We first hear of the place, as “Beodric’s Weorth,” at the very remote period of A.D. 631. Of Beodric we known nothing, and the spot is mentioned thus early only because Sigebert, King of East Anglia at that time, founded a monastery here, a monastery in which he became a monk, and whose cloisters he only forsook to wage war with the heathen Penda. Fighting for the Cross he died, and thus early did the town secure the chance of honouring a martyr. But not to the earliest or most deserving of those who have laid down their lives in the cause did the highest honours accrue, and we can scarce blink the fact that to St. Edmund, King and Martyr, who suffered a hundred and sixty years later, fell a great deal more than his just share. Edmund, who was crowned King of East Anglia on Christmas Day, 856, reigned thirteen years before the great invasion of the Danes in 869 broke up his kingdom and brought him to a tragical end at Eglesdene, near Hoxne. Oakley Park is supposed to be the site of “Eglesdene.” Near by is a bridge over the Dove, known as “Gold Bridge,” the successor of the one under whose arch the fugitive King was hiding, according to the legend, when a newly-married couple, crossing the bridge by moonlight, caught the glint of his golden spurs in the water and revealed his lurking-place to the Danes. If you consider it at all closely, the legend is not at this point very convincing, for, in the terrible wars of extermination then waged, when not only the actual combatants, but the entire people, went in fear, it is not very likely that honeymooning couples would be wandering about in the moonlight; but that is a detail. St. Edmund was, after all, very human, as well as very saintly, for he did what many an unregenerate would have done—he cursed that couple who revealed his presence. Nay, he did more; and perpetrated a wickedness of which no mere son of Belial or everyday child of ungodliness would have been guilty. He cursed every couple who in the future should cross that bridge to be married. ’Twas not well done, St. Edmund!