2-914-042 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Trial of the Pyx", at the Office of the Comptroller-General of the Exchequer, Whitehall, 1854. 'The trial takes place in the principal apartment of the Exchequer-office, in Whitehall-yard....The Lord Chancellor is seated in a carved chair, with the Privy Councillors at the board, or table; and the stage of the proceeding represented by our Artist is the Remembrancer administering the oath to the Jury...The, Lord Chancellor, in addressing the Jury, said the object for the attainment of which they had assembled was one of very great importance - namely, the securing of the due rate of the coinage and preventing it being debased...On the table, before the Lord Chancellor, were "the Pyx," or boxes containing samples of the "gold moneys coined by Mr John Frederick William Herschel, K H., Master and Worker of Her Majesty's Mint"...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1854.