Old Hall, Master’s Lodge.
If in the same volume the chapter in question is referred to, a singular fact discloses itself. Certain words in the text are underscored in red pencil, and fingers, inked in the margin, are directed to the lines in which they occur. Taken in their consecutive order these words run: “Ecce murus forinsecus ... ad portam quae respiciebat viam orientalem ... mensus est a facie portae extrinsecus ad orientem et aquilonem quinque cubitorum ... hoc est gazophylacium.” This may be taken to mean, “Look at the outside wall ... at the gate facing towards the eastern road ... he measured from the gate outwards five cubits (7¹⁄₂ feet) towards the north-east ... there is the treasure.”
The outer wall of the College, the wood-yard gate and the road through the Nuns’ cemetery must at once have suggested themselves to Richard Harrison, had he lived to see his friend’s bequest, and he must have taken it as an instruction from the testator that a treasure known to both parties was hidden in the spot indicated, close to Badcoke’s chamber. And the first text cited must have conveyed to him that his friend, in some deadly terror, had transferred the treasure thither from the place where the two friends had originally laid it. But the message never reached Harrison, and it is quite certain that no treasure has been sought or found in that spot. If the Canterbury or any other treasure was deposited there by Badcoke it rests there still.
To those who are curious to know more of this matter I would say: first, ascertain minutely from Loggan’s seventeenth-century plan of the College the position of the wood-yard gate; and, secondly, which indeed should be firstly, make absolutely certain that John Badcoke was not mystifying posterity by an elaborate jest.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Cooper, Annals, I., p. 393.
[2] The Suppression of the Monasteries (Camden Society’s Publications), p. 90.
[3] Cooper, Annals, II. p. 29.