Summer is usually a time of hard work and celebration in medieval Britain, but this summer,

in 1153, terror and panic are breaking out across a village in the east of England.

Nights are thundering through fields of wheat and barley, putting it to the torch.

The golden brown fields are turning black, coughing out thick smoke into the warm summer air.

You can hear the howls of anguish from peasant farmers as their whole years work is destroyed

in an afternoon.

This is all down to a man named Eustace, the Count of Balloyne.

The 24-year-old son of King Stephen is on the warpath.

One chronicler of the time says he's greatly vexed and angry.

Today we might say he's doing his nut.

And he's taking his anger out on a specific target, lands and property belonging to the church,

in this case the Abbey of Berries and Edmonds.

Berries and Edmonds is the site of a super wealthy monastery.

It's a cash cow earning a fortune every year from tourists coming to pray at the shrine

of Saint Edmund, a famous old Christian king of East Anglia who was murdered by the

heathen Vikings.

And now Eustace, like a modern day Viking, is ravaging that land.

He's riding around with a bunch of thuggish nights, burning crops, smashing buildings,

and making sure that everyone who lives there faces starvation that winter.

For them it's devastating.

But for a young nobleman like Eustace, ruining people's lives is simply the equivalent of

punching the wall.

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