Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 29.djvu/257

'j]il: .siii;ine of st. aij;ax. 207 jjowdercd uilh ;i few conventional roses. The Leads of the ends and sides of the nic-lies have had the traceiy gilt, and the flat painted alternately red and blue, the principal red com- partments having each three leopards in gold, and the corre- sponding blue ones five fleur-de-lys. The smaller compart- ments have had flowers similar in form to those in the groin- ing. Just above the springing Ymc of the tracery, ^Yhere the panels sunk in the marble backs and sides are continued in the chalk Avork, the latter is painted in imitation of the marble. The gold is mostly perished, and the figures can now with difficulty be made out ; but the other colours are still bright, though they have laded much since they were first brought to light. Measures have been taken to pre- serve them as imuh as possible from further decay. There remains to be noticed the three lozenge-shaped openings in the base of the shrine. They occur in the eastern and "western bays on the south side, and in the western only on the north. AVliat is their meaning I am unable to decide ; the best suggestion I can give is that they are a tradition of an earlier shrine formed, as we know to have been usual in the twelfth century, with a hollow base pierced at the sides in order that pilgrims might crawl in at one side and out at the other. There is a difficulty about the date of the shrine. Before the discovery it used to be said on seemingly good authority that the shrine of St. Alban was set up by Abbot De jNIarinis in 130S, but the work now found can hardly be so early as that. Sir G. Gilbert Scott having kindly promised a note on the dates of the shrines, I shall not enter further into the question. The shrine in its present form appears never to have had an altar belonging to it ; at any rate it was never attached to the structure as in that of St. Edward at AVestminster, nor can it have been very close to it, for the steps are, if anything, more worn with kneeling on at the west than at any other part. It is most likely' that the high altar was looked ujjon as the altar of St. Alban, and continued to be so even after the erection of the great reredos. The body of the Saint appears to have been at St. Albans in the fcretnnn itself, and not in the marble base as we now find it at Westminster, and this agrees with the account of the fcninnn left us by ^Matthew Paris. Tiicre is nothing to