He oversaw the expulsion of Jews from Bury St Edmunds after a 1190 pogrom during Holy Week.
After taking his MA in Paris, Samson returned to Norfolk and taught in the school at Bury St Edmunds.
[1] Hugh died in 1180, and on the advice of Eysteinn of Nidaros, who resided in the abbey between 1181 and 1182, Samson was elected abbot of Bury St Edmunds on 21 February 1182.
Pope Lucius III made Samson a judge delegate in ecclesiastical causes; he served on the commission for settling the quarrel between Hubert Walter and the monks of Canterbury; and on the Royal Council in London, where he sat as a baron, opposing the efforts of William of Longchamp to curtail the rights of the Benedictine Order.
Thomas Carlyle wrote an extended essay on Samson and leadership entitled "The Ancient Monk" in his 1843 Past and Present, based on his portrayal in J.G.