Indisputable, though very dim to modern vision, rests on its hill-slope that same _Bury_, _Stow_, or Town of St. Edmund; already a considerable place, not without traffic, nay manufactures, would Jocelin only tell us what. Jocelin is totally careless of telling: but, through dim fitful apertures, we can see _Fullones_, 'Fullers,' see cloth-making; looms dimly going, dye-vats, and old women spinning yarn. We have Fairs too, _Nundinae_, in due course; and the Londoners give us much trouble, pretending that they, as a metropolitan people, are exempt from toll. Besides there is Field-husbandry, with perplexed settlement of Convent rents: corn-ricks pile themselves within burgh, in their season; and cattle depart and enter; and even the poor weaver has his cow,--'dungheaps' lying quiet at most doors (_ante foras_, says the incidental Jocelin), for the Town has yet no improved police. Watch and ward nevertheless we do keep, and have Gates,--as what Town must not; thieves so abounding; war, _werra_, such a frequent thing! Our thieves, at the Abbot's judgment-bar, deny; claim wager of battle; fight, are beaten, and _then_ hanged. 'Ketel, the thief,' took this course; and it did nothing for him,--merely brought us, and indeed himself, new trouble! Everyway a most foreign Time. What difficulty, for example, has our _Cellerarius_ to collect the _repselver_, 'reaping silver,' or penny, which each householder is by law bound to pay for cutting down the Convent grain! Richer people pretend that it is commuted, that it is this and the other; that, in short, they will not pay it. Our _Cellerarius_ gives up calling on the rich. In the houses of the poor, our _Cellerarius_ finding, in like manner, neither penny nor good promise, snatches, without ceremony, what _vadium_ (pledge, _wad_) he can come at: a joint-stool, kettle, nay the very house-door, '_hostium_;' and old women, thus exposed to the unfeeling gaze of the public, rush out after him with their distaffs and the angriest shrieks: '_vetulae exibant cum colis suis_,' says Jocelin, '_minantes et exprobrantes_.'