SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



thousand townsmen and their sympathizers gathered at the sound of the toll- 

 house bell, attacked and plundered the abbey, imprisoned the prior, elected an 

 alderman and assumed full authority over the town and neighbourhood, even 

 setting up, it was said, a block and axe in the market-place. 



A fortnight later, the abbot hurrying down from London, where he had 

 been sitting in Parliament, was compelled to sign a charter which conferred 

 on Bury all the rights for which the burgesses were contending. Soon 

 afterwards he escaped again to London and tried to get his grant annulled. 

 This led to a further outbreak of violence in May, and another in October, 

 during which many of the abbey buildings were destroyed and a score of its 

 manor-houses burnt and plundered. It was not till December that the 

 sheriff, backed by the military forces of the Crown, contrived to overpower the 

 townsmen and their allies, three cart-loads of whom were sent to Norwich 

 for trial. A number were hanged, others were imprisoned, and over 200 were 

 outlawed. But these proceedings were far from making an end of the 

 matter. Many of the outlaws were still at large, and a body of them entered 

 the town at midnight on 28 August 1328, were feasted in Moyses Hall, and 

 did not depart till they had routed with slaughter some of the abbot's 

 servants who were sent to capture them. Another body, headed by the two 

 leaders of the revolt, who had contrived to escape from prison, actually 

 succeeded in kidnapping the abbot at Chevington, and after keeping him 

 several days in London by the connivance of the Lord Mayor carried him 

 over to Brabant, whence he did not escape till the following April. ^' 



The demands of the townsmen as embodied in the extorted charter had 

 nothing very extravagant about them. The grant of a perpetual commune 

 and a common seal, the free election of their alderman, the full exercise of 

 the powers of a gild merchant, the exemption from tolls, the farm of 

 tallage, the removal of the taint of villeinage from the holdings, the 

 power of admitting new burgesses, the control of the town courts," — these 

 rights and privileges if permanently secured would certainly have almost 

 entirely emancipated the town from the abbot's authority, but they would 

 not have conferred more freedom upon Bury than royal charters had long ago 

 bestowed on Ipswich and Dunwich. What is worthy of special note, how- 

 ever, is the large measure of support which the burgesses received from other 

 classes : from the clergy, the local gentry, and the peasantry on the abbey's 

 estates. It is this which accounts for the determined character of the struggle, 

 and which lends it its real social significance. No less than thirty-two of 

 the clergy were convicted of taking part in the revolution. These were 

 drawn not only from the secular priests of the parish churches, but also from 

 the friars of Babwell, who had an old grudge against the abbey. 



The two sections were not free from jealousy of each other. The friars 

 would gladly have secured a foothold in the town, while the secular clergy 

 were anxious to keep it as much as possible to themselves. But they joined 

 in giving the sanction of the Church to the claims of the burgesses and in 

 saving them from the consequences of excommunication. In full array of 

 vestments and banners they took the place of the monks in the processions of 

 Rogation Day. They even seem to have conferred on the movement the 



" Mem. of St. Edmunds (Rolls Sen), ii, 327 et seq. ; see also V.C.H. Suff. ii, 62-3. 

 " Mem. of St. Edmunds (Rolls Scr.), iii, App. A. 



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