King Edmund is a shadowy figure, but his reputation after his death was to hold sway over medieval England in the centuries to follow. Kate Viscardi has explained his background, but rumours of his powers after death were enough to alarm kings and raise the abbey named after him to become one of the greatest Christian sites in Europe.
His prowess as a worker of miracles and as a terrifying warrior from beyond the grave began with Edward the Confessor, who revered the martyred Edmund. It was he who first made the abbot of St Edmund one of the great barons of the land, exercising the powers of royal government across much of Suffolk. But those powers rested not with the abbot, but with the relics under his protection.
Magna Carta was signed under the protection of Edmund
Edmund was the king under the hill, who would rise up and smite the country’s enemies, and the greatest men in the kingdom fell under his sway. Before confronting King John over Magna Carta, the knights met at the abbey to swear an oath together under his powerful auspices.
Stories spread of Edmund’s powers, wielded from his gold encrusted reliquary in his chapel. It is reckoned that during this period perhaps a third of all the population of England went on pilgrimage at least once in their life, and Beodricworth (the Saxon name of Bury St Edmunds) became the second most visited shrine in the country, after Canterbury.
Until this time, Bury had been a dirty little town serving the prosperous wool industry, where artisans fulfilled only the lowliest tasks, washing the fleeces before they were taken elsewhere in west Suffolk.
Bury became wealthy through medieval tourism
Yet with thousands of visitors came new prosperity, particularly in what today we would call the hospitality sector. Medieval pilgrims were the equivalent of our tourists, and wanted much the same things.
They wanted bed and board, they wanted souvenirs and good luck charms, they wanted good companionship, places to visit, the opportunity to sing and get drunk, they wanted loose women. Images of St Edmund were available to suit every pocket, from a bent bit of tin to jewel-encrusted icons bought from Goldsmiths Row just beyond the abbey gates. Bury was pleased to offer whatever its visitors desired. The more people visited Edmund’s shrine, the more his reputation grew and the more prosperous the abbey and the town became.
Buying back your own horse’s dung from the abbey
But as the town’s status improved, so did their sense of self-worth. That brought them into sometimes bitter conflict with the abbey, since the Pope had declared that the abbey owned all of the town, and the abbey was well disposed to making the most of it.
The town’s market grew with its prosperity, and its fairs attracted merchants and buyers from across the country and Europe. (Beodricsworth was the prestigious centre of the bed coverlet industry.) But the abbey charged a tariff for those wanting to sell their wares in the town. They meanwhile sold produce from their own extensive holdings across Suffolk, and since naturally they didn’t pay the premium they could always sell more cheaply.
Townspeople were not allowed to keep their sheep in their own folds either – they had to be kept in those of the abbey, because sheep dung was valuable. So the dung was kept by the abbey. And if your horse should defecate in the street, from the moment it left the animal that dung was also the property of St Edmund and his protector, the abbey – though the horse’s owner was allowed to buy it back.
New aspirations lead to riots
As the abbey became ever more wealthy, so did the town. The town guilds were becoming powerful, and disputes were frequent. Sometimes there were riots. The people demanded more rights, the abbey warned them against angering St Edmund. By now the abbot lived in a palace within the grounds and had his own staff and amenities: brewery, kitchens, bakery and cellar. (The monks drank wine from their own vineyard just across the river. The abbot had his imported via Yarmouth.)
Tales of the abbey’s excesses also began to spread, but Henry III revered the memory of Edward the Confessor (and even named his son – the future Edward I – after him). So he also shared his regard for – and fear of – Saint Edmund. He visited the abbey frequently, and is reported as crawling on his knees to pay reverence at his shrine.
Deserted by its monks, the abbey falls into disrepute
Royal visits were not popular with the monks. The king arrived with a vast retinue and might stay for weeks, so they were ruinously expensive. Also, the abbey was often living beyond its means. At this time there were 80 monks and 111 live-in servants, with many more living in the town. Some years later, a visitor was shocked to record none of the monks resident in the abbey either: they were snuggled away in the town, living with their doxies.
Gradually, the desire for pilgrimage diminished, and then it came to an end with the dissolution of the monastery under Henry VIII in 1536. There is little now of the vast enclosure of the abbey and its church, once the second largest building in Europe. The end of the abbey and the end of St Edmund’s influence over England for 800 years is recorded in a parchment in a cardboard box in the Suffolk archives: a copy of the document transferring ownership to the king.
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