In this case the Abbot is William of Colchester. As we shall see, his character is depicted by Shakespeare, but he has no article to his credit in the _Dictionary of National Biography_. If he is to be brought back from obscurity, it can only be accomplished by repeated visits to the Abbey Muniment Room. I shall therefore ask the reader to climb with me the turret staircase which is approached from a door in the East Cloister, and to enter a noble apartment of which that cloister is the origin. For when Henry III.'s builders came to the planning of the South Transept, known as Poets' Corner, the lines of the Great Cloister had already been long established, and must not be minished or altered by the new work. Therefore, whereas the North Transept has aisles on its east side and on its west, the South Transept is aisled only on the east side. The East Cloister occupies the space of what would otherwise be the western aisle, and thus upholds the floor of the apartment which we enter. We look into the distant recesses of the Abbey eastward, through three of Henry III.'s bays, across a low wall split up by the bases of dwarf pillars. There are signs of royalty in the room, such as the crowned heads at the capitals of the pillars of the colonnade by which we enter, and on the wooden wall which shuts off the southern section is the outline of a white hart crowned, the emblem of Richard II. Professor Lethaby has suggested to me that such a point of vantage from which to see what stones and what buildings are here, and from which to observe some procession of State as it arrives from the Palace by Poets' Corner door and makes its solemn circuit of the church, would naturally be appropriated as a royal pew. Be that as it may, the room was set apart in very early times for the storing of muniments; it contains a cupboard which probably dates from Richard II.'s reign and now stands under Richard II.'s hart; and at least one of its archive chests, if not more, belongs to the fourteenth century. We may assume, then, that here, from that century onwards, the Convent kept its official archives--charters, leases, acquittances, and the annual account-rolls of its officers. Here, for the last twenty years, the Dean and Chapter have had the constant service of Dr. Edward Scott, formerly of the British Museum, as the Keeper of their muniments. He has written with his own hand over 110,000 descriptions of documents, and has compiled, and is still steadily compiling, an index of persons and things. I am merely attempting to construct a life of Abbot Colchester out of documents which I have spelt out with Dr. Scott's assistance. Any one who finds the story uninteresting must console himself with the thought that it has not been told before. II A NOVICE FROM ESSEX