Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/607

594 bright spot in a long life of sorrow. Here it was that the royal pursuivant brought the mandate of exile to the aged Feckenham, as he was planting some young trees.

“Sir,” said the last of the Abbats, “suffer me to finish my work; but I know of a truth, that this Abbey of Westminster shall ever be preserved.”

We must retrace our steps to the Great Cloister. Before us the beautiful double doorway, with faint traces of gold and colour; its exquisite scrollwork and foliage, with a tree of Jesse entwined, admits us to the vestibule of the Chapter-house, which is situated under the old dormitory. Those prints upon the stone-pavement were by the feet of the monks. On the right is the door with its ugly fringe of human skin; on the left the former entrance to the sacristy, commonly but erroneously known as the Chapel of St. Blaise. Before us is the inner vestibule with a flight of stairs leading up to the great portal of the Chapter-house; the walled-up windows on the side lighted the altar of the sacristy, which is now entered from the south transept. The footpace of the altar at the east end, and a fresco in oil of the Madonna, a crucifix with a Benedictine in prayer, remain, with a monkish distich:

The western end was the vestry, and years ago the rack for copes and vestments remained on the wall; the aumbries for the sacred vessels and jewels have been preserved; and so valuable was the store that three strong-doors—one lined with human skins—were considered to be indispensable to its security. A bridge of stone and a winding stair once formed a communication between the dormitory and transept.

The Chapter-house was, soon after its erection in the latter part of the thirteenth century, alienated from use by the Benedictines. In the two last parliaments of King Edward III. we find the Commons desired to remove from the Painted Chamber—“a leur ancienne place en la maison de chapitre de l’abbaye de Westm'.” Almost 60 ft. in diameter, and only inferior in point of size to the Chapter-house of Lincoln, but far surpassing it in beauty, it is an octagon, a form substituted for the oblong ground-plan of the former century in imitation, probably, of the circular churches introduced by the Templars. The height of the crown of the vaulting is fifty-four feet; the groined roof was taken down upwards of a century since, but the ribs have been found carefully packed away in a recess in the walls. The central shafted pillar of Purbeck marble, thirty-five feet high, is still standing; beneath the boarded-floor lies a superb encaustic pavement with tiles of noble design, and stained with the legend of St. John and the Confessor; and the walls are arcaded with stalls, and, in one portion, have oil-paintings of the fourteenth century, representing the Saviour showing His five wounds to the Heavenly host, and angels with wings full of eyes within, and inscribed with the names of virtues, receiving the souls of the ransomed and setting crowns of gold upon their heads, as also some later paintings of subjects from the Apocalypse.