at these locks date from the
seventeenth century and are not the original ones belonging to the
Treasury, of which the Keeper of the Royal {132} Wardrobe and the Abbot
had duplicate keys; for we know that when Parliament sent Sir Robert
Harley to seize the regalia in 1643, no keys were produced by the Dean,
the locks were therefore broken, and new ones were put on by order of the
House. 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. The
Romanesque round arches and plain short pillars with fluted mouldings
date from the eleventh century, while on the floor are ancient tiles of
various periods, some of which have been identified as Roman. Two large
and solid chests on which are written the names of different countries,
such, for instance, as Scotland, Burgundy, and Navarre, seem to have held
treaties and possibly tribute money. We cannot visit either the Library
or the Pyx Chapel to-day, nor the small vaulted chamber which leads into
the school gymnasiu