[74], 12. Geoffrey Ridel. This presentation appears to have been made (c. 1161) by Henry II., perhaps during Samson's journey abroad. In 1163 Geoffrey became Archdeacon of Canterbury in succession to Thomas à Becket, appointed Archbishop, and for the next eight years was in violent opposition to his primate, who called him "our arch-devil," and excommunicated him. On May 1, 1173, Geoffrey was chosen Bishop of Ely, and died at Winchester, 27 July, 1189. As Geoffrey from the chronicles seems to have been of a masterful and contumacious spirit, it must have given Abbot Samson peculiar satisfaction to have got the better of him over the timber referred to on page 106.
[74], 19. Acre. This was Samson's first imprisonment at Castleacre (circ. 1161, before he became a monk). His second imprisonment probably took place about 1173, as on page 6 he speaks of it to Jocelin, then a novice, as something quite recent. As to Castleacre, see note on pages 223-4.
CHAPTER VII.
[77], 23. Charters of the King. This dispute with the monks of Canterbury, heard before King Henry II. on the 11th February, 1187, raised the whole question of the Liberty of St. Edmund, a matter respecting which the Bury monastery was extremely tenacious. A marginal note in the original MS. of the Chronicle, against the puzzled phrase of the King (see page 78, lines 1-3), says: "Our Charter speaks of the time of King Edward, and of the time of his mother, Queen Emma, who had eight and a half hundreds as a marriage portion before the time of King Edward, besides Mildenhall." According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Confessor, after his coronation in 1043, seized the possessions of his mother, "because she was formerly very hard on the King her son, and did less for him than he wished before he was King, and also since." The Franchise having thus come into the Confessor's hands, was granted to the Abbots and Monks of Bury shortly after his accession. Under a Charter of King Edmund granted about 945, and Charters of Canute and Hardicanute, the jurisdiction of Bury Abbey had been restricted to the town, and the circuit indicated by the four crosses placed at the distance of a mile from the extremities of the town: but by the Confessor's Charter, it was enlarged to a district extending over about two-fifths of the whole county of Suffolk. (For names of the 8½ hundreds included in the Liberty see note on page 232, 14.)
Edward the Confessor paid a visit to the shrine of St. Edmund in 1044, and when he had come within a mile of it, dismounted from his horse and accomplished the rest of the journey on foot. Herman the archdeacon, who wrote about half a century later, is the first to relate this fact, and also the grant by the King to the abbey of the 8½ hundreds: "Qua tunc suffragatorem reditibus imperialibus honorat, centurias quas Anglice hundrez vocant, octo et semis sibi circum-circa se donat, regiamque mansionem nomine Mildenhall his adauget" (Arnold, I. 48). The original grant of Edward the Confessor gave the abbey jura regalia in wide loose general terms. Later, Charters became gradually more explicit as to the extent of jurisdiction (civil and criminal) conferred. Later still, the Royal justices in eyre supervened. The institution of the circuits and assizes had to be fitted into the exempt jurisdiction: so the Liberty had its own assizes, etc., but outside the interior special and inviolable circuit of the bannaleuca or limits of St. Edmundsbury itself.
Lord Francis Hervey, who has made a special study of the subject, gives hope on page 250 of his notes to the Breviary of Suffolk (1902), of his undertaking "a detailed examination of the history and incidents of the great Liberty of St. Edmund, which remained in the hands of its monastic rulers till the day when Abbot Reeve surrendered his Abbey to Henry VIII., November 4, 1539."
[78], 15. Matthew xix. 12.
[78], 16. the matter was put off. This dispute between Bury and Canterbury was not, as a matter of fact, ultimately composed till over 200 years later. Amongst Dr. Yates' manuscript materials for the never completed Part II. of his History of Bury is a memorandum (now amongst the Egerton MSS. in the British Museum) in the following words:—
"The Letters Patent of King Henry 4th the 25th Nov. 1408 confirm and ratify an Indenture of three parts between the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, and the Abbot of Bury St. Edmund's, by which it is determined that the parishes of Hadleygh et Illeygh being within the eight hundreds and an half called the Liberty or Franchise of St. Edmund should be subject to the Abbot's Seneschallus, or High Steward of the Franchise, and that the return of the writs of the Seneschal's Great Court with the rolls fines and other rights and privileges should be regarded in those parishes in the same manner as in the other parts of the Liberty. An exemption on the part of the Archbishop having been claimed, this indenture terminated a dispute that had been above 160 years [cf. Arnold, III. 188] in agitation. During this dispute it was agreed that the Sheriff of Suffolk should act till its termination as Seneschal of these Parishes. A patent was addressed to the Sheriff of Suffolk dated 27th November in the same year, commanding him no longer to intromit within the Franchise of St. Edmund, but to preserve inviolate the Liberties and immunities of the Abbot and Monastery.—Registrum Rubrum in Collect, Burien.: 317 to 328 inclusive."