Following the track of the pilgrims, we leave the crypt on the south side, emerge into the transept, and ascend, along the south choir aisle, by steps worn hollow by penitential knees (for it was a kind of _scala santa_--a sacred stair) to the Trinity Chapel, the sanctuary of the martyr's shrine. Let us try to recall what this was like. It stood in the centre of the now vacant space beneath the crescent in the vaulted roof. Three steps led up to a platform figured with a kind of mosaic. The lowest step, worn by pilgrims' knees, and three of the inlaid "roundles" form part of the present pavement. On the platform three arches sustained the body of the saint in a gilded and richly wrought coffin. Two of these arches, with their columns, were hung with the precious offerings of those who had sought or received benefit by the saint's intercession. Through the third, suppliants were allowed to pass, that by contact with the pillars they might derive some virtue from the relics. The whole was enclosed in an elaborate oaken case, which was let down and drawn up by ropes and pulleys from above. One of the monks had charge of the proceedings--the Mystagogus or Master of the Mysteries, as Erasmus, with a touch of mockery, calls him--and when a sufficient concourse had assembled he drew up the cover and revealed to the wondering throng all the splendour of gold and gems. Within thirty years of Erasmus's visit every vestige of this magnificence was swept away; and so completely were all memorials of Becket destroyed that only one representation of the shrine survives. This, perhaps, was overlooked, for it is a small panel of stained glass, and may be found in the highest group of the central of the three thirteenth-century windows on the north side of the Trinity Chapel. St. Thomas is mitred and in full canonical vestments, leaning from or coming out of his shrine, above a figure lying on a bed or couch below. It is a pictorial record of a vision of the saint which is related by Benedict, his historian, as having appeared to himself. The inscription is _Prodire Feretro_, which fails in grammatical construction, but probably is intended to mean _Issuing from the Shrine_. It should be noted that the casket or coffin portrayed elsewhere in these windows, is not the great shrine in the Trinity Chapel, but the earlier "tumba" at which Henry II did his penance in the crypt. The determination of Henry VIII to obliterate everything which could minister to the cult was probably due not merely to zeal against superstition, but was part of his policy of stamping out the resistance of the clergy to common law; for in the history of Becket, and in the honour paid to his remains, was the chief support of their claim. This throws light on the extraordinary legal process by which, more than three hundred years after his death, "Thomas Becket, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury", was summoned, tried, and condemned for treason, contumacy, and rebellion.