On the 25th of January in that year the townsmen of Bury St. Edmunds, headed by Richard Drayton, burst into the Abbey. Its servants were beaten off, the monks driven into choir, and dragged thence with their prior (for the abbot was away in London) to the town prison. The abbey itself was sacked; chalices, missals, chasubles, tunicles, altar frontals, the books of the library, the very vats and dishes of the kitchen, all disappeared. Chattels valued at £10,000, £500 worth of coin, 3000 "florins,"--this was the abbey's estimate of its loss. But neither florins nor chasubles were what their assailants really aimed at. Their next step shows what were the grievances which had driven the burgesses to this fierce outbreak of revolt. They were as much personal as municipal. The gates of the town indeed were still in the abbot's hands. He had succeeded in enforcing his claim to the wardship of orphans born within his domain. From claims such as these the town could never feel itself safe so long as mysterious charters from Pope and King, interpreted yet more mysteriously by the wit of the new lawyer class, were stored in the abbey archives. But the archives contained other and yet more formidable documents. The religious houses, untroubled by the waste of war, had profited more than any landowners by the general increase of wealth. They had become great proprietors, money-lenders to their tenants, extortionate as the Jew whom they had banished from the land. There were few townsmen of St. Edmund who had not some bond laid up in the abbey registry. Nicholas Fowke and a band of debtors had a covenant lying there for the payment of 500 marks and fifty casks of wine. Philip Clopton's mark bound him to discharge a debt of £22; a whole company of the wealthier burgesses were joint debtors in a bond for no less a sum than £10,000. The new spirit of commercial enterprise, joined with the troubles of the time, seems to have thrown the whole community into the abbot's hands.
It was from the troubles of the time that the burghers looked for escape; and the general disturbance which accompanied the deposition of Edward II. seems to have quickened their longing into action. Their revolt soon disclosed its practical aims. From their prison in the town the trembling prior and his monks were brought back to their own chapter-house. The spoil of their registry--the papal bulls and the royal charters, the deeds and bonds and mortgages of the townsmen--were laid before them. Amidst the wild threats of the mob, they were forced to execute a grant of perfect freedom and of a guild to the town, and a full release to their debtors. Then they were left masters of the ruined house. But all control over the town was gone. Through spring and summer no rent or fine was paid. The bailiffs and other officers of the abbey did not dare to show their faces in the streets. Then news came that the abbot was in London, appealing for aid to King and Court, and the whole county was at once on fire. A crowd of rustics, maddened at the thought of revived claims of serfage, of interminable suits of law which had become a tyranny, poured into the streets of the town. From thirty-two of the neighbouring villages the priests marched at the head of their flocks to this new crusade. Twenty thousand in number, so men guessed, the wild mass of men, women, and children rushed again on the abbey. For four November days the work of destruction went on unhindered, whilst gate, stables, granaries, kitchen, infirmary, hostelry, went up in flames. From the wreck of the abbey itself the great multitude swept away too the granges and barns of the abbey farms. The monks had become vast agricultural proprietors: 1,000 horses, 120 oxen, 200 cows, 300 bullocks, 300 hogs, 10,000 sheep were driven off for spoil, and as a last outrage, the granges and barns were burnt to the ground. £60,000, the justiciaries afterwards decided, would hardly cover the loss.