‘So greatly had ambition and covetousness, and the temptation of the hellish adversary, possessed themselves of him that, as a tyrant to his king and liege lord, he committed the crime of divine and human high treason, in every manner and degree noticed in my major; that is to say, in the first, second, third and fourth degrees.
‘In regard to the divine high treason, as that concerns the Sovereign Judge in the heavens, I shall not lay any great stress upon this article, but shall touch upon it incidentally, when I speak of human high treason. I shall therefore enumerate, article by article, how he has committed human high treason in the four degrees above stated, and shall consequently divide my minor into four heads.
‘Respecting the first charge I make, of his having committed high treason in the first degree,—that is, when the offence has been done directly against the person of the king,—it may be done two ways: the first by imagining and practising the death and destruction of the prince, his sovereign lord, which may be divided into several heads, but I shall content myself with three.
‘The first by practising the death of the prince by sorcery, charms and witchcraft; the second, by poisons, venoms and intoxication; the third, by killing or causing the prince to be killed by arms, water, fire, and other violent injections.
‘That he is guilty of the first charge, I prove thus: To cause the king our lord to die of a disorder so languishing, and so slow, that no one should divine the cause of it,—by dint of money, he bribed four persons, one of whom was an apostate monk, the others a knight, an esquire, and a varlet, to whom he gave his own sword, his dagger and a ring, for them to consecrate to, or, more properly speaking, to make use of, in the name of the devils.
‘As suchlike sorceries can only be performed in solitude, and far from the world, these persons took up their abode for many days in the tower of Mont-Jay, near Laigny-sur-Marne. The aforesaid apostate monk, who was the principal in this diabolical work, made there several invocations to the devil, and at different times, the whole of which took place between Easter and Ascension-day; and one grand invocation on a Sunday, very early and before sun-rise, on a mountain near to the tower of Mont-jay.
