Already the sainted King had become more powerful than any other miracle-monger, but his name had not yet been given to the town, which retained its old style until the time of Edward the Confessor, when it first became known as 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. Edward the Confessor walked the last mile bare-foot. Henry I., Henry II., and Richard I. were frequently here. King John, however, was in different sort. Jocelin of Brakelond, the old monkish chronicler, who was born in that very street of “Short Brakland” we may see in Bury to this day, tells us how, in 1203, that King stayed with the Abbot a whole fortnight, the said Abbot and Monastery being at that time only by way of recovering from much domestic mismanagement of former Abbots, and ill-prepared for the costs and charges of such entertaining. Carlyle, with picturesque efforts at recovering something of that visit beyond the mere dry and innutritious bones of dates, pictures that monarch “a blustering, dissipated human figure, with a kind of blackguard quality air, in cramoisy velvet, or other uncertain texture, uncertain cut, with much plumage and fringing; amid numerous other noisy figures of the like; riding abroad with hawks; talking noisy nonsense; tearing out the bowels of St. Edmundsbury Convent (its larders, namely, and cellars) in the most ruinous way.”
And when at last he went his ways, and the Abbot expected something kingly, he merely left a handsome silk cloak for St. Edmund, or rather, pretended to leave it, for one of his retinue borrowed it, “and we,” says Jocelin, or Carlyle for him, “never got sight of it again.” And all else the King gave was “one shilling and one penny, to say a mass for him; and so departed—like a shabby Lackland as he was! Thirteen pence sterling! this was what the Convent got from Lackland, for all the victuals he and his had made away with. We, of course, said our mass for him, having covenanted to do it—but let impartial posterity judge with what degree of fervour!”
The memory of King John’s hungry hordes and his shabby thirteen pence lingered at Bury, and it must have been with a peculiar satisfaction that the Abbot saw assembled at the high altar of his church the representative concourse of Barons who, on St. Edmund’s Day, 1214, swore to obtain from the King that Magna Charta which they did actually wring unwillingly from him in the following year.
Royal visits continued until the time of Henry VI., who held a Parliament here, but all the glories of the place are gone, and are only dimly perceived amid the mouldering ruins and damp churchyard walks that alone are left. The spot where the liberties of the English people were sworn to be upheld is accurst by the memory of how, three hundred years later, in the Marian persecution, twelve martyrs suffered at the stake for liberty of religious thought
XXIX
A great open space stretches outside the boundary walls of the old Abbey precincts. Here, on “Angel Hill,” as it is called, Bury fair was held in days of old. It was no mere rustic saturnalia, but a fashionable institution, and lasted a fortnight. A one-day fair still held annually, on September 21st, is the sole relic of this once important event, famous not only for the business, but also for the matrimonial matches concluded there.
The “Angel,” a dyspeptic and gloomy-looking house of huge proportions and sad-coloured brick, faces this wide, empty space, and adds a quite unnecessary emphasis to its dulness. There was an inn of the same name here so early as 1452, neighboured by others, but in 1779 the whole of the buildings on this side were removed and the present row erected. No one would suspect from the commonplace exterior of the “Angel” that its great cellars are of mediæval date, and comprised of groined crypts; but they do not redeem the general aspect of the building, and we do not look upon the “Angel” with interest because it figures in the Pickwick Papers, but only in surprise that Dickens should have thought it worth mention. He did so mention it because the “Angel” was the principal coaching-inn of the town. There was—indeed, there still is—the “Suffolk” hotel, but to and from the “Angel” came and went the Norwich Mail and the best of the post-chaise traffic. In the days when “every gentleman visited London at least once in his lifetime,” the house may by dint of much business have worn a cheery look; but now that almost every one comes up to town by rail many times a year, the place has the air of a public institution of the hospital or infirmary order. Looking upon this scene, the proverbial slowness of the Bury coaches recurs to the stranger, who remembers that old story of a pedestrian walking from Newmarket and overtaking—not being overtaken by—the stage. The coachman offered him a lift. “No, thank you,” said he; “I’m in a hurry to-day,” and soon disappeared in advance of the lumbering conveyance.
“ANGEL HILL,” BURY ST. EDMUNDS.