Excerpts from The Project Gutenberg eBook, Westminster Abbey, by Mrs. A. Murray Smith, Illustrated by John Fulleylove -

The battered oak effigy of Henry V. need not detain us now, we speak of that great monarch later. Standing before the shrine itself the oft-told tale of our Saxon founder must not be omitted—the fascinating legend of his strange visions, one of which led him to select Thorneye as the favoured site of his monastic foundation. The story of his life and death are illustrated by the stone pictures on the screen, which divides the chapel from the high altar, and was probably put up by the pious Henry VI. One of the favourite scenes is the remission of the Dane-gelt, which may have taken place in the old Treasury, the Pyx Chapel; here we see the King pointing to the casks which contain his people's hard-earned money; upon them formerly danced a demon Dane, thus thwarted of his due.

....in the vestibule as we go out we see a curious old doorway, which was originally the entrance to the royal treasury, now called the Pyx Chapel. Upon the other side hang strips of the human skin with which it was once entirely covered, like the door which used to divide the chapels of St. Faith and St. Blaise, in the south transept. The latter was taken down long ago, but in Scott's time the frame, which still had some skin adhering to it, was extant, but it was then carried off by the Abbey master-mason and has been since entirely lost sight {130}of. The gruesome relics on the south transept door were traditionally supposed to be the skins of the Danes, but the one here was said to be that of a man flayed alive for robbing the royal treasury in the time of Edward I., which was fixed upon the treasury entrance as a warning to the monks, who were implicated in the crime. Sir Gilbert Scott, however, believed the skins to have been those of men who were executed for sacrilege.

..The whole question of the Pyx Chapel is one of vast interest, and much of its history is still an insoluble riddle. It is enough to tell our party that the regalia and Crown jewels were kept here for many centuries, and that in later times the pyx, a box containing the standard pieces of gold and silver money, took the place of the ancient treasure. The pyx is now in the Mint, and quite recently the treasury chamber, which is at present under the control of the Board of Works, has been cleared out after centuries of neglect, and most of the old chests have been temporarily removed. Now that the chapel is empty, it is possible to appreciate the fine proportions of its architecture. This vaulted chamber and a few other substructures beyond it, including the dark cloister, belong to the Norman monastery, and were built during and after the Confessor's time. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries most of the old monastic buildings were gradually pulled down to make way for more airy and convenient {133}new structures, but these remained untouched when the rest were destroyed. The Pyx Chamber appears to have been a chapel at one time, there are traces of an altar and a thirteenth-century holy-water basin at the east end, as there are also in the Chapter-House crypt, but both were used as royal treasuries, and the regalia was kept in the former until the Commonwealth. After the Restoration the new regalia was deposited in the Tower, and ever since it has been brought to the Abbey the night before the coronation.

..We cannot visit either the Library or the Pyx Chapel to-day, nor the small vaulted chamber which leads into the school gymnasium... We stop to notice a tablet against the wall, near the choir boys' practice-room, which is a favourite with all our parties, on account of the quaint conceit about the man who, "through the spotted veil of the smallpox, rendered a pure and unspotted soul to God." Returning by the dark arch we look into Little Dean's Yard, around which are the school buildings, but Westminster School is too vast a subject to be tackled at the end of a long morning, so we merely point out the gateway leading to the great schoolroom, where are carved the names of many a distinguished old Westminster, and advise our friends to visit Ashburnham House and see Inigo Jones's famous staircase on another occasion.