Editing St Benet's Abbey (section)

==The Abbey after the Conquest==
After the Conquest, [[William the Conqueror]] pursued those seen as having supported the defeated Harold and Abbot Aelfwold was outlawed and exiled for a time to Denmark,<ref>Brian Golding, ''Conquest and Colonisation: The Normans in Britain, 1066-1100'', Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2013, p. 29.</ref>  and the [[abbey]]'s estates suffered encroachments by neighbouring landowners and a general campaign of systematic harassment by the tenants of the upcoming Norman magnate Sir Roger Bigod,<ref>Stenton 1922, pp. 225-229.</ref><ref>Emma Cownie, ''Religious Patronage in Anglo-Norman England, 1066-1135'', 1998, p. 60</ref> whom the [[Domesday Book]] gives as holding 187 lordships in [[Norfolk]] and another 117 in [[Suffolk]]. The harassment was to continue for a long period of time.<ref>Stenton 1922, pp. 232-233.</ref> In the reign of [[Henry II of England|Henry II]] (1154–1189) the church at [[Ranworth]], which was the property of the abbey, was stolen bodily, and being a timber building, was dismantled and spirited away. It took a command from the King to have it returned.<ref name="Snelling and Edwards 1983 p4">Joan M. Snelling and W. F. Edwards, ''St Benet’s Abbey, Norfolk'', Norwich, 1983, p. 4.</ref>

John of Oxnead (de Oxenedes), a 13th-century monk of St Benet's, says in his [[Chronica Johannis de Oxenedes|''Chronicle'']] that Abbot Aelfwold was later able to return and resume his post, dying at the abbey as abbot on 14 November 1089.<ref>Henry Ellis (ed.), ''Chronica Johannis de Oxenedes'', Longman, London, 1859, p. 293.</ref><ref>Edward Freeman, ''The History of the Norman Conquest of England, its Causes and Results'', Clarendon Press, Oxford, vol. VII, 1878, p. 717.</ref>  He was succeeded as abbot by Ralph, and Ralph in 1101 by Richard, who is credited with having completed the church's western tower and with having hung two large bells there.

[[File:Seal of St. Benet's Abbey in 1534.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|Seal of St Benet's Abbey in 1534, as appended to the acceptance of the Act of Supremacy]]
The site was not immune to natural disasters and in the 13th and 14th centuries there were incidents where violent storms on the coast forced the sea to break through the dunes, causing damage to the abbey. In 1287 to save the horses, they had to be brought from the stables to shelter on higher land in the nave of the church.<ref name="Snelling and Edwards 1983 p5">Joan M. Snelling and W. F. Edwards, ''St Benet's Abbey, Norfolk'', Norwich, 1983, p. 5.</ref> The abbey also remained vulnerable to hostile incursions by water and in 1327 by royal licence the site was enclosed by a wall with [[battlements]], isolated traces of which still survive.<ref name="Snelling and Edwards 1983 p5" />

Surviving records from the 12th century show that at least some of the abbey's tenants paid their rents in kind or by means of service rendered. At [[Swanton Abbott]] the lease for a mill and a piece of land were four fat cocks a year, land at [[Potter Heigham]] was paid each year with a supply of beer for the monks, another stretch of land at [[Banningham]] was rented for eight measures of honey and a property in London for a pound of pepper and a pound of cummin, while two churches, one at [[Stalham]] and one in Norwich had to present the abbey annually with a pound of incense each.<ref>Joan M. Snelling and W. F. Edwards, ''St Benet’s Abbey, Norfolk'', Norwich, 1983, p. 3.</ref>