Bury St Edmunds

The origins of the religious house at the place which came to be known as Bury St Edmunds appear to lie in the first half of the tenth century, when the relics of St Edmund, the king of the East Angles killed by the Danes in 869, were translated from the king’s resting-place at Haeglesdun (?Hellesdon, Norfolk) to a church founded on the royal estate at Bedericesworth (Abbo, Passio S. Eadmundi, ch. 13). It seems that the community of ‘St Edmund’s church’ maintained a continuous existence thereafter, though rather little is known of its history in the later tenth and early eleventh centuries. <Herman, on the monk Æthelwine, who brought the relics of St Edmund to London in 1010-13.> Significant developments appear to have taken place during the reign of Cnut. An annal entered in the margin of the Easter Tables in the ‘Bury Psalter’ (Vatican, MS. Reg. lat. 12), placed opposite the year 1020 (16v), indicates that Bishop Ælfwine, acting in some sense under Earl Thorkell, established monastic rule in the monastery of St Edmunds; another annal, placed opposite the year 1032 (17v), indicates that Archbishop Æthelnoth consecrated a church ‘in honour of Christ and St Mary and St Edmund’. Both annals are written in a mid-eleventh-century hand, presumably within living memory of the events, and constitute good evidence for the establishment and early development of a regular monastic community at Bedericesworth. It emerges from a more circumstantial record of the foundation of the abbey in the reign of Cnut that the community initially comprised 13 monks brought to Bedericesworth from the monastery of St Benet of Holme, in Norfolk (see below, p. 000); the close connection between the two houses in the eleventh century is attested in other ways (see, e.g., S 1528 (Whitelock, Wills, no. 25)). Ufi, formerly prior of St Benet of Holme, became the first abbot of St Edmunds, and was succeeded (in 1044) by Leofstan, himself formerly a monk of St Benet of Holme. Leofstan was succeeded (in 1065) by Baldwin of Saint-Denis, who had served as physician to Edward the Confessor, and who served William I and William Rufus in the same capacity; his impeccable credentials must have done much to ease the transition at Bury from the Anglo-Saxon to the Anglo-Norman regime.

Given the great wealth of the abbey by the time of the Norman Conquest, it comes as a surprise that the Bury St Edmunds archive contains very few royal diplomas serving as title-deeds for its estates. S 483 (a charter of King Edmund, for Bishop Theodred) and S 703 (a charter of King Edgar, for Æthelflæd) were evidently transferred to the church in connection with the respective beneficiary’s specific bequests; but there is nothing else in the archive of the same kind. The ‘earliest’ of the charters drawn up in favour of the church itself is one of King Edmund, dated 945 (S 507); a charter of King Cnut which conveys certain privileges to the abbey (S 980, modelled in part on the king’s charter for St Benet of Holme (S 984)) was probably produced in its received form towards the end of the eleventh century; the confirmation of it issued in the name of King Harthacnut (S 995) is another forgery; and two very disreputable charters of Edward the Confessor (S 1045-6) complete the series. Yet the archive is of quite exceptional importance for our understanding of the various forms of vernacular documentation current in the later Anglo-Saxon period, supplying an extensive and substantially authentic series of royal writs (which testify to the variety of purposes for which writs could be used), a major series of tenth- and eleventh-century wills, and several other eleventh-century records of miscellaneous import. It may be that Bury’s endowment was accumulated in circumstances which had not, for one reason or another, involved the transfer of royal diplomas in any quantity, and that special efforts had been made to acquire and to preserve the other forms of documentation which pertained to the abbey’s estates (cf. Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 143-4); whatever the case, the profile of the Bury archive is strikingly different from the profiles of other archives in other parts of the country, and the fact should be capable of some explanation.

Records pertaining to the abbey’s affairs were entered in certain service-books at Bury in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Additions to a late-tenth-century copy of the bilingual Rule of St Benedict (Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS. 197 (Ker, Catalogue, no. 353; Thomson, no. 1274)) include a singularly interesting account of the assets of the abbey at the time when Abbot Leofstan took charge, and various texts bearing on the activities of Abbot Baldwin (which happen to reveal the importance attached at Bury to Abbot Ufi’s anniversary); see Robertson, Charters, no. 104 (pp. 192-201 and 440-7). Additions at the end of a gospel-book written in the first half of the eleventh century (BL Harley 76 (Davis 122; Thomson, no. 1275)) include a copy of Cnut’s charter for Bury (S 980), in association with documents which relate to the dispute between Abbot Baldwin and Bishop Arfast in the late eleventh century. Another gospel-book, now lost but formerly kept on the high altar at Bury, appears to have contained copies of certain charters of King Edward the Confessor (see Thomson, pp. 14-15). And the front flyleaf of a manuscript of Bede’s commentary on St Luke (Cambridge, Pembroke College, MS. 83 (Ker, Catalogue, no. 76)) was used for recording payments to be made in connection with a funeral; see Robertson, Charters, App. II, no. 8 (pp. 252-3 and 501-2). Against this background, it is easy to imagine that the monks of Bury might have maintained informal records of the various benefactions which they received, and such records might underlie the lists of benefactors found in several of the later cartularies (below, p. 000).

A manuscript of the chronicles of Marianus and John of Worcester (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 297 (S.C. 2468)), written at Bury St Edmunds in the mid-twelfth century, provides a further example of the varied methods of record-keeping practised at the abbey. An account of the succession of the West Saxon kings, based on a version of the West Saxon regnal table but duly adapted for Bury’s purposes, was added in blank spaces on pp. 72-3 and 75; in this context reference is made (for example) to King Æthelstan’s gift of a gospel-book, and to the ‘many lands’ given to the church of St Edmund by King Eadwig, ‘sed ante non multos annos karta eius periit’. An adulterated copy of King Edmund’s charter for the church of St Edmund (S 507) was added in the lower margins of pp. 327-31, against the annal for 945; the witness-list is arranged in a way which indicates that the exemplar was probably a version of the charter in single-sheet form. A copy of Cnut’s charter for the abbey (S 980) occurs on pp. 353-4, but in this case as an integral part of the main text.

The complications of the Bury archive multiply as soon as we turn to consider the numerous cartularies and other registers of the abbey; for an exemplary guide, see Thomson, Archives of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds. An inventory of the vast number of charters preserved in the abbey’s archives (in single-sheet form) was made in the second half of the thirteenth century: BL Harley 1005, fols. 223-72 (Davis 105; Thomson, no. 1293), with later additions; copied, before the additions, in BL Harley 638, fols. 119-38 (Davis 106; Thomson, no. 1281). The organisation of the single-sheet charters in the archive is discussed by Thomson, pp. 18-19 and 24-33. As listed in the inventory, the bulk of the pre-Conquest charters occur in three blocks: royal charters (Harley 1005, 223r (Thomson, Plate I)); ‘Celeraria de diuersis collacionibus’ (Harley 1005, 239v); and ‘carte anglice scripte’ (Harley 1005, 264r); curiously, almost all of the charters listed in the second block appear to have been copies of the (?original) documents listed under ‘carte anglice scripte’. The inventory does not appear to indicate the existence in the archive of any pre-Conquest single-sheet charters which were not copied in the surviving cartularies; there are, however, several charters copied in the cartularies which were not included in the inventory, from which it may follow that the inventory was incomplete, or that the texts in question were copied from earlier registers, now lost. The muniments were ransacked by the disgruntled burgesses of Bury St Edmunds during the course of the ‘Great Riot’ in 1327 (see Lobel, ‘A Detailed Account of the 1327 Rising’, and Thomson, pp. 20-1). Some charters were burnt, and others were carried off: ‘videlicet tres cartas Knuti quondam regis Anglie, quatuor cartas Hardeknuti quondam regis etc., unam etiam cartam sancti Edwardi regis …’ (according to one of the pleas which followed the riot, ptd Hervey, Pinchbeck Register I, p. 150). It is important to bear in mind, therefore, that there would appear to have been more charters of Cnut and Harthacnut in the archive than perusal of the inventory or the extant cartularies would suggest.

The earliest of the extant cartularies of Bury St Edmunds is the ‘Black Register of the Vestry’ (CUL, Mm. 4. 19 (Davis 118; Thomson, no. 1277)), compiled in the early thirteenth century (soon after 1207). It contains a series of specifically royal charters on fols. 83-105, beginning with texts of all of the royal diplomas of ‘standard’ type (S 483, 507, 980, 995, 703), copied in a single block on 83r-91r; only two ‘pre-Conquest’ documents (S 1072 and 1213) occur among the series of mainly non-royal charters on fols. 105-23. It is worth observing in connection with this manuscript that the main scribe seems to have collaborated with another scribe who ‘specialized’ in writing texts in the vernacular; yet even so, the compilers of the cartulary were very restrictive in their selection of the abbey’s pre-Conquest charters, as if they were reluctant to grapple with texts of difficult and unfamiliar form.

A rather different perception of the abbey’s muniments appears to have originated in the cartulary known at Bury as the ‘Register of Abbot John Northwold’, which was presumably produced towards the end of the thirteenth century, but which has not itself survived. The structure and organization of this evidently massive compilation can be reconstructed in some detail on the basis of the references to it which occur in the abbey’s fifteenth-century registers (see Thomson, pp. 6 and 7). It began with a series of papal bulls (fols. 1-23), followed by copies of predominantly royal charters (fols. 22-57), records of pre- and post-Conquest ‘private’ benefactions (fols. 60-73), extracts from Domesday Book (fols. 100-7), and much else besides. It would obviously be of interest to know in what respects the ‘Register of Abbot John Northwold’ determined the organisation and presentation of the pre-Conquest records found in the later cartularies of Bury. For while the compilers of certain cartularies clearly took some of their texts from single sheets, it may have been more convenient or necessary to copy other texts direct from the Northwold register.

It seems likely that the influence of the lost ‘Register of Abbot John Northwold’ lies behind the two extant cartularies which provide the full range of Latin and vernacular charters preserved at Bury St Edmunds. The earlier part of the ‘Sacrist’s Register’ (Cambridge, University Library, Ff. 2. 33 (Davis 117; Thomson, no. 1296)), compiled in the late thirteenth century, begins with papal bulls on fols. 11-19, and continues with copies of the royal charters for the abbey on fols. 20-34; the pre-Conquest royal diplomas and vernacular writs occur on 20r-23v, interspersed with some historical narrative (in the form, therefore, of a rather crude chronicle-cartulary). Fols. 35-44 are missing (without apparent loss of text), and the cartulary resumes with a series of ‘private’ grants on fols. 45-72, beginning with the pre-Conquest wills and other ‘private’ documents on 45r-50r, and a list of donations ‘without charter’ on 50rv. (Copies of the two royal diplomas not in favour of the abbey - S 703 and 483 - are included among these ‘private’ documents.) The ‘White Register’ (BL Add. 14847 (Davis 96; Thomson, no. 1278)), compiled in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, seems to be the product of an attempt to present much of the same material in a rather different way. After copying the papal bulls on fols. 3-14, the compiler sought to provide an account of the abbey’s early benefactors, comprising texts of the pre-Conquest ‘private’ charters (fols. 15-20); other material intervenes on fols. 21-6; and the series of royal charters is copied on fols. 27-53, beginning with the range of pre-Conquest diplomas and writs on 27r-31v (with some linking historical narrative). The precise nature of the relationship between Ff. 2. 33 and Add. 14847 requires more detailed investigation. It has been suggested, on purely linguistic grounds, that both manuscripts descend from a lost manuscript with ‘a strongly late thirteenth-century flavour’, written by a scribe from at least twenty miles north of Bury (McIntosh, ‘Language’, pp. 41-2). Certainly, it is striking that the texts within each of the two blocks of royal and ‘private’ charters occur in exactly the same order, share the same ‘modernised’ orthography, and also share certain misreadings, implying that both manuscripts are copied directly or indirectly from a common source. The obvious inference is that Ff. 2. 33 and Add. 14847 were derived independently from the lost ‘Register of Abbot John Northwold’, though it should be noted that Add. 14847 replaces the genuine S 1069 with the spurious S 1070, omits a few of the ‘private’ charters, and abbreviates others. It has been argued more recently, however, that Add. 14847 was copied direct from Ff. 2. 33, and is thus of little independent value (Lowe, ‘Two Thirteenth-century Cartularies’). Of course one should never underestimate the capacity of the compilers of complex cartularies to confuse the issue by copying texts from a variety of different sources, whether in book or single-sheet form; but if substantial parts of Add. 14847 were copied from Ff. 2. 33, it would remain quite likely that Ff. 2. 33 was itself based substantially on the lost register of Abbot John Northwold.

Some of the royal charters for Bury St Edmunds continue to recur in the abbey’s later cartularies. The details are tedious, but it is quite instructive to distinguish between those texts which were chosen in their own right (whether copied from single sheets, or from earlier registers), and those texts which appear again and again by virtue of their incorporation in Inspeximus charters. It was Cnut’s charter for Bury (S 980), and five of the privileges in the name of Edward the Confessor (S 1045, 1084, 1075, 1085 and 1069, said to have been written on one sheet under the seal of Richard I), which were incorporated in the Inspeximus charter of 8 Edward II (1314) (Cal. Ch. Rolls iii. 272-3), and which accordingly recur from that source in the Inspeximus charters of 4 Edward III (1330) (Cal. Ch. Rolls iv. 180) and 7-8 Richard II (1384) (Cal. Ch. Rolls v. 294-5). The ‘Pinchbeck Register’ (CUL, Ee. 3. 60 (Davis 119; Thomson, no. 1280); ptd Hervey, Pinchbeck Register), compiled towards the middle of the fourteenth century, contains the Inspeximus charter of 4 Edward III, as well as a separate text of S 1046. The ‘Werketone Register’ (BL Harley 638 (Davis 106; Thomson, no. 1281), also compiled in the fourteenth century, contains the Inspeximus charter of 8 Edward II, adding separate copies of S 507 and 995. The ‘Lakenheath Register’ (BL Harley 743 (Davis 97; Thomson, no. 1283)), compiled in the late fourteenth century, contains S 507, 980, 995, 1046, 1069, 1079 and 1045, on fols. 56v-59v. The ‘Cellarer’s Register’, Part I (CUL, Gg. 4. 4 (Davis 109; Thomson, no. 1299)), compiled in the fifteenth century, has texts of S 507, 980, 995, 1068, 1045, 1078 and 1046 copied in their own right on fols. 94r-97v, followed sooner or later by the Inspeximus charter of 4 Edward III, by that of 7-8 Richard II, and by a separate text of S 703. The ‘Cellarer’s Register’, Part II (CUL, Add. 4220 (Davis 110; Thomson, no. 1300)) has two writs of Edward the Confessor (S 1069 and 1068), copied in their own right; see Thomson, p. 36. The ‘Red Vestry Register’, Part I (CUL, Ff. 2. 29 (Davis 120; Thomson, no. 1284), compiled in the early fifteenth century, has a text of Harthacnut’s charter (S 995). The ‘Red Vestry Register’, Part II (CUL, Ff. 4. 35 (Davis 121; Thomson, no. 1285)) has two distinct groups of charters of Edward the Confessor (S 1068, 1045, 1078, 1072 and 1046; S 1078, 1084, 1083 and 1079), copied in their own right. And the ‘Register of Thomas of Ikworth’ (BL Lansdowne 416 (Davis 115; Thomson, no. 1306)) has a separate text of S 1045.

<Oxford, Bodleian Library, Gough Cambridge 22 (Thomson, no. 1317; see also p. 33) contains copies of S 779 and 1051 (both for Ely abbey), from an Inspeximus charter, as well as several Bury texts, also from Inspeximus charters.>

An important series of registers providing documentation for particular estates was produced at Bury towards the middle of the fifteenth century; see Thomson, pp. 38-9. They are uniform in design, each beginning with some account of the acquisition of the estate in question. BL Add. 42055 (Davis 100; Thomson, no. 1310), for Culford, begins with a reference to S 1225 (citing the ‘Pinchbeck Register’, fol. 322, the ‘Register of Abbot John Northwold’, fol. 69, and the charter itself ‘inter cartas abbatis K. 20’), but gives no more than its opening words. BL Add. 34689 (Davis 101; Thomson, no. 1311), for Fornham, begins with a reference to the original grant (S 1607), but the charter is said to have been lost ‘tempore combustionis’ (presumably in 1327); for a facsimile of fol. 1, see Thomson, Plate IV. CUL, Add. 6847 (Davis 102; Thomson, no. 1312), for Harlow, begins with a reference to S 1531 (citing the ‘testamentum … scriptum in antiquo anglico in archivis abbatis et in Registro Johannis Norwoldi, fol. 67’), but does not give any part of the text. BL Add. 45951 (Davis 103; Thomson, no. 1314), for Palgrave, begins with S 1527 (cited from the ‘testamentum … quod est inter carte abbatis E. 60 et in Registro Johannis Norwoldi, fol. 66’), given in full, apparently from the register); there follow two texts of S 1213, the first (on 1rv) copied from what would appear to have been the original single sheet (with vernacular endorsement), and the second (1v-2r) from a ‘scriptura moderna’. BL Add. 14850 (Davis 104; Thomson, no. 1315), covers Redgrave and Rickinghall: the section for Redgrave begins with a reference to Ulfketel’s grant (cited from the ‘Pinchbeck Register’, fol. 321 (cf. S 1219)), and the section for Rickinghall begins with S 1219 (cited from the ‘Register of Abbot John Northwold’, fol. 68), given in full. The texts of S 1527 and 1219 given in these registers are significantly ‘better’ than the texts of the same documents preserved in CUL, Ff. 2. 33 (and BL Add. 14847); it would seem to follow that the scribe of the lost ‘Register of Abbot John Northwold’ was quite faithful to his exemplars, and that it was the scribe of Ff. 2. 33 who introduced much of the orthographical and textual corruption of the texts.

The monks of Bury appear to have maintained informal records of the benefactions which accumulated in the tenth and eleventh centuries; for similar material from other East Anglian archives, see below, pp. 00 (Ely), 000 (Peterborough), 000 (Ramsey) and 000 (Thorney). Accounts of the abbey’s early benefactors are found in several of the cartularies: a list of donations said to be ‘without charter’ in CUL, Ff. 2. 33, fol. 50rv (s. xiii ex.); the more discursive lists in BL Harley 1005, fols. 81r-83r (s. xiii ex.), ptd Mon. Angl. i. 292-3, CUL, Mm. 4. 19, fols. 166v-167v (s. xiii ex.), and CUL, Add. 6006, fols. 73r-76v (s. xiv); and the extended tract in CUL, Ee. 3. 60, fols. 320-6 (s. xiv), ptd Hervey, Pinchbeck Register II, pp. 282-94. The relationship between these lists, and the nature of their sources, require detailed examination; some of the donations mentioned, and not covered by the extant charters, are calendared by Hart, ECEE, pp. 248-9.

Charters of Bury St Edmunds

Edition: Charters of Bury St Edmunds, ed. K. Lowe (in preparation).

Royal diplomas. 483; 507; 703; 980; 995; 1045; 1046.

Writs. 1068; 1069; 1070; 1071; 1072; 1073; 1074; 1075; 1076; 1077; 1078; 1079; 1080; 1081; 1082; 1083; 1084; 1085. See also 1875.

Miscellaneous. 1213; 1219; 1224; 1225; 1468; 1470. See also 1607; 1608.

Wills. 1483; 1486; 1489; 1490; 1494; 1499; 1501; 1516; 1519; 1521; 1525; 1526; 1527; 1528; 1529; 1531; 1537. (A copy of S 1501, in single-sheet form, was also preserved in the archives of Christ Church, Canterbury.)

Select bibliography

WM, GP, pp. 152-6; Mon. Angl. i. 284-302; Mon. Angl. (rev. ed.) iii. 98-176; VCH Suffolk ii. 56-72; MRH, p. 61; HRH, pp. 31-3.

T. Arnold, ed., Memorials of St Edmund’s Abbey, 3 vols., Rolls Series (London, 1890-6);
D. C. Douglas, ed., Feudal Documents from the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds (London, 1932);
Dumville, English Caroline Script, pp. 35-43;
R. S. Gottfried, Bury St Edmunds and the Urban Crisis: 1290-1539 (Princeton, 1982);
A. Gransden, ‘Baldwin, abbot of Bury St Edmunds, 1065-1097’, Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies IV, ed. R. A.Brown (Woodbridge, 1982), pp. 65-76 and 187-95;
A. Gransden, ‘Legends and Traditions Concerning the Origins of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds’, in her Legends, Traditions and History in Medieval England (London, 1992), pp. 81-104 (reptd from EHR 100 (1985), pp. 1-24);
Harmer, Writs, pp. 138-66;
Lord F. Hervey, ed., Corolla Sancti Eadmundi: the Garland of Saint Edmund King and Martyr (London, 1907);
Lord F. Hervey, ed., The Pinchbeck Register, 2 vols. (Brighton, 1925);
Lord F. Hervey, ed., The History of King Eadmund the Martyr and of the Early Years of his Abbey (Oxford, 1929), for material from Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS. 197 (also ptd by D. C. Douglas, in EHR 43 (1928), pp. 376-83);
M. D. Lobel, ‘A Detailed Account of the 1327 Rising at Bury St Edmunds and the Subsequent Trial’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology 21 (1933), pp. 215-31;
K. A. Lowe, ‘Two Thirteenth-century Cartularies from Bury St Edmunds: a Study in Textual Transmission’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 93 (1992), pp. 293-301;
A. McIntosh, ‘The Language of the Extant Versions of Havelock the Dane’, Medium Ævum 45 (1976), pp. 36-49;
Ridyard, Royal Saints, pp. 61-73 and 211-33, for the cult of St Edmund;
R. M. Thomson, The Archives of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Record Society 21 (Woodbridge, 1980).

<Graves, pp. 836-8; Medieval Libraries, ed. Ker, pp. 16-22; E. P. McLachlan, The Scriptorium of Bury St Edmunds in the Twelfth Century (New York, 1984). ? corrected ed. of Thomson, with addenda, c. 1982.>

Sir Ed. Coke, 9th Report: had Bury St Edmunds cartulary.

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