His
Family Now Rises By The Good Fortune Of His Son, Who Proves To Be A
Gentleman Of Very Agreeable Parts, And Well Esteemed In The
Country.
From this part of the country, I returned north-west by Lenham, to
visit St. Edmund's Bury, a town of which other writers have talked
very largely, and perhaps a little too much.
It is a town famed
for its pleasant situation and wholesome air, the Montpelier of
Suffolk, and perhaps of England. This must be attributed to the
skill of the monks of those times, who chose so beautiful a
situation for the seat of their retirement; and who built here the
greatest and, in its time, the most flourishing monastery in all
these parts of England, I mean the monastery of St. Edmund the
Martyr. It was, if we believe antiquity, a house of pleasure in
more ancient times, or to speak more properly, a court of some of
the Saxon or East Angle kings; and, as Mr. Camden says, was even
then called a royal village, though it much better merits that name
now; it being the town of all this part of England, in proportion
to its bigness, most thronged with gentry, people of the best
fashion, and the most polite conversation. This beauty and
healthiness of its situation was no doubt the occasion which drew
the clergy to settle here, for they always chose the best places in
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
there for the sake of it.
The Lord Jermin, afterwards Lord Dover, and, since his lordship's
decease, Sir Robert Davers, enjoyed the most delicious seat of
Rushbrook, near this town.
The present members of Parliament for this place are Jermyn Davers
and James Reynolds, Esquires.
Mr. Harvey, afterwards created Lord Harvey, by King William, and
since that made Earl of Bristol by King George, lived many years in
this town, leaving a noble and pleasantly situated house in
Lincolnshire, for the more agreeable living on a spot so completely
qualified for a life of delight as this of Bury.
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