THE CHRONICLE OF CLEMENDY
had given in long ago and had taken to horse-hair, knotted scourges, dreadful penances, all-night vigils, fasting on bread and water, and general morality, the which was a state of things unknown at the Priory since the days of the pious founder. But everybody confessed that it was not pleasant to live at Abergavenny as it formerly had been, and agreed that if Sir Jenkin were not done away with the castle, convent and city would all go to the devil together. And then began consultations and whisperings and conferences to take place and messengers were running all day from the castle to the convent, and from the convent to the town; and at last half a score of humble petitions were delivered to the Prior, the first beautifully engrossed by the best clerk in the Chancery of Burgavenny, and sealed with a great lump of wax as big as a French pear, with boars' heads and lions, and flower-de-luces on it, and the last rather blotted and scurvily written with no seal at all, from the poorest people in the place (for though a man be poor he doesn't like his little pleasure to be interfered with). But all these petitions were very humble and reverent, and all craved the same boon, namely that the false Knight, Sir Jenkin Thomas de Clochasterio, should be seized and haled before the Ecclesiastical Court, for that he harboured within him a certain, foul, damnable, pestilent, and infernal spirit or demon, the name of the demon aforesaid being unknown, and this to the great loss and hurt of the petitioners, who prayed that without needless delay or adjournment the Knight aforesaid should
[ 73 ]
