20th November is the saint’s day of Edmund the Martyr, the only English monarch to be declared a Christian martyr until King Charles I in 1649.
According to the traditional account (which has been
disputed) Edmund was only 14 in 855 when he was declared king by the leading
men and clergy of Norfolk, who were soon joined by those of Suffolk, thus
making Edmund the undisputed king of East Anglia (the Angles had accompanied
the Saxons in their invasion of England after the withdrawal of the Romans).
Edmund proved to be devout as a Christian and a just ruler,
modelling himself on King David of the Old Testament.
However, after only ten years of peaceful rule, a major
threat arrived in the shape of the Danish “Great Heathen Army” that landed in
Suffolk in 865 and proceeded to sweep northwards, taking York in 866. They then
moved southwards again, arriving in East Anglia in 869.
Edmund was killed in the battle that ensued, after which the
Danes overran East Anglia, which would become part of the “Danelaw” that later kings
of England were forced to recognise as being beyond their power to control.
St Edmund came to be venerated after his death, including by
the Danes who overthrew him. Coins have been discovered that circulated in the
Danelaw and bear Edmund’s image.
Edmund’s remains were eventually buried in a shrine at what
was originally called St Edmundsbury but is now more usually known as Bury St
Edmunds. (The comic writer Clement Freud once named a racehorse “Dig Up St
Edmunds”, but that’s another story!)
The shrine of St Edmund came to be a place of pilgrimage
that was visited for several centuries, bringing considerable wealth to Bury St
Edmunds Abbey. However, the shrine was destroyed in 1539 as part of the
Dissolution of the Monasteries under King Henry VIII.
© John Welford
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