Washington Irving’s impressions were as follows:
“I stood before the entrance to Henry the Seventh’s Chapel. A flight of steps leads up to it, through a deep and gloomy, but magnificent arch. Great gates of brass, rich and delicately wrought, turn heavily upon their hinges, as if proudly reluctant to admit the feet of common mortals into this most gorgeous of sepulchres.
“On entering, the eye is astonished by the pomp of architecture and the elaborate beauty of sculptured detail. The very walls are wrought into universal ornament, encrusted with tracery and scooped into niches, crowded with the statues of saints and martyrs. Stone seems, by the cunning labour of the chisel, to have been robbed of its weight and density, suspended aloft, as if by magic, and the fretted roof achieved with the wonderful minuteness and airy security of a cobweb.
“Along the sides of the chapel are the lofty stalls of the Knights of the Bath, richly carved of oak, though with the grotesque decorations of Gothic architecture. On the pinnacles of the stalls are affixed the helmets and crests of the knights with their scarfs and swords; and above them are suspended their banners, emblazoned with armorial bearings, and contrasting the splendour of gold and purple and crimson, with the cold grey fretwork of the roof. In the midst of this grand mausoleum stands the sepulchre of its founder,—his effigy, with that of his queen, extended on a sumptuous tomb, and the whole surrounded by a superbly wrought brazen railing.
“There is a sad dreariness in this magnificence; this strange mixture of tombs and trophies; these emblems of living and aspiring ambition, close beside mementoes which show the dust and oblivion in which all must sooner or later terminate.
“Two small aisles on each side of this chapel present a touching instance of the equality of the grave, which brings down the oppressor to a level with the oppressed, and mingles the dust of the bitterest enemies together. In one is the sepulchre of the haughty Elizabeth; in the other is that of her victim, the lovely and unfortunate Mary. Not an hour in the day but some ejaculation of pity is uttered over the fate of the latter, mingled with indignation at her oppressor. The walls of Elizabeth’s sepulchre continually echo with the sighs of sympathy heaved at the grave of her rival.
“A peculiar melancholy reigns over the aisle where Mary lies buried. The light struggles dimly through windows darkened by dust. The greater part of the place is in deep shadow, and the walls are stained and tinted by time and weather. A marble figure of Mary is stretched upon the tomb, round which is an iron railing much corroded, bearing her national emblem—the thistle.”
Dean Stanley writes:
“It was to be his chantry as well as his tomb, for he was determined not to be behind the Lancastrian princes in devotion; and this unusual anxiety for the sake of a soul not too heavenward in its affections expended itself in the immense apparatus of service which he provided. Almost a second Abbey was needed to contain the new establishment of monks who were to sing in their stalls ‘as long as the world shall endure.’ Almost a second shrine surrounded by its blazing tapers and shining like gold with its glittering bronze, was to contain his remains.
“To the Virgin Mary, to whom the chapel was dedicated, he had a special devotion. Her ‘in all his necessities he had made his continual refuge’; and her figure, accordingly, looks down upon his grave from the east end, between the apostolic patrons of the Abbey, Peter and Paul, with ‘the holy company of heaven—that is to say, angels, archangels, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, evangelists, martyrs, confessors and virgins,’ to ‘whose singular mediation and prayers he also trusted,’ including the royal saints of Britain, St. Edward, St. Edmund, St. Oswald, St. Margaret of Scotland, who stand, as he directed, sculptured tier above tier, on every side of the Chapel; some retained from the ancient Lady-Chapel; the greater part of the work of his own age. Around his tomb stand his ‘accustomed Avours or guardian saints to whom he calls and cries’—St. Michael, St. John the Baptist, St. John the Evangelist, St. George, St. Anthony, St. Edward, St. Vincent, St. Anne, St. Mary Magdalene and St. Barbara, each with their peculiar emblems—‘so to aid, succour and defend him, that the ancient and ghostly enemy, nor none other evil or damnable spirit, have no power to invade him, nor with their wickedness to annoy him, but with holy prayers to be intercessors to his Maker and Redeemer.’ These were the adjurations of the last Mediæval King, as the Chapel was the climax of the latest Mediæval architecture.”