[68] This secular tradition was preserved in the following words:--"Subter gradus saxeos (secundum et tertium) climacis ascendentis et ducentis erga turrim campanarum in templo cathedrali civitatis Dunelmensis, prope horologium grande quod locatur in angulo australi fani ejusdem, sepultus jacet thesaurus pretiosus, (corpus S. Cuthberti.)" The earliest notice of such a tradition is in Serenus Cressy, (1688), Church History, p. 902. The next in two MSS. in Downside College by F. Mannock (1740), who states that he had heard it from F. Casse (1730.) Both these statements pointed to the removal of the body in the time of Henry VIII. The next notice of it is in 1828, when F. Gregory Robinson wrote to Lingard, (see Lingard's Remarks, p. 50), but in this account the removal was described as taking place in Mary's time. The secresy was partly broken when, in 1800, the sketch of the cathedral which exists in the archives of the Northern (R.C.) Province was allowed to be seen. Lingard's tradition (Anglo Saxon Church, ii. p. 80), about the exchange of S. Cuthbert's body for another skeleton is unknown to the Benedictines, who assert that they possess the secret. It is said that the Benedictine tradition concerning the site does not agree with the secular. What started the diggings in 1867, under the stairs, was that a hereditary Roman Catholic of Gateshead became a Protestant, and gave up a small piece of paper on which was written the above secular tradition, "_subter gradus, &c._" His father or grandfather had been servant to a Vicar Apostolic, after whose death he had some of his clothes, among which was a waistcoat, inside which the above was secured. It was ascertained that this was not a hoax, and the late Dean Waddington invited some of the fathers from Ushaw over, and the head of the English Benedictines to see the diggings. It was supposed that the "precious treasure" was something else, perhaps the Black Rood of Scotland, containing a portion of the true cross, and that the words above in parenthesis, (corpus Sti. Cuthberti) are a gloss. However they dug, but found nothing but concrete and rock. S. WULFRAM, B. OF SENS. (A.D. 741.)