A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK In the same way the service of reaping was commuted for an annual penny called rep-silver, the carrying service for a tax of zd. on each 30 acres called ' aver-peni,' whilst the obligation for bringing cattle to the lord's fold was met by a payment of a penny for every cow per year called ' sor-peni.' But as Bury became a busy and populous town and the holdings changed hands, were divided, or sublet, the assignment and collection of these dues became increasingly difficult. In the uncertainty as to who was liable, it was easy for the richer burgesses to evade payment, and the abbey official found himself reduced to levying the tax on the poorer householders by dis- training such of their movables as lay to his hand. This method of collection led to disturbances and bad feeling in the town, and cannot have yielded much profit to the abbey. When therefore the townspeople offered to compound for rep-silver by the payment of a fixed sum every year, the abbot, ' considering the undignified way in which the cellarer used to take distresses in the houses of the poor, and how the old women came out with their distaffs threatening and abusing the cellarer and his men, ordered that 20J-. should be given every year to the cellarer at the next portmanmoot before August ' by the burgesses through the hands of the bailiff in discharge of rep-silver. A quittance was also given for the payment of sor-peni in consideration of 4/. payable at the same term, which was a pure gain to the abbey as the burgesses had for some time successfully repelled the attempts of the cellarer to seize the dunghills before their doors, and each householder had acquired a prescriptive right to use or sell his own. There was indeed no practical object to be gained by enforcing agricul- tural service on a body of townsmen, but the comparative ease with which the men of Bury got rid of this element of villeinage was due to their possessing an organization capable of bargaining with the abbot and of standing to the bargain when made. The question was how far should this new organization be allowed to carry its claims to an independent existence. The rights of the town as a borough had been in some sort recognized by previous abbots since the beginning of the 1 2th century, and more explicitly by the charter of Abbot Anselm," but for the most part they were being acquired by the steady encroachments of custom. From the monks' point of view the burgess tenants in Bury were still to be distinguished from the villeins of the abbey only by the few privileges mentioned in the charter, and the new sources of revenue opened up by the growth of the town were entirely at the disposal of their lord. They might be tallaged or their merchandise taxed at his pleasure. The rents of their stalls and shops might be made a rack-rent. Their numbers might be increased by the admission of the abbey's suburban tenants to share all the advantages of the town's trade without bearing any of its burdens. Their markets were to be regarded as in the first place a source of supply to the abbey, which was to have the right of first purchase at a lower price than others. And finally, their municipal officers were to be considered as servants of the abbey." Such claims involved a complete negation of the rights which the free towns of Western Europe were at this time winning for themselves, and the men of Bury found it impossible to acquiesce in them. Their town was fast " Published by J. H. Round in American Hist. Rev. ii, 688. " Mem. of St. Edmund's Abbey (Rolls Ser.), i, 279-80, 304. 636
