The church and religious house which King Sigebert of the East Angles built at Bedericsworth was of little importance till the royal martyr, St. Edmund, was buried there; and a great monastery was built by Canute on the spot in honour of the royal saint of East Anglia. In its most flourishing time the monastery is said to have had 80 Benedictine monks, 15 chaplains of the abbot and chief officials, 111 servants, and 40 priests of chapels, chantries, and monastic appendages in the town. The town which gradually grew up beside the abbey came to be known as the Bury of St. Edmund. Its principal streets are straight and at right angles with one another like a town planned and built by the proprietor of the whole site. The abbey buildings had swallowed up the original Saxon church, and the people attended service in the nave of the abbey church, till Abbot Anselm, wishing, it is said, to be rid of the townspeople out of the abbey church, built the Church of St. James for them in 1125. Soon after a second Church of St. Mary was built by the sacrist at the south-west corner of the abbey cemetery. The abbey appointed the parish priests, and built a college for the parochial clergy. It derived from its rectorial rights at the time of the Reformation, as given in the “Valor,” from St. Mary’s £16 10s. 9½d., and from St. James’s £18.
As the monastery had created the town, so it ruled it without opposition till the desire for civil liberties which stirred the minds of the people led some of the younger townsmen to unite themselves under colour of a gild, the Gild of Bachelors, or young men, to endeavour to obtain municipal rights for the town. In 1264 they closed the town gates against an official of the abbey, and engaged in riotous proceedings, when the abbot appealed to the Crown. The more prudent burghers got frightened, and suppressed the Bachelors’ Gild. They kept up, however, a chronic quarrel, which culminated in open rebellion; in 1327 the townspeople broke into the abbey, and compelled the abbot to concede the liberties they sought. But the king strengthened the armed force at the command of the abbot, and the townsmen were obliged five years after to renounce their claim, and sue for pardon.
It will be observed that where a great monastery was the lord of the town there was no possibility of a rival monastery, and the monks did not welcome the friars into their neighbourhood.[590] The abbot supplied hospitals and such-like things as they were needed; here, at St. Edmund’s, there were four hospitals at its four gates, founded by different abbots, for the entertainment of poor pilgrims. During a vacancy in the abbacy here some Franciscans took the opportunity to establish themselves in a house in the north part of the town; but the new abbot got rid of them in the peremptory way in which a landlord gets rid of a contumacious tenant—he pulled the house down over their heads. The friars appealed to Rome; the pope directed the archbishop, and the archbishop sent his commissaries, to conduct them into a new habitation in the west quarter of the town; but the monks drove out both the Episcopal Commissaries and their clients. The king sent down the chief justice to give them possession of a new site, but the monks did not submit to the chief justice, and made good their opposition. At length a compromise was arrived at, and the friars were allowed to settle “outside the Four Crosses,” which marked the Liberties of St. Edmund for a mile in every direction.[591]
Offa, the great King of the Mercians, in the eighth century, is said to have “discovered” the relics of St. Alban, the Proto-Martyr of Britain, and built a monastery to contain them on the site of the martyrdom. A population gathered around the monastery. The founding of St. Alban’s Town is ascribed to Usinus, the sixth abbot, in the tenth century. He is said to have built three parish churches for the people: St. Michael’s, St. Peter’s, and St. Stephen’s, on the north, south, and west sides of the abbey, and established a market for them. From Domesday it appears that the town was then part of the possessions of the abbey, and was held by the abbey in demesne.
St. Albans.
Early in the fourteenth century, the inhabitants tried to relieve themselves from this hereditary jurisdiction, and wrested from Abbot Eversden (1308-1326) the right to elect two of their number to represent them in Parliament; but a little later Abbot Richard of Wallingford (1326-1334) successfully disputed his predecessor’s concessions.