II - The story of Edward the Confessor's gift of Mildenhall

Summary

Possibly the story purporting to explain what prompted Edward the Confessor to give Mildenhall and the eight and a half hundreds to St Edmunds was a fiction composed to strengthen its claim to Mildenhall in its dispute with Richard de Clare in 1253. It relates that Edward came to St Edmunds, walking the last mile, out of veneration for the king and martyr. He was taken on a tour of the domestic buildings and on visiting the refectory, saw the young monks refreshing themselves on barley bread before their meal (prandium). Edward asked why this was and the monks told him that the church's possessions were not sufficient to allow them to have wheaten bread two or three times a day. ‘The saintly king then said that, therefore, he gives the blessed Edmund the manor of Mildenhall lest the boys of his relative St Edmund (for thus he calls St Edmund), should in future eat barley-bread’. The story occurs in not quite identical versions in three of the abbey's registers: BL MSS Additional 14847, ff. 65–65v (Thomson, Archives, pp. 121–3 no. 1278 item 19) and Harley 1005, f. 126v (ibid., pp. 142– 5 no. 1293 cf. item 33); CUL MS Ff. ii. 29, f. 65 (ibid., pp. 130–1 no. 1284). The first two texts are in fourteenth-century hands – the Harley copy is in the hand of Henry of Kirkstead. The text in Ff. ii. 29 was probably written in the early fifteenth century. The story is not in the mid-twelfth century Bury version of the Worcester chronicle, now Bodl. Lib. MS Bodley 297, nor in the mainly hagiographic and historical compilation now Bodley 240 (cf. Memorials, i. 363– 4, and Horstman, Nova Legenda, ii. 607–8). Moreover, the original writ itself granting the land at Mildenhall and the sokes of the eight and a half hundreds survives (Harmer, Writs, pp. 145–6, 154–5 no. 9), and contains no clause indicating that the grant was to help victual the monks. However, the De Miraculis (p. 48) composed c. 1100, contains what was perhaps the seed of the story. It can be paraphrased as follows. Edward came to St Edmunds, walking the last mile on foot, to venerate the martyred saint, and prayed for the good governance of the realm.