This evening I launched my new book The Franciscans in Medieval Bury St Edmunds with a talk at Moyse’s Hall Museum in Bury St Edmunds. Published by Boydell & Brewer on behalf of the Suffolk Record Society, the book is volume 22 in the SRS’s Charters Series, edited by Dr Nicholas Karn. The book is an edition and translation of documents relating to the conflict between the Franciscan friars and the Benedictine monks of Bury St Edmunds between 1233 and 1263, and thereafter documents relating to the Franciscan friary at Babwell (just outside Bury) between 1265 and its dissolution in 1538. The site of Babwell Friary is now the Best Western Priory Hotel in the northern part of the town.

I first proposed a volume dealing with the Bury Franciscans to the Suffolk Record Society in 2019, and planned to undertake most of the work on the volume in 2020. The pandemic supervened, however, and it became impossible for me to access the archives in which most of the material for the book could be found. Accordingly, I was forced to postpone work on the book for a year or more, but I am very grateful to Dr Nicholas Karn for seeing the book through to completion and publication. I am hopeful that it will shine a light on Bury’s largely forgotten Franciscan friaries, and an often overlooked aspect of the town’s religious history.