Historian Martyn Taylor looks back at the last abbot of the Abbey of St Edmund, who died of broken heart

In recent years, much has been written about the Abbey of St Edmund, which celebrated its 1,000-year anniversary in 2020.

This religious institution, which owned and controlled the town of Bury St Edmunds for more than half that millennium had, as its head, an abbot who was mitred and represented the town in Parliament. This fact would only be addressed with the third charter of James I/VI in 1614, which enabled Bury to send two MPs to London.

After Henry VIII’s break with Rome over the denial of his annulment from Katherine of Aragon by the Pope, Henry’s chief minister and strategist, Thomas Cromwell, was given carte blanche to dissolve the religious houses in England and Wales.

By Cromwell’s reckoning, their wealth, treasures and lands that they owned would be better used by his lord and master, Henry. The other major plus was Henry would be the supreme ruler of the newly-formed Protestant Church of England, with the acts of succession and supremacy.

On behalf of Henry, a valuation survey of the religious houses in the country was carried out, known as the Valor Ecclesiaticus. With all this in mind, starting in 1536, two years after Cromwell had been appointed, the dissolution started.

The greater abbeys were the last to see a visit from the king’s commissioners, Sir John Leigh and John Ap Rice. The Abbey of St Edmund, as one of the richest in the land, was one of these.

On their arrival in 1538, they found not only the abbey well-run but Edmund’s shrine empty, devoid of a body. Obviously ‘given the nod’ as to their impending visit, had the monks spirited the blessed saint away – that is, if he was ever there?

The destruction of the shrine would be their number one priority. In commissioner John Ap Rice’s words, ‘they found the shrine exceedingly cumbrous to deface’, referring to the levering off of the gold, silver and precious jewels covering it amounting to some 5,000 marks. However, the abbey may have been spending monies it did not have leading up to the dissolution as an estimate of the abbey’s worth at the dissolution was less than expected.

They also found various relics, according to them, ‘of vanity and superstition’. Moreover, they said, in their own words: “As for the abbot, we found nothing suspect as touching his living (income from taxes and tithes), he delited moche in playing at dice and cardes, and therein spente moche money; and in buylding for his pleasure.

“He did not preche openly; also he semeth to be addict to the mayntening of such superstituos ceremonies as hath been used heretofore.”

One of these so-called superstitious rituals was the tethering of a white bull at the Haberdon, a manor of the abbey.

Here, barren women hoping to become pregnant would stroke the flanks of the bull, the completion of this rite completed by praying at the shrine of St Edmund for deliverance of a child!

The last abbot, John Reeve or Reve, was also known as De Melford, the place where he came from. His family were clothiers, part of the wool trade, which was very much the commerce in medieval times. Such was his upbringing, no doubt he may have looked upon religion as to his future.

Following on from Abbot William Buntyng, he was elected to the highest spiritual office that anyone could hold in the Benedictine order, that of abbot, in 1514, though it is unclear if he held any of the other roles of an obedientiary, an officer of the abbey such, as the sacrist.

He was considered worthy enough in 1520 to become one of Henry’s privy councillors and, two years later, was appointed with others to verify the bounds of Ipswich. The most important service he performed was as the celebrant at the funeral of the king’s youngest sister, the Queen of France, Mary Brandon/Tudor in 1533.

The peaceful surrender of the Abbey of St Edmund to the crown took place six years later on November 4, 1539. Along with about 40 monks, Abbot Reeve quietly filed out of the abbey.

However, not all religious houses were as compliant as that in Bury. Abbot Whyting, of Gloucester Abbey, suffered a horrendous death – hung, drawn and quartered for failing to give up his charge.

Abbot Reeve was given a modest house in Crown Street, nothing like the luxurious palace he previously had, along with an enormous pension of 500 marks. However, he died within a year on March 30, 1540, after being abbot for some 26 years, it is said of a broken heart, obviously not collecting his generous pension.

According to historian Richard Yates, the brass of Abbot Reeve showing his mitre, crozier and four coats of arms was stolen by ‘fanatics of 1643’ (these were Puritans).

The grey marble slab on his grave had an inscribed Latin inscription which, translated, read: “Here rest the sepultured bones of that man whom Bury formerly acknowledged lord and abbot, born at Melford in Suffolk, named John; his family and father Reeves.

“He was magnanimous, prudent, learned, benignant and upright, loving the religion to which he was dedicated. Who, when he had seen the 31st year of the reign of Henry VIII, on the 31st day of March, sunk untimely to the grave. Spare his soul, O gracious God! – 1540.”

His last resting place, in St Mary’s chancel, was indignantly interrupted in 1745 when a ship’s purser by the name of Sutton was interred in Reeve’s own grave, with the incumbent abbot moved to the entrance of the South Porch.

The lost original brass was rectified in Victorian times when a new brass was laid over the original grave of the abbot in front of the High Altar. Whether his actual body was taken from near the South Porch is unknown. Incidentally, this porch was removed in 1831 by a member of the Oakes family, probably Orbell Oakes, and can be found now in the grounds of Nowton Court as a folly.

As for the abbot’s former house, near the Dog and Partridge, in Crown Street, this too has gone. An oval plaque put up in 1907 to re-enforce the wonderful pageant of that year shows where the house used to be.