We are fortunate in possessing one unquestionable intimation as to his personal circumstances while holding this office. It bears date November 9, 1386, shortly before his promotion to the highest room, and is an indenture of lease of sheep.[43] It sets forth that Thomas Charlton, the valet, and Henry Norton, the servant of William Colchester, Archdeacon of Westminster, leased to John Waryn, butcher, of Westminster, 132 muttons--multones--3 rams, and 168 ewes, of the average value of 20_d._ each, to be fed and kept sound till Ash Wednesday next ensuing; and there follows a statement of the terms upon which the tenant may acquire any or all of them. The bargain was apparently made by the Archdeacon's servants, and the actual document leaves it in doubt whether the sheep were his or theirs, but the endorsement[44] places the ownership beyond question and proves the sheep to have been the Archdeacon's. The third means adopted by the Convent for marking its sense of Colchester's services to the House was more exceptional. I give the statement of it as it stands in the vellum volume called _Liber Niger Quaternus_, a fifteenth-century copy of an earlier black paper register compiled by a very active monk called Roger Kyrton, or Cretton,[45] who entered the Convent in 1384-5, served many offices under Abbot Colchester, and survived him by about fourteen years:-- "On September 25, 1382, there was granted to Brother W. Colchester Archdeacon of Westminster a chamber, together with that part of the Garden which belongs to the Lady Chapel; also a pension of six marks [£4] and an additional monk's allowance--corrodium--such as is enjoyed by the seniors; but on condition that if the said William be promoted to any prelacy elsewhere, the pension, the allowance and the chamber are to revert to the Convent." Two questions of topography arise here, the position of the Garden and that of the chambers, or "camerae." It is not necessary to assume that they were contiguous. "The part of the Garden which belongs to the Lady Chapel" cannot be located with certainty, but the Convent Garden lay in the acres eastward of St. Martin's Church, Charing Cross, which still retain the name, and are now the scene of the sale of garden-produce that is grown elsewhere. Our great chartulary called Domesday[46] shows that the Lady Chapel was given considerable property in this district during the reign of Henry III., under whom the chapel was built. In view of our information that within four years the Archdeacon possessed a flock of 400 sheep, it seems reasonable to suppose that his share of the Garden included considerable pasturage, and that he sometimes took his walks abroad in the direction of Charing to see if it was well with the flocks.