nd Lancashire made ready to rise. The eastern counties were in
one wild turmoil of revolt. At Cambridge the townsmen burned the charters
of the University and attacked the colleges. A body of peasants occupied
St. Albans. In Norfolk a Norwich artizan, called John the Litster or Dyer,
took the title of King of the Commons, and marching through the country at
the head of a mass of peasants compelled the nobles whom he captured to act
as his meat-tasters and to serve him on their knees during his repast. The
story of St. Edmundsbury shows us what was going on in Suffolk. Ever since
the accession of Edward the Third the townsmen and the villeins of their
lands around had been at war with the abbot and his monks. The old and more
oppressive servitude had long passed away, but the later abbots had set
themselves against the policy of concession and conciliation which had
brought about this advance towards freedom. The gates of the town were
still in the abbot's hands. He had succeeded in enforcing his claim to the
wardship of all orphans born within his domain. From claims such as these
the town could never feel itself safe so long as mysterious charters from
Pope or King, interpreted cunningly by the wit of the new lawyer class, lay
stored in the abbey archives. But the archives contained other and hardly
less formidable documents than these. Untroubled by the waste of war, the
religious houses profited more than any other landowners by the general
growth of wealth. They had become great proprietors, money-lenders to their
tenants, extortionate as the Jew whom they had banished from their land.
There were few townsmen of St. Edmund's who had not some bonds laid up in
the abbey registry. In 1327 one band of debtors had a covenant lying there
for the payment of five hundred marks and fifty casks of wine. Another
company of the wealthier burgesses were joint debtors on a bond for ten
thousand pounds. The new spirit of commercial activity joined with the
troubles of the time to throw the whole community into the abbot's hands.

[Sidenote: Saint Edmundsbury]

We can hardly wonder that riots, lawsuits, and royal commissions marked the
relation of the town and abbey under the first two Edwards. Under the third
came an open conflict. In 1327 the townsmen burst into the great house,
drove the monks into the choir, and dragged them thence to the town prison.
The abbey itself was sacked; chalices, missals, chasubles, tunicles, altar
f