Cnut, the first Viking chieftain welcomed by the church as an equal to Christian kings, establishes close ties with his fellow Vikings, the Normans.

Eventually embracing Christianity, he becomes a founder and patron of monasteries.

When, in the early tenth century, the relics of the martyred king, St Edmund, were translated from Hoxne to Beodricsworth, afterwards known as St. Edmundsbury, the site had already been in religious use for nearly three centuries.

To the small household of Benedictine monks who guard the shrine the surrounding lands are granted in 1020, during the reign of Cnut.

Monks are introduced from St Benet's Abbey under the auspices of the Bishop of Elmham and Dunwich.

Robert de Beaumont, the Earl of Leicester, a supporter of young Henry who had been in Normandy and chief of the aristocratic rebels, takes up the charge next.

He raises an army of Flemish mercenaries and crosses from Normandy back to England to join the other rebel barons there, principally Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, who is based at the castle of Framlingham.

He lands at Walton in Suffolk in late September or early October.

After some inconclusive fighting, Leicester decides to lead his men to his own base of Leicester, but royalist forces prevent this.

The earl's base there had recently come under attack by royal forces and thus needs reinforcement, but another reason for the movement may have been friction between de Beaumont and Bigod and Bigod's wife, Gundreda.

The Battle of Fornham is fought on October 17, 1173 between rebel forces under the command of Leicester and royal forces under the command of Richard de Lucy, the Chief Justiciar as well as Humphrey de Bohun Lord High Constable, Reginald de Dunstanville, the Earl of Cornwall, William of Gloucester, the Earl of Gloucester, and William d'Aubigny, the Earl of Arundel.

The rebel forces are numbered at three thousand mercenaries, and the royal forces include at least three hundred knights as well as the Earl of Norfolk's son, Roger Bigod, who has remained loyal to the king.

Along with these knights, the royal forces also have the local levies and the military followings of three earls of Gloucester, Arundel, and Cornwall.

The rebels are caught fording the River Lark near the present towns of Fornham St Genevieve, Fornham All Saints, and Fornham St Martin in Suffolk at a location about four miles (6.4 kilometers) north of Bury St Edmunds.

With his forces split, Leicester's cavalry is captured and his mercenaries are driven into nearby swamps where the local peasants kill most of them.

Leicester is captured, as is his wife, Petronilla de Grandmesnil, who had put on armor herself.

Leicester will remain in captivity until January 1177 when some of his lands will be returned to him.

…Bury St Edmunds, as well as to smaller communities throughout the land.

At the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, a dispute had broken out in 1181 between William the Sacrista of the Abbey and his associate Samson.

The Jews and the local townspeople had sided with William, but it had been Samson who gained power as Abbot the next year.

Abbot Samson had demanded in the aftermath of the Coronation riots that the Jews should be placed under his authority rather than the Kings.

Fifty-seven Jews are massacred on Palm Sunday, 1190.

Shortly after this event, Samson, whose Abbey is coincidentally in debt to Jewish moneylenders, obtains permission to expel all the Jews, who depart Bury St. Edmunds under guard.

The first reference to the windmill in Europe is made by a Dean Herbert of East Anglia, whose mills are supposedly in competition with the abbey of Bury St Edmunds.

This is probably an invention imported from interaction with the Muslim world, since the first windmills were most likely innovated from the Bana Musa brothers in the Islamic Middle East during the middle ninth century.

The windmill will spread in the other direction, to be introduced by as early as 1219 to China.

John needs money for armies, but the loss of the French territories, especially Normandy, has greatly reduced the state income, and a huge tax would need to be raised to reclaim these territories.

Yet, it is difficult to raise taxes because of the tradition of keeping them unchanged.

John relies on clever manipulation of preexisting rights, including those of forest law, which regulate the king's hunting preserves, which are easily violated and severely punished.

John has also increased the preexisting scutage (feudal payment to an overlord replacing direct military service) eleven times in his seventeen years as king, as compared to eleven times during the reign of the preceding three monarchs.

The last two of these increases have been double the increase of their predecessors.

He has also imposed the first income tax, raising the (then) extortionate sum of seveny thousand pounds.

John’s failed expedition to Poitou in 1214, coupled with the defeat of his ally, Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV, in the Battle of Bouvines, provides the restive English barons with their excuse for rebellion.

Their act stems from a royal demand for overseas service that they feel is not owed, from the king’s policies of ensuring their personal loyalties by intimidation, and from the domestic policies—especially increased financial exactions—not only of the king himself but also of his immediate Angevin predecessors.

The baronial opposition initially swears, in the church of Bury St. Edmunds, to force the king to restore its powers under the Norman kings.

Realistic considerations lead, however, to an insistence on pragmatic reforms aimed at controlling, rather than nullifying, the innovations introduced by Henry II, Richard, and John.

The barons request of Scotland’s new monarch, Alexander II, that he invade England against their king, pledging their support, but Alexander demurs.

The barons draw up a document later called Magna Carta (“Great Charter” of King John)—some of it framed by Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury—setting forth the law on several points and targeted at the reform of specified abuses.

Many of the charter’s sixty-three clauses deal with feudal privileges of benefit only to the barons, who acquiesce in the growth of royal jurisdiction since 1154, but seek, under certain clauses, to control the direction of legal reforms.

The Magna Carta, in specifying ecclesiastical concessions, states that the church is to be free.

Following these concessions, Magna Carta specifies liberties for all free men so that all might be defended from royal whim, and stipulates that certain taxes may not to be levied without the common consent of the kingdom, whose representatives' decisions are binding on all.

The Magna Carta, which places the king under the rule of law, is the first legal document to enunciate, if vaguely, due process of law: "No free man shall be arrested or imprisoned...except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land."

English poet John Lydgate, a monk of Bury Saint Edmunds, closely imitates Chaucer in two fine works, written while he is around thirty: his A Complaint of a Lover’s Life, written about 1400, and The Temple of Glass, written around 1403.

The Oxford English Dictionary cites Lydgate with the earliest record of using the word "talent" in reference to a gifted state of natural ability.

Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, uncle and former regent of Henry VI, is consistently popular with the citizens of London and the Commons.

He also has a widespread reputation as a patron of learning and the arts.

His popularity with the people and his ability to keep the peace had earned him the appointment of Chief Justice of South Wales.

However, his unpopular marriage to Eleanor Cobham has become ammunition for his enemies.

Eleanor had been arrested and tried for sorcery and heresy in 1441, and Humphrey had retired from public life.

He himself is arrested on February 20, 1447, on a charge of treason.

He dies at Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk three days later and is buried at St Albans Abbey, adjacent to St Alban's shrine.

At the time, some suspect that he has been poisoned, though it is more probable that he has died of a stroke.

The Red Barn Murder is a notorious murder committed in Polstead, Suffolk, England in 1827.

A young woman, Maria Marten, was shot dead by her lover William Corder.

The two had arranged to meet at the Red Barn, a local landmark, before eloping to Ipswich.

Maria was never seen alive again and Corder fled the scene.

He sent letters to Marten's family claiming that she was in good health, but her body was later discovered buried in the barn after her stepmother spoke of having dreamed about the murder.

Corder was tracked down in London, where he had married and started a new life.

He was brought back to Suffolk and found guilty of murder in a well-publicized trial.

He is hanged at Bury St Edmunds on August 1, 1828 and a huge crowd witnesses the execution.

The story provokes numerous newspaper articles, songs and plays.

The village where the crime had taken place will become a tourist attraction and the barn will be stripped by souvenir hunters.

The plays and ballads will remain popular throughout the next century and continue to be performed today.