At some point during the 1070s the archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc, wrote to Herfast (bishop of East Anglia 1070–84/5) in trenchant terms. Much of his letter criticized the bishop's lifestyle – ‘Give up the dicing (to mention nothing worse) and the world's amusements in which you are said to idle away the entire day’ – and the company he kept: ‘Banish the monk Hermann, whose life is notorious for its many faults, from your society and your household completely.’ Instead, Lanfranc told his bishop to read Scripture and above all to master the decrees of the Roman pontiffs and the canons of the holy councils, to ‘discover what you do not know’ and ‘ensure that you hold no opinion that is at variance with your mother church’. The significance of that advice finds context in the opening of the letter, which relates to the affairs of the abbey of Bury St Edmunds. After a conventional greeting, where Lanfranc wished Bishop Herfast might be humble in wisdom and of sober understanding, the archbishop began by observing that Berard, a cleric of Abbot Baldwin of Bury, had delivered a previous letter from the Archbishop to Bishop Herfast. He went on: