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RESEARCH PRODUCT

The Magical Treasure and Its Guardians

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On 17 June 1499, John and Agnes Clerk from Great Ashfield as well as their young daughter Marion had to answer charges before the consistory court of Norwich. The ecclesiastical court had learned that the girl worked as a healer and a soothsayer, and that she claimed she could locate buried treasures. Marion admitted everything immediately, even with an air of self-importance. She said that she got her abilities from God, the Virgin Mary and from the fairies. The ecclesiastical judge seems to have amused himself asking the girl about the details. The fairies, Marion explained, were little people who gave her information whenever she needed it. They did not believe in Jesus and the Holy Spirit but they did believe in the Almighty Father, rather like the Jews. The fairies nevertheless enabled her to speak to St Stephen and to the archangel Gabriel. Marion told the judge that she had been to Heaven, where she had seen God in a golden mantle. On a more secular note, she explained that a treasure was hidden in ‘Moises Halle’ in Bury St Edmunds. The Jews would guard it. Marion’s mother, Agnes, confirmed everything she had said. She explained that she herself had been in contact with the fairies when she was younger, even to such an extent that at some point her head and neck had been twisted around backwards.