ABSTRACT
The fame of the martyred Anglo-Saxon king, St Edmund, brought pilgrims, kings, and prosperity to the cathedral which contained his shrine and the abbey which looked after it. King Canute, who founded the Benedictine abbey at Bury St Edmunds in 1020, endowed it with extensive gifts and privileges, and later kings, in general, confirmed and increased them. Canute, for example, þeed the abbey þom episcopal jurisdiction and decreed that the monastery, town, and the area immediately around the town were subject to the abbot alone. 1 Edward the Confessor exempted the abbey þom payment of the Danegeld and gave the abbot the right to collect and keep the tax within his domain. 2 He also granted the abbot jurisdiction over the eight and a half hundreds, which amounted to approximately a third of Suffolk, and the right to the royal revenues which derived þom that jurisdiction. 3
