Suffolk Heraldry Society |
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SOME
SUFFOLK COATS OF ARMS Created by our member and heraldic artist Ron Douglas Lovell |
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Left
side:
The Duke of Grafton, John
Brooke-Little, John Dent, Frederick Rapsey Centre:
Sir
Edmund Bedingfeld, Henry Paston-Bedingfeld,
Norroy and Right
side:
Sir Conrad Swan, A.B.(Bunny)
Henwood, Gerard de Roeper, Enver H Chaudri.
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THE ORIGINAL ARMORIAL
BEARINGS OF THE
TOWN OF BURY ST
EDMUNDS |
Over the
centuries the Abbey of
St Edmund
was built as a fitting place to house the tomb of St Edmund, King of
the East
Angles, who was murdered by the Vikings in 865 AD. Soon after his
death,
miracles began to be attributed to him and thus the Abbey grew and
prospered.
The small town also flourished round the Abbey, and became known as
Bury St
Edmunds. It
was totally under the
fealty
of the Abbey and had no
armorial
bearings of its own.
The people
resented the fact that the Abbey
charged them rents and tithes on virtually all property, and since the
Abbey
owned all the land that we now know as In 1535 Henry
VIII
ordered the Abbey to be
dissolved and it was
plundered of all its valuables. It was not long before the
town’s
people set
about destroying it; the stone was pulled down and sold by the cart
load for
local building.
The people were
delighted to
shake free from the yoke of the Abbey but it was not until
1606,
after several attempts, the town’s people were able to obtain
a
Charter of
Incorporation with the right to carry maces. In
1663, these were commissioned and the incorporation
brought the new
Town Council the right to
bear a coat of
arms and they were granted a blue shield bearing three gold crowns. In
respect
of St Edmund’s death and the original Abbey, the crowns were
made
different by
having a pair of silver arrows, crossed in saltire points down, thrust
through
them.
They were also granted
a crest of
a seated wolf holding in its paws the crowned head of St Edmund. There
was a story that when the Danes killed
King Edmund they threw his head into the bushes and those later
searching for
it could not find it. But they heard a voice crying “Here I
am!
Here I
am!”
Following this sound
they came
across a large wolf guarding the head. They took it up, unharmed by the
wolf,
who meekly followed them. The head was laid with the body and later,
miraculously, became rejoined.
Many
years later during some repair work, the bones of a large canine were
found
interred in a wall of the Abbey which were said to be the
remains
of the wolf. The motto is Sacrarium Regis, Cunabular Legis that is - shrine of a king, cradle of the law. Firstly, this was because the body of King Edmund had been laid to rest here and secondly, that in 1214 - at great personal peril -the Barons of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury met together, in secret, to swear on the high altar of the Abbey that they would compel King John of England to agree to the issue of Magna Carta, the document which righted many civil wrongs and became the basis of our law today. Illustration 1. This is the
plaque displaying the arms, taken from the Council Chamber of the
Borough of
Bury St Edmunds, the tinctures faded over time. |
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The
blazon is: Azure
three
crowns or each enfiled
by two
arrows, points down,
crossed in saltire
argent. |
After 1974,
the Borough of Bury
St
Edmunds, the Urban district of In 2004 it
became apparent that
this
change left the town without any specific civic representation or
identity of
its own and so a new Town Council was set up. In 2006 the Town Council
petitioned the Illustration 2. The Armorial Bearings of the present Bury St Edmunds Town Council. |
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