es, broken by a stately
synagogue, and traversed from time to time by the yellow gaberdine of the
Jew. Soldiers from the castle rode clashing through the narrow streets;
the bells of Osney clanged from the swampy meadows; processions of
pilgrims wound through gates and lane to the shrine of St. Frideswide.
Frays were common enough; now the sack of a Jew's house; now burgher
drawing knife on burgher; now an outbreak of the young student lads who
were growing every day in numbers and audacity. But as yet the town was
well in hand. The clang of the city bell called every citizen to his
door; the call of the mayor brought trade after trade with bow in hand
and banners flying to enforce the king's peace.

[Sidenote: St. Edmundsbury]

The advance of towns which had grown up not on the royal domain but
around abbey or castle was slower and more difficult. The story of St.
Edmundsbury shows how gradual was the transition from pure serfage to an
imperfect freedom. Much that had been plough-land here in the Confessor's
time was covered with houses by the time of Henry the Second. The
building of the great abbey-church drew its craftsmen and masons to
mingle with the ploughmen and reapers of the Abbot's domain. The troubles
of the time helped here as elsewhere the progress of the town; serfs,
fugitives from justice or their lord, the trader, the Jew, naturally
sought shelter under the strong hand of St. Edmund. But the settlers were
wholly at the Abbot's mercy. Not a settler but was bound to pay his pence
to the Abbot's treasury, to plough a rood of his land, to reap in his
harvest-field, to fold his sheep in the Abbey folds, to help bring the
annual catch of eels from the Abbey waters. Within the four crosses that
bounded the Abbot's domain land and water were his; the cattle of the
townsmen paid for their pasture on the common; if the fullers refused the
loan of their cloth the cellarer would refuse the use of the stream and
seize their cloths wherever he found them. No toll might be levied from
tenants of the Abbey farms, and customers had to wait before shop and
stall till the buyers of the Abbot had had the pick of the market. There
was little chance of redress, for if burghers complained in folk-mote it
was before the Abbot's officers that its meeting was held; if they
appealed to the alderman he was the Abbot's nominee and received the
horn, the symbol of his office, at the Abbot's hands. Like all the
greater revolutions o