THE CHRONICLE OF CLEMENDY
every other place was searched again and again, even to the lockers in the walls and the chests in the Record Room of the Chancery of Caldicot, but there was no Loyse anywhere, neither amidst the towels nor the rolls. And this was indeed a wonderful affair which puzzled all the lay-people tremendously, but Father Raymond is alleged to have had his eyes open at a very early stage of this business and to have smelt sulphur in it from the first. He certainly sent letters to Oxon, which brought a learned clerk to Caldicot, a man of great skill in matters wherein the devil was thought to have his finger, who understood all the intricacies of affairs like this; yet even he was for a long time quite at fault. But if anybody could have seen through the walls of the keep and looked into Dom Benedict's laboratory, they would have beheld a very strange sight, as appears from the confession of the adept, made by him on the fifth day of the question, and written down by Giles Sandys one of the clerks to the Chapter of St. Peters at Llandaff. The which document sets forth that the accused person Benedictus de Rotherham, a native of the county Palatine of Durham, and aged fifty-five years, three months, and ten days at the time in which this confession was made; had formerly been a monk of the Benedictine House of Religion at Durham, but was beset even from his boyhood by an itching desire for knowledge, and more especially for knowledge which is occult, and not lawfully to be acquired by Christians. And Benedictus de Rotherham, the accused person aforesaid, having
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