away, but the later abbots had set themselves against the policy of concession and conciliation which had brought about this advance towards freedom.  The gates of the town were still in the abbot’s hands.  He had succeeded in enforcing his claim to the wardship of all orphans born within his domain.  From claims such as these the town could never feel itself safe so long as mysterious charters from Pope or King, interpreted cunningly by the wit of the new lawyer class, lay stored in the abbey archives.  But the archives contained other and hardly less formidable documents than these.  Untroubled by the waste of war, the religious houses profited more than any other landowners by the general growth of wealth.  They had become great proprietors, money-lenders to their tenants, extortionate as the Jew whom they had banished from their land.  There were few townsmen of St. Edmund’s who had not some bonds laid up in the abbey registry.  In 1327 one band of debtors had a covenant lying there for the payment of five hundred marks and fifty casks of wine.  Another company of the wealthier burgesses were joint debtors on a bond for ten thousand pounds.  The new spirit of commercial activity joined with the troubles of the time to throw the whole community into the abbot’s hands.

[Sidenote:  Saint Edmundsbury]

We can hardly wonder that riots, lawsuits, and royal commissions marked the relation of the town and abbey under the first two Edwards.  Under the third came an open conflict.  In 1327 the townsmen burst into the great house, drove the monks into the choir, and dragged them thence to the town prison.  The abbey itself was sacked; chalices, missals, chasubles, tunicles, altar frontals, the books of the library, the very vats and dishes of the kitchen, all disappeared.  The monks estimated their losses at ten thousand pounds.  But the townsmen aimed at higher booty than this.  The monks were brought back from prison to their own chapter-house, and the spoil of their registry, papal bulls and royal charters, deeds and bonds and mortgages, were laid before them.  Amidst the wild threats of the mob they were forced to execute a grant of perfect freedom and of a gild to the town as well as of free release to their debtors.  Then they were left masters of the ruined house.  But all control over town or land was gone.  Through spring and summer no rent or fine was paid.  The bailiffs and other officers of the abbey did not dare to show their faces in the streets.  News came at last that the abbot was in London, appealing for redress to the court, and the whole county was at once on fire.  A crowd of rustics, maddened at the thought of revived claims of serfage, of interminable suits of law, poured into the streets of the town.  From thirty-two of the neighbouring villages the priests marched at the head of their flocks as on a new crusade.  The wild mass of men, women, and children, twenty thousand in all, as men guessed, rushed again on the