Thetford was at the very centre of the East Anglian realm, and therefore a place of great security. Thus it was that the Royal Mint was early established here and so continued, through the history of this one of the seven kingdoms. For two hundred and sixty-three years East Anglia and England in general remained under Saxon rule. The kinglets were always at war with one another, and their boundaries, and even the numbers of their kingdoms, were ever changing, but it was not until 838 that an alien danger threatened them. It was in this year that the Danes first invaded the country, and were defeated at Rushford Heath. With that decisive result the land was left in peace for twenty-seven years. In the meanwhile that most famous and most legendary East Anglian Christian king, the sainted Edmund, had succeeded to the throne, and had reigned ten years when the terrible invasion of 866 befell. Then was fought the battle of Snarehill, which lasted for several days, and whose bloody memories were so vivid, even a hundred and fifty-four years later, that the Abbot of St. Edmundsbury founded a monastery on the spot, in honour of the thousands who fell on both sides. This, the Battle Abbey of its era, was in Henry VIII.’s time granted to Sir Richard Fulmerstone. The “Place” farm, an ecclesiastical building now used as a barn, and a training-stable for horses now occupy the site of what is locally called “The Nunnery.” The Battle of Snarehill was not conclusive. The invading Danes certainly occupied the town for the winter, but they would appear to have afterwards retired, and it was not until 870 that the crowning disaster came. In the spring of that year the Danes again returned, destroyed Thetford, and utterly defeated the army Edmund had drawn from every nook and corner of his kingdom. Edmund himself did not fall in that tremendous slaughter, but met with his martyrdom, as we have already seen, at Hoxne, some twenty miles away.