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.
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