Bury St Edmunds

“ If, on the other hand, you elect to follow the route of the old Thetford and Norwich Mail, which turned off just outside Newmarket from the direct road through Barton Mills, and went instead by Bury St. Edmunds, it is exactly seven miles longer to Thetford and all places beyond.
There are few roads so wild and desolate, and no other main road so lonely, in the southern half of this country. ”

“ Edmund’s Bury, or Bury St. Edmunds; [11] and many miracles were wrought at his tomb, and he was canonized—at which honour let all Englishmen rejoice, the earth having as much need as ever of many such kings and saints.
And they were rare then as now, and then as now men went their own way, and not God’s way, and cut out their own work instead of taking his. For “when King Edmund was slain, his brother Edwold, dreading the pleasures of the world, and seeing that a hard lot had fallen on himself and his brother, retired to the monastery of Carnelia in Dorsetshire, near a clear well which St. ”

“ Edmunds to give the bishop his title; and Bury St. Edmunds scorned to submit to the richer but less aristocratic Ipswich. So in desperation the diocese had to be called ‘St. Edmundsbury and Ipswich.’
To look at an Ordnance map one would say that Suffolk was very flat and eminently agricultural. The highest hill I could find was 402 feet above the sea; seldom does the land rise over 200 feet. Yet a motor drive [Pg 85] in Suffolk gives one the sensation of having been on a switchback railway. One is never on the level, and some of the little ascents and descents are very sharp. ”

“ BOOK II. CHAPTER I. Edward, Lord Murk—now three years enjoying the viscounty—was established, during the summer of ’92, at “Stowling,” his lordship’s seat near Bury St Edmunds. Since his uncle’s death he had spent the greater part of his time here—perhaps because his associations with the place were less of the disreputable old peer than of the traditions and the personnel that had made it dear to him in his youth. He had sold both the Cavendish Square property and the villa at Putney; and was consequently, no doubt, very meanly equipped with domicile for a gentleman of his position. ”

“ Here the road from Bury St. Edmunds falls in, a junction of roads still known by some of the older generation as “Cockpit Corner,” a name that marks the site of the cockpit which stood here in those brutal days of yore and moved a letter-writer of 1785 to say, “I believe most of the young Thetford people are dissipated, simple, ignorant young men (what a nice ‘derangement of epitaphs’!) that mind nothing but the low and insipid sport of cock-fighting.” From this point, into the town 209across the Town Bridge, the road narrows amazingly, and, arrived at the “Bell” inn, and St. ”

“ It lies in the midst of wide meadow-lands, much used for horseback sports such as polo and racing. Royal visits, so dear to the average Britisher, are a frequent event, and here it is that the King, usually in some new style of hat or cut of trousers, appears, to set the world of fashion agog.
Well clear of Newmarket and its birds of prey, the most glorious of roads brought us quickly into the fine old town of Bury St. Edmunds—and none other in East Anglia has been celebrated by greater pens ”

“ She also wrote some poems and two devotional works. She held for some time an appointment in the household of the Princess of Wales.
BURY, RICHARD DE (1281-1345) . —S. of Sir Richard Aungerville, b. at Bury St. Edmunds, studied at Oxf., and was a Benedictine monk, became tutor to Edward III. when Prince of Wales, and Bishop of Durham, and held many offices of State. He was a patron of learning, and one of the first English collectors of books, and he wrote his work, Philobiblon, in praise of books, and founded a library at Durham. ”

“ This region now is drained and dyked, but in earlier times it was a wilderness of shallow waters and reedy islets, with frequent "islands" of firmer and more elevated ground. These were availed of for the monasteries of the Fenland—Ely, Peterborough, Crowland, and others, all established by the Benedictines. The abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, although situated some distance from the marshland, may also be classed among the religious houses of the Fens. ”

“ No other blot, I suppose, is to be found on his fame and character; and that he should have incurred this indelible stain, and fallen into so pitiable an error, is a problem by no means easy of solution.
At the Lent Assize, in 1664, at Bury St. Edmunds, two aged women, named Rose Cullender and Amy Duny were brought before him on a charge of having bewitched seven persons. ”

“ CHITTING, HENRY (d. 1638) , genealogist, was a native of Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk (Addit. MS. 19165, f. 183 b) . He was appointed Chester herald 18 July 1618; he visited the counties of Berks and Gloucester for Camden, Clarenceux, and the county of Lincoln for Sir Richard St. ”

“ But Richard can hardly have failed to note what these hints proved his mitred counsellor to have noted well—the silent revolution which was passing over the land, and which in a century and a half had raised serfs like those of St. Edmunds into freeholders of a town.
It is only in such lowly records as those which we are about to give that we can follow the progress of that revolution. But simple as the tale is there is hardly better historic training for a man than to set him frankly in the streets of a quiet little town like Bury St. ”

“ Faith, 309-311 Iceni, The, 114, 123, 127-129, 130 Iciani, Great Chesterford, 117 Icknield Way, The, 114-118, 187-189, 215, 231 Ingham, 186 Ingworth, 326 Inns (mentioned at length) :— Angel, Bury St. Edmunds, 180-183 Bell, Thetford, 208, 220-224 Belle Sauvage, Ludgate Hill, 12 Black Boys, Aylsham, 316 Blue Boar, Whitechapel, 11 358Boar and Castle, Oxford Street, 12 Bull, Bishopsgate Street, 2, 4, 7, 8, 11 —— Whitechapel, 12, 66 Bull and Mouth, St. ”

“ Edmund’s Bury.
As everywhere else, the Norman Conquest meant a great increase of ecclesiastical wealth and power at Bury. The Monastery was rebuilt, and its Abbot, mitred and all-powerful within the wide-spreading Limits of St. Edmund, was little less than a Bishop. The sanctity and potency of St. Edmund were not less than those of St. Thomas in after-years became. Pilgrims of every estate in the realm flocked to his shrine. Even kings entered into his courts with humility. ”

“ Another well-known name connected with Bury was that of Calamy, the elder, a rigid Presbyterian, who, about 1630, was one of the town lecturers at Bury. Subsequently he became Rector of Aldersmanbury, London, and one of the Assembly of Divines, and frequently preached before Parliament. He lived to see London in ashes, the sight of which broke his heart. His son Edmund was born at Bury, became a distinguished preacher, was ejected, and formed a congregation in Currier’s Hall, near Cripplegate, London. ”

“ Beyond the village the battered remains of the old “Franchise Cross,” which once marked the boundary of the Liberty of St. Edmund, stand by the way, and still mark the limits of Thetford and Barnham parishes. None is sufficiently humble to do that cross reverence nowadays, but in the old times, when it was protected by a specific proclamation by the Abbot of Bury, that all who injured it would be anathematised and cursed with the fires of Hell, this old landmark was dealt gently with. ”

“ Good-bye, poor Miss Carey”—and he bent towards her—“you are not cut out for a distributing kitchen employer; and nature is a hideous transgressor whom you ought to kick out of your doors. What will Lady Carey say to all this?” and the fastidious critic was off, followed by Murray.
The group broke up; Lionel putting his hand on Danford’s shoulder walked out of the Rotunda, leaving Gwen and Eva conversing in one part of the cool hall, while Lelia Dale and Nettie reclined in another part. Lelia Dale leaned her head on her hand. She did not know whom to serve. ”

“ Temple, instead of retiring, dallied with the cups and saucers. There was something in the valet’s mind, but he did not know how to put it into words.
“Now, Temple, there’s something you want to say. What is it?” Gwen turned gracefully on to her side and poured out tea.
“Yes, my lady; and as you are so kind as to allow me, I shall speak. It’s about the groom, Wiggles, my lord.”
“What about him?” asked Lionel. “He cannot surely complain that he receives no wages? We none of us get any wages nowadays.” ”

“ She is suggestive and narrow-minded, gushing and worldly-wise; she never allows passion to tear her heart to shreds, but talks freely about women’s frolics, and tells naughty stories with a twinkle in her eye and a pout on her lip. What a pity such a woman had missed the coach to originality, and had alighted at the first station—superficiality!”
“I say, Dan, can you put a label on that fine piece of statuary talking over there to Tom Hornsby?”
“That, my lord, surely you ought to know—ha! ha! ha! What an ingrate you are! it is Lady Ranelagh. ”

“ By 925 the fame of St Edmund had spread far and wide, and the name of the town was changed to St Edmund's Bury. Sweyn, in 1020, having destroyed the older monastery and ejected the secular priests, built a Benedictine abbey on its site. In 942 or 945 King Edmund had granted to the abbot and convent jurisdiction over the whole town, free from all secular services, and Canute in 1020 freed it from episcopal control. Edward the Confessor made the abbot lord of the franchise. By various grants from the abbots, the town gradually attained the rank of a borough. ”

“ On the death of Sir Samuel Dodd, Bury was raised by King George I to be chief baron of the exchequer 10 June 1716. He died on 4 May 1722, suddenly, having been engaged in the discharge of his judicial duties until within a few hours of his death; and was buried, with a handsome tomb, in the parish church of Grantham, Lincolnshire. He left no issue, and his estates at Irby, near Wainfleet, passed to his grandnephew, William Bury, of Lyndwood Grange, Lincolnshire. ”

“ These wishes, however, were soon doomed to disappointment; Lord Albert had accepted the invitation under the impression that in the country there was more leisure and tranquillity than the hurry of a London life allowed; but whether in the country or town, he might have known, had not the fatal mist of delusion which comes over all who enter on a tortuous path began to blind him, that reflection and serenity of mind do not depend on time or place; that power, that calm, may be destroyed or may be nurtured in cities, as in lonely wilds, it is true ”

“ But what a night wrap! The Earl smiled as he recalled the masterpiece in which Doucet of Paris had surpassed himself, revealing with subtle suggestiveness the lissome shape of arms and legs, and full curves of the breast through a foam of white lace and chiffon. As he sat in the darkness of his brougham, he closed his eyes and saw the Countess as she had stood in front of the footlights, unblushingly courting the approval of her public; and he still heard in his ears the furious applause of London Society gathered that night in Islington Hall. ”

“ He was always ready to do the business of his office, and his progress through his diocese was marked by an organised distribution of alms to the poor, amounting in the case of journeys between Durham and Newcastle to eight pounds sterling. But Richard de Bury was above all things a scholar and a promoter of learning. He surrounded himself with learned men ; Thomas Bradwardin, Richard Fitzralph, and other less known scholars were among his chaplains. ”

“ Some of its members had been sheriffs of the city; others were ‘persons of condition; divers very rich, many more very substantial, few poor. The whole congregation computed worth near 400,000l.’ Bury agreed to go to Bristol for six months ‘to make a tryal of the waters there.’ He arrived there on 8 April 1720. In little more than a month he lost his wife. His stay at Bristol was permanent; he got as assistant (probably in 1721) John Diaper, who succeeded him as pastor, and resigned in 1751. Under Bury's ministry the congregation increased both in numbers and in wealth. ”

“ Bury, formerly the seat of an Abbot, the last of whom was, I think, hanged, or somehow put to death, by that matchless tyrant, Henry VIII., is a very pretty place; extremely clean and neat; no ragged or dirty people to be seen, and women (young ones I mean) very pretty and very neatly dressed.—On this side of Bury, a considerable distance lower, I saw a field of Rape, transplanted very thick, for, I suppose, sheep feed in the spring. The farming all along to Norwich is very good. ”

“ In the small room, where first he saw the Duke of Gloucester, De Lacy found Sir John de Bury. The old Knight was slow to rally from his wound; and being scarcely convalescent when Richard drew in his forces, he had been left in command of Pontefract in place of Sir Robert Wallingford, who went with the King. ”

“ As to social duties—they only existed in our imaginations, and the sooner we emancipate ourselves from such bondage the better. Besides, my dear Sir Edward, who knows whether there will be a Coronation?”
“You are tired, dear friend”—the physician laid his hand on Lionel’s brow. “You have done far too much in one day, and need rest. But I will tell you just to put your mind at ease, that the date of the Coronation is fixed. I met the Lord Chamberlain an hour ago, and he informed me that we may look forward at an early date to our Sovereign’s public apotheosis.” ”