GRUESOME RELIC

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 21, 6 January 1928, Page 5

GRUESOME RELIC

IN WESTMINISTER ABBEY. ROBBER WHO WAS FLAYED ALIVE. London, Dec. 3. How many of the thousands of yearly visitors to Westminster Abbey see its strangest relief It is a piece of the skin of a robber who was put to death <124 years ago. He was no ordinary robber, for he succeeded in clearing out almost the whole exchequer of England. His name was Richard de Podlecote, and he broke in one night to the chamber beneath the monks’ dormitory of the abbey and made off with half a million dollars’ worth and a donkey’s load of treasure, worth probably ten millions in modern currency. The chamber was then the King’s treasure house. It is now known as the Chapel of Pyx. For his offense Richard de Podlccote was flayed, and hia skin nailed to one of the doors of the chamber. Later the old door was taken from its hinges and placed inside the chamber, where it remained until a few years ago. When the old door finally disappeared a piece of the human skin still clung to i.t. This suitably framed is now shown in the chapel with an accon/it of its origin beneath. The “new” doors of the chapel—which themselves date from 1342, and must be among the finest specimens in England, have seven locks between them, and can only bo opened by the use of all seven keys. A curiosity of history is that al though the Chapel of the Pyx is part, of the Abbey, and leads immediately off the cloisters, it does not belong to the abbey, but to the crown. This, of course, is a sequel to its use as the Royal Treasury.