arose more beautiful from its ashes. King James, by whom it had previously been incorporated, and invested with many gifts and privileges, contributed large quantities of timber towards the rebuilding.

In the year 1636, the plague raged at Bury with great violence, and the town was so depopulated by desertion and disease, that the grass grew in the streets. Some hundreds of families, lying sick at one time, were maintained at the public charge of £200 a week; previously to which, the sum of £2,000 had been disbursed for the relief of the afflicted.*

Of the stupidly ignorant and persecuting spirit displayed in the seventh century, against unfortunate creatures who laboured under the imputation of witchcraft, Bury witnessed some deplorable instances. "In 1644, one Matthew Hopkins, of Manningtree, in Essex, who styled himself Witch-finder general, and had twenty shillings allowed him for every town he visited, was with some others commissioned by parliament in 1644, and the two following years, to perform a circuit for the discovery of witches. By virtue of this commission, they went from place to place, through many parts of Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Huntingdonshire, and caused sixteen persons to be hanged at Yarmouth, forty at Bury, and others in different parts of the country, to the amount of sixty persons." "Among the vic

* According to the statement of Mr. Nicholls, in his History of Leicestershire, 1,000 persons died of the plague, at Bury, in the year 1257.

tims, sacrificed by this wretch, and his associates, were Mr. Lawes, an innocent, aged clergyman, of Brandeston, a cooper and his wife, and fifteen other women, who were all condemned and executed at one time at Bury."*—On the 17th of March, 1664, two poor widows were tried before Sir Matthew Hale, convicted, and sentenced to death. Sir Matthew, not satisfied with the evidence, declined summing it up, and left it to the jury, with a prayer to God to direct their hearts in so important an affair. This extraordinary trial was published, as an appeal to the world, by Sir Matthew Hale; notwithstanding which, the lives of the women were sacrificed.†

* Hopkins, the wicked agent of a blind and fanatical government, employed many arts to extort confession from suspected persous, and when these failed, he had recourse to swimming them, which was done by tying their thumbs and toes together, and then throwing them into the water. If they floated, they were guilty of the crime of witchcraft, but their sinking was a proof of their innocence. This method he pursued, till some gentlemen, indignant at his barbarity, tied his own thumbs and toes, as he had been accustomed to tie those of other persons, and when put into the water, he himself swam, as many had done before him.

It is stated by Sir Matthew Hale, that, at one Suffolk Assizes, a few years before the Restoration, thirteen persons were executed under convictions upon the statutes relating to gypsies.

THE ABBEY, CHURCHES, &c.

HAVING succinctly sketched, in the preceding pages, the leading events in the history of Bury St. Edmund's, we now proceed to the detail of such particulars as more immediately relate to the Abbey, Churches, &c. in connection with the town.

"The monastery of St. Edmund's Bury," observes Mr. Yates, "has been generally supposed to have exceeded, in magnificent buildings, splendid decorations, important privileges, valuable immunities, and ample endowments, all other ecclesiastical and monastic establishments in England, Glastonbury alone excepted." By Leland, who lived when this abbey was in its full prosperity, and may be supposed to have seen it in its greatest splendour, it is thus described :-" The sun hath not shone on a town more delightfully situated on a gradual and easy descent, with a small river flowing on the eastern part, or a monastery more illustrious, whether we consider its wealth, its extent, or its incomparable magnificence: you might indeed say that the monastery itself is a town; so

many gates there are, some of them of brass; so many towers; and a church, than which none can be more magnificent, and subservient to which are three others also splendidly adorned with admirable workmanship, and standing in one and the same churchyard. The rivulet mentioned above, with an arched bridge thrown over it, glides through the bounds of the monastery."

It has been seen, that a church and monastery were founded by King Sigbercht, at least as early as the year 638. The buildings, as were probably all ecclesiastical structures at that period, were of wood. The church was rebuilt, upon a larger scale, in the year 903, when it became the receptacle of St. Edmund's body. The ecclesiastics, who devoted themselves to the monastic life, at that time, under the protection of the royal Saint and Martyr, increased in number, and were incorporated into a college of priests about the year 925. The celebrity of the shrine of St. Edmund, through whose agency many extraordinary miracles were declared to have been performed, procured numerous gifts and oblations to the establishment. King Athelstan appears to have been its first great royal benefactor. Edmund, the son of Edward the Elder, was, by his example, the means of eminently increasing its wealth and consideration. Amongst the numerous privileges, which he confirmed by a royal grant or charter, in the year 945, was that of a jurisdiction over the whole town, and one mile round it. Soon

afterwards appear to have commenced the disputes, to which we have alluded in a preceding page, between the seculars or established clergy of the country, and the monks or regulars. The monks, by an affectation of superior sanctity, achieved a triumph; and, in the year 990, they procured the appointment of Ailwin, one of their number, to be the guardian of the body of St. Edmund, with which the secular priests were declared to be unworthy of being intrusted, 66 on account of their insolence and irregularity."-Previously to the destruction of Bury, by Swein, in the early part of the eleventh century, Ailwin, apprehensive that his sacred charge might be subjected to injury and insult from the Danes, conveyed it to London, where it remained three years. The Bishop of London, we are told, observing the rich offerings which were made at the shrine of the Saint, conceived a strong desire to take it into his own custody. He accordingly went, with three assistants, to remove it privately from the little church of St. Gregory, in which it had been placed; but the shrine of the Saint remained as fast" as a great hill of stone," and his body as immoveable as a mountain," till Ailwin arrived, when the Martyr quietly suffered his remains to be conveyed back to Bury.

"

Ailwin, who in the year 1020 was consecrated Bishop of Hulm, under Canute, the son and successor of Swein, ejected the secular clergy from their establishment at Bury, and supplied their places