Bury St Edmunds (Beodericsworth, St Edmund's Bury), supposed
by some to have been the Villa
Faustina of the Romans, was one of the royal towns of the Saxons.
Sigebert, king of the East Angles, founded a monastery here about 633, which in
903 became the burial place of King Edmund, who was slain by the Danes in 869,
and owed most of its early celebrity to the reputed miracles performed at the
shrine of the martyr king. The town grew around Bury St Edmunds Abbey, a site
of pilgrimage. By 925 the fame of St Edmund had spread far and wide, and the
name of the