Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/671

 The Risings in the English Monastic Tozvns 66 1 agreement there, but learning of his resolve to stand by his rights as lord of the town, they returned in all haste to Bury enraged at what they considered his treachery. Fresh scenes of violence were enacted in the town, and allured by promises of freedom and plunder the whole countryside joined the rioters, so that a multitude of twenty thousand were assembled in and around the town. They pillaged the abbey's stores and made free with the carts, provisions and everything else belonging to the monks. All the lower elements of the population, men ever hostile to the great ecclesiastical cor- poration, were aroused. Parish priests and friars, hating the regu- lar clergy, joined and headed processions of rioters, and when the abbot sent an envoy to Rome, for protection against such attacks, they, also, sent two of their number. The abbot's messenger died on the way ; those sent by the other party probably never visited Rome, but returned with clumsily forged bulls, purporting to be from the Pope, favoring the claims of the townspeople. So palpable, however, were these forgeries that the two clerks who bore them were held up to scorn and derision by their comrades.* In the midst of these tumults a special mandate from the King bade both parties, under penalty of forfeiture of all they could for- feit, not to assemble armed men and to cease from attacking each other. Instead each side was to send two deputies to the King at York, to treat of a settlement of the disputes betwixt the abbey and the town." This mandate was issued May 14, 1327, and the day fixed for the meeting was the second week in June. To the royal commands no attention was paid, it seems, by the townsmen, for ten days later the King took the abbey into his protection, and appointed two custodians, with power to arrest and imprison all offenders. No officers of the abbey were, however, to be removed so long as they were obedient and submissive.^ Two additional custodians were appointed two months later, in July, and during the summer at- tempts at reconciliation and mediation were made.^ Proctors sent by the monks and by the townsmen appeared before the king and through them any further breach of the peace was prohibited. When, however, the King was called to the Scottish border with his army, in the autumn of 1327, the townsmen of Bury St. Edmunds, in spite of the royal commands and protection granted to the abbot, broke out in fresh revolt.^ They were summoned together by the "^ Memorials, II. 333-340; Cal. Pat. Molls, 1327-1330, 213-214. 2 Cal. Pat. Polls, 1327-1330, 151. '^ Ibid., 106, 156. ^Memorials, II. 337-338; Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1327-1330, 214.
 * Ibid., 213-2:4.