ithin his domain. From claims such as these the town could
never feel itself safe so long as mysterious charters from Pope and
King, interpreted yet more mysteriously by the wit of the new lawyer
class, were stored in the abbey archives. But the archives contained
other and yet more formidable documents. The religious houses,
untroubled by the waste of war, had profited more than any landowners by
the general increase of wealth. They had become great proprietors,
money-lenders to their tenants, extortionate as the Jew whom they had
banished from the land. There were few townsmen of St. Edmund who had
not some bond laid up in the abbey registry. Nicholas Fowke and a band
of debtors had a covenant lying there for the payment of 500 marks and
fifty casks of wine. Philip Clopton's mark bound him to discharge a debt
of L22; a whole company of the wealthier burgesses were joint debtors in
a bond for no less a sum than L10,000. The new spirit of commercial
enterprise, joined with the troubles of the time, seems to have thrown
the whole community into the abbot's hands.

It was from the troubles of the time that the burghers looked for
escape; and the general disturbance which accompanied the deposition of
Edward II. seems to have quickened their longing into action. Their
revolt soon disclosed its practical aims. From their prison in the town
the trembling prior and his monks were brought back to their own
chapter-house. The spoil of their registry--the papal bulls and the
royal charters, the deeds and bonds and mortgages of the townsmen--were
laid before them. Amidst the wild threats of the mob, they were forced
to execute a grant of perfect freedom and of a guild to the town, and a
full release to their debtors. Then they were left masters of the ruined
house. But all control over the town was gone. Through spring and summer
no rent or fine was paid. The bailiffs and other officers of the abbey
did not dare to show their faces in the streets. Then news came that the
abbot was in London, appealing for aid to King and Court, and the whole
county was at once on fire. A crowd of rustics, maddened at the thought
of revived claims of serfage, of interminable suits of law which had
become a tyranny, poured into the streets of the town. From thirty-two
of the neighbouring villages the priests marched at the head of their
flocks to this new crusade. Twenty thousand in number, so men guessed,
the wild mass of men, women, and children r