SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY thousand townsmen and their sympathizers gathered at the sound of the toll- house bell, attacked and plundered the abbey, imprisoned the prior, elected an alderman and assumed full authority over the town and neighbourhood, even setting up, it was said, a block and axe in the market-place. A fortnight later, the abbot hurrying down from London, where he had been sitting in Parliament, was compelled to sign a charter which conferred on Bury all the rights for which the burgesses were contending. Soon afterwards he escaped again to London and tried to get his grant annulled. This led to a further outbreak of violence in May, and another in October, during which many of the abbey buildings were destroyed and a score of its manor-houses burnt and plundered. It was not till December that the sheriff, backed by the military forces of the Crown, contrived to overpower the townsmen and their allies, three cart-loads of whom were sent to Norwich for trial. A number were hanged, others were imprisoned, and over 200 were outlawed. But these proceedings were far from making an end of the matter. Many of the outlaws were still at large, and a body of them entered the town at midnight on 28 August 1328, were feasted in Moyses Hall, and did not depart till they had routed with slaughter some of the abbot's servants who were sent to capture them. Another body, headed by the two leaders of the revolt, who had contrived to escape from prison, actually succeeded in kidnapping the abbot at Chevington, and after keeping him several days in London by the connivance of the Lord Mayor carried him over to Brabant, whence he did not escape till the following April. ^' The demands of the townsmen as embodied in the extorted charter had nothing very extravagant about them. The grant of a perpetual commune and a common seal, the free election of their alderman, the full exercise of the powers of a gild merchant, the exemption from tolls, the farm of tallage, the removal of the taint of villeinage from the holdings, the power of admitting new burgesses, the control of the town courts," — these rights and privileges if permanently secured would certainly have almost entirely emancipated the town from the abbot's authority, but they would not have conferred more freedom upon Bury than royal charters had long ago bestowed on Ipswich and Dunwich. What is worthy of special note, how- ever, is the large measure of support which the burgesses received from other classes : from the clergy, the local gentry, and the peasantry on the abbey's estates. It is this which accounts for the determined character of the struggle, and which lends it its real social significance. No less than thirty-two of the clergy were convicted of taking part in the revolution. These were drawn not only from the secular priests of the parish churches, but also from the friars of Babwell, who had an old grudge against the abbey. The two sections were not free from jealousy of each other. The friars would gladly have secured a foothold in the town, while the secular clergy were anxious to keep it as much as possible to themselves. But they joined in giving the sanction of the Church to the claims of the burgesses and in saving them from the consequences of excommunication. In full array of vestments and banners they took the place of the monks in the processions of Rogation Day. They even seem to have conferred on the movement the " Mem. of St. Edmunds (Rolls Sen), ii, 327 et seq. ; see also V.C.H. Suff. ii, 62-3. " Mem. of St. Edmunds (Rolls Scr.), iii, App. A. 651
