Benedictine, his emissary Augustine naturally brought the Rule to England; and though Suffolk can show but little of early Benedictine history, it is not quite destitute, even in the Saxon period, of traces of that great system which in its day so remarkably nursed literature as well as theology.

We can only note the early destruction of small Benedictine houses at Hadleigh, Hoxne and Stoke-by-Nayland, as recorded by Tanner, and turn to the establishment of that rule at Bury St. Edmund's.

The body of St. Edmund, which had remained there till A.D. 1010, when it was temporarily removed to London, had been guarded by a college of secular canons. These seculars did not renounce private property, though living according to rule in other respects. They were accused of negligence in keeping the records of miracles-an offence which will be variously estimated in later agesand of carelessness about the shrine itself.

In A.D. 990 Athelstan, Bishop of Elmham, transferred the guardianship to one who had left them for the Benedictine rule, Ailwin, from St. Bene't's-at-Hulme. Twenty years afterwards the later Danish troubles forced Ailwin to seek a more sure resting-place for the martyr's body than East Anglia could afford, and he carried it to London by Stratford, his difficulties at crossing the Lea being graphically told by Lydgate. But in the course of three years, in a brief political calm, he returned with it to Bury St. Edmund's, whither Canute brought, in A.D. 1020, Uvius, Prior of Hulm, who was consecrated the first Abbot of St. Edmundsbury. From him and his eleven companions grew that grand abbey, of which the remains are still one of the great sights of the county.

The sudden growth of St. Edmundsbury is marvellous, and testifies to the great popularity of the memory of the martyr-King, and to the profound regard for his uncorrupt body. This epithet of itself is not inconsistent with embalming, but the popular belief invested it with a miraculous character, which does not seem borne out by

the evidence adduced, as that of the woman Oswene, who used with holy temerity' on every Maundy Thursday to comb the saint's hair and to pare his nails, or of the youth Leofstan, who was struck with madness for his bold attempt to gaze on the remains of the saint, and appears to have seen nothing, and through his insanity to have been incapable of recording anything which was to be seen. It is to be noted that the incorruption of the body is not mentioned in the account of the town in Domesday Book.

Now, from the appointment of Abbot Uvius to the accession of Edward the Confessor the period is only twenty-one years. Put ten or twelve years to this, and we shall not be far out for that undefined 'time of King Edward' which all Domesday readers know by the letters T.R.E. (Tempore Regis Edwardi), and it is instructive to see the progress of the abbey up to that time. Two specimens shall be taken: the hundred of Risbridge in the Suffolk Woodlands for the south-west, and the hundred of Wangford for the north-east. In the former under St. Edmund there were 12 freemen in Poslingford, 7 in Stansfield, 9 in Thurlow, 18 in Bradley, 5 in Kedington, I in Wratting, and 2 in Haverhill. In the latter the abbey practically held the town of Beccles, save that the King had a fourth part of the market; also thirty acres of land, two of meadow and the fifth part of a mill in Linburne, which is now in Homersfield; and half a church, valued at 12d., in Worlingham. If we travel into other districts, the result is the same. Chepenhall, now a farm in the parish of Fressingfield, was given to St. Edmund by its Saxon owner Swartingstone, and formed a convenient halting-place for pilgrims on the 'broad road leading from Dunwich to Bury St. Edmund's."

For a long time we have a blank record in the chronicles. The turn of Ipswich to be plundered came in the year 991, when Brihtnoth, the Ealdorman, probably 1 So frequently termed in deeds.

of East Anglia, was slain at Maldon. Tribute was recommended by Archbishop Siric of Canterbury, and yielded with the usual result.

Ethelred 'the Unready,' 'unstable in all his ways,' in the same year (1002) paid £24,000 to the fleet, and treacherously massacred the Danes in England on St. Britius's Day, November 13. For this Sweyn took an ample revenge, burning Norwich within two years, and striking such terror into the country that Ulfketyl the Ealdorman counselled another purchase of peace.

During the truce the army stole up from their ships and marched on Thetford. The Ealdorman, who by this time appears to have recovered some courage, attempted to cut off their retreat by breaking up their ships, but those to whom he trusted this work failed in it. However, the Norfolk and Suffolk men came round him and gave a good account of themselves when Sweyn's men were falling back, after having burnt Thetford. Many chiefs fell in the fray, in which their foes said that 'they had never met a worse hand-play.' The cycle of ravage had returned. Ipswich saw further trouble in A.D. IOIO, preliminary to a general harrying of East Anglia, which was repeated three years afterwards. Next year Sweyn died; but the struggles with Canute swept off many of the Angle nobility, especially at Assandun (Ashdon in Essex), where he built a minster of stone and lime, appointing to it Stigand, one of his priests, who became Bishop of Elmham in A.D. 1038, and in A.D. 1052 was promoted to Canterbury. Our divisions into hundreds are said to date from Alfred the Great, but perhaps some more settled districts got into shape earlier than others less favoured. Including the liberty of Ipswich, there are twenty-three hundreds. Seven of them are named from fords, Carlford, Cosford, Sampford, and Wilford in the south; Mutford and Wangford in the north-east; Lackford in the north-west. These fords, no doubt, were convenient for a hundred-mote hard by, but we can assign localities only to the last two: Wangford, the ford over

the Waveney, already treated of in Chapter III.; and Lackford, the ford over the Lark, just where that parish now joins Icklingham All Saints. Two are meres, Bosmere and Hartismere, the latter perhaps the small lake from which Redgrave Water was developed. Blything takes its name from the river which flows through it. The origin of the rest I leave to conjecture.

The county is not rich in discovered interments of the Anglo-Saxon time. The sexton of Hundon some years ago is recorded to have come upon a hoard of Saxon coins in that churchyard,' which looks like an instance of grave goods,' and some of the stone coffins found at Icklingham and elsewhere may be those of ante-conquestal ecclesiastics.

Clarke of Easton, in his uncouth doggerel, often gives valuable information, in spite of his mixing up all periods in a fashion peculiar to himself:

'Ipswich, an ancient borough town;

Here Woolsey's college was pulled down:
Nothing remains but entrance gate
And royal arms in mouldering state.

This town once had a royal mint,

Sipold on Gipespic coin'd in't

For King Etheldred the Second:

Sparrowe's house quite antique reckon'd."

He is sceptical about a mint at Dunwich, but the same rhyme comes in conveniently:

"Tis said that Dunwich had a mint,

But not much faith is placed in't ;

The coin that has made so much talk,
There's little doubt was struck at York.'3

Among the larger possessions of Saxon thanes may be mentioned those of Edric of Laxfield, about the time of Edward the Confessor, an example of that tendency of

1 J. Clarke of Easton, Suffolk Antiquary, p. 22. 2 Suffolk Antiquary, p. 1.

3 lbid., p. 13.

property of which Tennyson's Northern Farmer speaks with such intense feeling:

'But proputty, proputty sticks; and proputty, proputty graws.' Reckoning the carucate at 120 acres, this man owned some 6,000 acres, chiefly in the hundreds of Hartismere and Hoxne; besides possessions of great value across the Norfolk border, dotted about from Kilverstone to Dilham, freemen and freewomen 'commended' to him all over the two aforesaid hundreds, and 'soc and sac ' in Badingham, Stradbroke, and Chepenhall. These 'commended' persons were such as lived under a great man's protection. and owed him service, as it were deposited with him for his keeping, as the great Roman lawyer Ulpian explains the word. Sac,' which exists in our 'sake,' equivalent to cause, and 'soc,' from soca, a plough, are terms belonging to the patriarchal justice then administered by the lords of the soil, the value of which consisted in 'forfeits, fines and fees.'

Stigand, Bishop of Elmham, when he was translated to Winchester, was succeeded by Grinketyl, who held the see for four years, giving place to Bishop Ailmar, whose name so often occurs in Domesday Book. He was too much of a Saxon for William the Conqueror, who took an early opportunity of getting rid of him.

With regard to the earldom, the old Saxon family disappears from the scene. Perhaps all perished at Assandune, or in subsequent troubles, or a remnant may have preferred a safe skulking to a hazardous eminence. Canute, in 1017, divided the realm into four parts, appointing Thurkill to East Anglia. His short rule of four years is followed by a period of more than twenty years of which we have no account. In 1045 Harold, the son of Godwin, seems to become Earl, but only an occasional flicker of his earldom shows itself. We catch a

1 Now in Fressingfield.

2 Commendare nihil aliud est quam deponere.'
3 Freeman's 'Norman Conquest,' ii. 572.