergh ; the half-hundred was that of Exning. 



6 This privilege of a moneyer was confirmed by the 

 Conqueror, William II, Henry I, Richard I, John, and 

 Henry III. The presentation and admission on oath 

 of moneyers and assayers during the reigns of Henry III 

 and the first three Edwards occur frequently in the 

 Registers 'Kempe' and 'Werketone' (Harl. MSS. 638, 

 645 ). During the Great Riot of I 327 the townsmen 

 carried off all things pertaining to the abbey mint. 

 On 22 January, 1327-8, the king ordered a new die 

 and assay for the mint to be made in the place of those 

 which had been taken and destroyed by the mob 

 (Harl. MSS. 645, fol. 134). The sacrist's register, 

 temp. Edward II, names the following mint officials : 

 ' Monetaries, Cambiator, duo Custodes, duo Assaia- 

 tores, et Custos Cunei.' The abbots retained their 

 privilege of coining until the reign of Edward III. 

 Other particulars relative to the St. Edmunds mint 

 are given in Battely, 134-43. See also Ruding, 

 Annals of the Coinage of Britain (1840), ii, 218-20 ; 

 and Andrew, Numismatic Hist, of Henry I, 385-92. 



9 Battely, Antiq. S. Edmundi Burgi, 134. 



10 The texts of both bull and charter are given in 

 Arnold's Memorials, i, 344, 347. 



58 



