Memorials of St Edmund's Abbey

Bury St Edmunds possessed one of the wealthiest abbeys in England. This three-volume collection of Latin documents relating to the abbey was edited by Thomas Arnold (1823-1900) and published between 1890 and 1896. Volume 2 contains a chronicle terminating in 1212, accounts of building works, narratives of abbatial elections in 1215, 1257 and 1302, and an early thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman metrical biography of St Edmund by Denis Pyramus, a monk of the abbey. There is also an account of the expulsion of the Franciscans from Bury by the Benedictines in 1257 and 1263. More serious were the ongoing disputes between the abbey and town that led to the Great Riot of 1327, in which the abbey was sacked, the abbot deported, and monks and civilians killed in a succession of attacks throughout the year. The settlement of 1331 is included in the appendix, and English side-notes are provided throughout.