About the third hour of the day, the flames being now greatly subdued, we effected an entry into the church, and water being carried thither, extinguished the fire there, which had now pretty well burned out. In the choir, which was reduced to ashes, we found all the books of the holy office utterly destroyed, both Antiphonaries as well as Gradals. On entering the vestiary, however, we found all our sacred vestments and the relics of the Saints, as well as some other precious things deposited there untouched by the flames, the place being covered with a double roof of stone. Going upstairs into our muniment room, we found that, although it had been covered throughout with an arching of stone, the fire had still made its way through the wooden windows; and that, although the presses themselves appeared to be quite safe and sound, still all our muniments therein were burnt into one mass, and utterly destroyed by the intense heat of the fire, just as though they had been in a furnace red hot or an oven at a white heat. Our charters of extreme beauty, written in capital letters, adorned with golden crosses and paintings of the greatest beauty, and formed of materials of matchless value, which had been there deposited, were all destroyed. The privileges also, granted by the kings of the Mercians, documents of extreme antiquity, and of the greatest value, which were likewise most exquisitely adorned with pictures in gold, but written in Saxon characters, were all burnt. The whole of these muniments of ours, both great and small, nearly four hundred in number, were in one moment of a night, which proved to us of blackest hue, by a most shocking misfortune, lost and utterly destroyed (p. 200). A few years before, however, I had of my own accord, taken from our muniment room several charters written in Saxon characters, and as we had duplicates of them, and in some instances triplicates, I had put them in the hands of our chauntor, the lord Fulmar, to be kept in the cloisters, in order to instruct the juniors in a knowledge of the Saxon characters; as this kind of writing had for a long time, on account of the Normans, been utterly neglected, and was now understood by only a few of the more aged men.... These charters having been deposited in an ancient press, which was kept in the cloisters, and surrounded on every side by the wall of the church, were the only ones that were saved and preserved from the fire.... (p. 201).