[897]I find in Mr. Selden's verses before Hopton's 'Concordance of Yeares,' that he was a Somersetshire gentleman. He was a great chymist.
The storie of his pulling the devill by the nose with
his tongues as he was in his laboratorie[898], was[899]famous
in church-windowes. Vide ... GazaeiPia Hilaria,
He was a Benedictine monke at Glastonbury, where
he was afterwards abbot, and after that was made archbishop
of Canterbury. He preached the coronation sermon
at Kingston, and crowned king
Mr. Meredith Lloyd tells me that there is a booke in print of his de lapide philosophorum; quaere nomen.
Edwardus Generosus gives a good account of him in a manuscript which Mr. Ashmole haz.
Meredith Lloyd had, about the beginning of the civill warres, a MS. of this Saint's concerning chymistrey, and sayes that there are severall MSS. of his up and downe in England: quaere Mr. Ashmole.
Edwardus Generosus mentions that he could make a fire out of gold, with which he could sett any combustible matter on fire at a great distance. Memorandum:—in Westminster library is an old printed booke, in folio, of the lives of the old English Saints: vide.
Meredith Lloyd tells me that, three or 400 yeares ago, chymistry was in a greater perfection, much, then now; their proces was then more seraphique and universall: now they looke only after medicines.
Severall churches are dedicated to him: two at London: quaere if one at Glastonbury.