the country to build in, either for richness of soil, or for health
and pleasure in the situation of their religious houses.
For the like reason, I doubt not, they translated the bones of the
martyred king St. Edmund to this place; for it is a vulgar error to
say he was murdered here. His martyrdom, it is plain, was at Hoxon
or Henilsdon, near Harlston, on the Waveney, in the farthest
northern verge of the county; but Segebert, king of the East
Angles, had built a religions house in this pleasant rich part of
the county; and as the monks began to taste the pleasure of the
place, they procured the body of this saint to be removed hither,
which soon increased the wealth and revenues of their house, by the
zeal of that day, in going on pilgrimage to the shrine of the
blessed St. Edmund.
We read, however, that after this the Danes, under King Sweno,
over-running this part of the country, destroyed this monastery and
burnt it to the ground, with the church and town. But see the turn
religion gives to things in the world; his son, King Canutus, at
first a Pagan and a tyrant, and the most cruel ravager of all that
crew, coming to turn Christian, and being touched in conscience for
the soul of his father, in having robbed God and his holy martyr
St. Edmund, sacrilegiously destroying the church, and plundering
the monastery; I say, touched with remorse, and, as the monks
pretend, terrified with a vision of St. Edmund appearing to him, he
rebuilt the house, the church, and the town also, and very much
added to the wealth of the abbot and his fraternity, offering his
crown at the feet of St. Edmund, giving the house to the monks,
town and all; so that they were absolute lords of the town, and
governed it by their steward for many ages. He also gave them a
great many good lordships, which they enjoyed till the general
suppression of abbeys, in the time of Henry VIII.
But I am neither writing the history or searching the antiquity of
the abbey, or town; my business is the present state of the place.
The abbey is demolished; its ruins are all that is to be seen of
its glory: out of the old building, two very beautiful churches are
built, and serve the two parishes, into which the town is divided,
and they stand both in one churchyard. Here it was, in the path-
way between these two churches, that a tragical and almost unheard-
of act of barbarity was committed, which made the place less
pleasant for some time than it used to be, when Arundel Coke, Esq.,
a barrister-at-law, of a very ancient family, attempted, with the
assistance of a barbarous assassin, to murder in cold blood, and in
the arms of hospitality, Edward Crisp, Esq., his brother-in-law,
leading him out from his own house, where he had invited him, his
wife and children, to supper; I say, leading him out in the night,
on pretence of going to see some friend that was known to them
both; but in this churchyard, giving a signal to the assassin he
had hired, he attacked him with a hedge-bill, and cut him, as one
might say, almost in pieces; and when they did not doubt of his
being dead, they left him. His head and face was so mangled, that
it may be said to be next to a miracle that he was not quite
killed: yet so Providence directed for the exemplary punishment of
the assassins, that the gentleman recovered to detect them, who
(though he outlived the assault) were both executed as they
deserved, and Mr. Crisp is yet alive. They were condemned on the
statute for defacing and dismembering, called the Coventry Act.
But this accident does not at all lessen the pleasure and agreeable
delightful show of the town of Bury; it is crowded with nobility
and gentry, and all sorts of the most agreeable company; and as the
company invites, so there is the appearance of pleasure upon the
very situation; and they that live at Bury are supposed to live