AND ITS SURROUNDINGS. 15 



they would spare his subjects. The Danes, however, 

 having seized him, used their utmost endeavours to induce 

 him to renounce his religion. Upon his refusing to comply, 

 they first beat him with clubs, then scourged him with 

 whips, afterwards bound him to a tree and shot at him till 

 he was completely covered with their arrows, and then 

 finally struck off his head. — A.D. 870." Many years after- 

 wards his body was removed to London, and subsequently 

 was brought back to Suffolk, to be there enshrined and 

 honoured ; and in process of time a vast abbey and a large 

 and wealthy town, now known as ** Bury St. Edmund's," 

 gathered around his venerable dust. In confirmation of 

 the story that he was shot in the manner, related, it has 

 been said that when an old tree in Hoxne Wood, Suffolk, 

 which had been known as St. Edmund's Oak, fell in 1 848, 

 an arrow was found imbedded in the heart of the tree. 

 The following is an extract from Dr. Oliver's account 

 of Buckfastleigh Abbey, in his Monasticon Dioecesis Exo- 

 niensis :— "26 Aug. 1414, Bishop Stafford dedicated the 

 chapel of St. Edmund, King and Martyr, a daughter 

 chapel of Churchstow, and on the next day blest its 

 cemetery. Roger Bachelor, then rector of Churchstow, 

 made his will Aug. 30, 1127, and desired to be buried 

 'in cancello de Kingston' [Kingsbridge ?], and left to 

 its store 10 marks. To the store of St. Mary de Church- 

 stow he gives 12 sheep and 1 cow, and also 2 marks 

 1 to paint the image of the blessed Mary of Churchstow, 

 namely in the chance 1 .' On the dissolution of the abbey, 

 in the time of Henry 8th, Gabriel Donne, the last Abbot, 

 granted a lease to John Southcot, of Bovey Tracey, of 

 the rectory of Churchstow, and its dependant chapel of 



