At night all the gates, except this, being locked and made fast, and all the monks, even the two guardians of the church, being asleep, the thief was perfectly safe. No one could see him. He set his ladder against one of the Chapter House windows and so, opening a window and tying a rope round the stonework, he easily let himself down into the Chapter House and so into the Cloisters. There is mention of some kind of night-watch; there was such a watch in the church; the Sacristan is said to have been responsible for a night-watch in the Abbey; there was perhaps an irregular patrol; perhaps the Sacristan, whose guilt in what afterward occurred is but too apparent, was already an accomplice. However that might be, there were no watchmen out on the night when Richard de Podelicote stood in the silent Cloisters and glanced hurriedly around before he forced open the lock of the Refectory door and proceeded to the job in hand. This was to fill his bag with silver cups from the aumbries or cupboards in the Refectory. Nobody disturbed him; he retreated as he had entered; he climbed up his rope; he replaced his ladder along the wall as if it had been left there by a workman, and he passed through the postern into the Palace itself. To find a place for rest and concealment in that deserted nest of houses, chambers, and offices was not difficult; to carry out his bag in the morning--his bag full of silver cups--was also easy. Perhaps, as happened later, the custodian of the gate was an accomplice in this job as well. The next chapter in the story is more difficult to understand. To rob the King’s treasury was a far more serious job than to rob the Refectory. For the Treasury was a chamber with stone walls of great thickness, cemented firmly, only to be dislodged by being taken away piecemeal with infinite labor: and to carry out whole sacks and hampers full of treasure was impossible for one man unaided. There must be confederates. There must certainly have been confederates within and without the Abbey: monks who would assist in averting suspicion; people who would buy up the plunder. The story has been related by two writers from such documents as remain; one of these is Mr. Joseph Burtt, late Assistant Keeper of the Public Records, who contributed a paper on the subject to Gilbert Scott’s “Gleanings from Westminster Abbey,” and the other is Mr. Henry Harrod, F.S.A., in a paper printed in the forty-fourth volume of “Archæologia.” The differences between the two accounts are very slight.