In opening this, my second, Anniversary Address, I will ask you to lend me your imagination: for I am in fact writing it in the capital of the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan a few days after the melodramatic removal of British control from the Arab Legion. The swarming population of Amman, tense and expectant, is dry tinder to any spark that blows, and sparks are not lacking. As I drove down the main street this morning, rifle-shots punctuated the uneasy flow of traffic, and hysteria waxed and waned with an ugly uncertainty. But, having said that, I turn to more relevant matter. I was on my way to the office of a Jordanian architect to discuss with him the preparation of a building in Jerusalem to house, for the first time, a resident British School of Archaeology. He received me with charm and coffee.

A study of seven collections of clothing accounts reveals that in the period 1660–1700 ten firms held a dominant position in London as suppliers of clothes and materials to the nobility. Below this group there were numerous tradesmen with only one aristocratic patron at a time.

The actual working of a medieval port is a fascinating subject for study: when the port is London, and the time the fourteenth century, the interest is increased, for this is the earliest date at which the customs administration takes definite shape. The present paper was undertaken as part of the investigations into the life and works of Chaucer carried on by Professor Manly and Professor Rickert of the University of Chicago with the aid of a grant from the General Education Board. The research into Chaucer's work as controller of customs involved the collection of material of a more general character with only an indirect bearing on the poet's life. In this paper, with Mr. Manly's generous permission, is set out an account of the site of the Woolwharf with the buildings on it, a story which affords glimpses of the officials at work on the quay, of the machinery for the collection and administration of the customs in the port of London. The object of the search being limited, the present study makes no claim to be exhaustive in its treatment, though a large number of records have been examined at both the Public Record Office and the Guildhall.

I have taken the liberty of sending you three boxes, containing various antiquities, which were discovered in Somersetshire last year, and which, I presume, are not unworthy the notice of the Society. If the enclosed short account of them is at all satisfactory, it is very much at their service.

Your lordship and the Council of the Society of Antiquaries having determined that, to render the publication-price of Caedmon's Paraphrase more moderate, the Illuminations of the Manuscript should appear in the Archasologia, the following Brief Notice of the Work has been drawn up to accompany the Plates, closing with a Descriptive Catalogue of them by Mr. Thorpe, occasionally containing such passages of the Poem as the Illuminations are intended more strictly to refer to.

I Have the honour to transmit herewith the model of a Druid Temple, discovered some time ago on the top of a pretty high rocky hill, near the town of St. Helier, in the Island of Jersey. I am sorry to have so long delayed executing the promise I made to send it your lordship; but it having been transmitted to me without a scale, I did not care to trouble you till that material defect was remedied. By the scale which I have now received, and which is of three feet to an inch, your lordship will see the dimensions are not great, but I imagine it to be the most intire and perfect monument of this kind existing in this part of the world.

The iron dagger in its bronze sheath shown in fig. 1, which I am able to illustrate, thanks to the kindness of Mr. Guy Maynard, the Keeper of the Saffron Walden Museum, was found in a rabbit-hole in Hertford Warren.

The Potential Importance of the detailed measurement and study of the proportions of different elements in metal alloys used for early Anglo-Saxon artefacts has been appreciated for several years now. Such analyses add, for instance, to the direct observations of early Anglo-Saxon metalworking practice that can be made, and have a contribution to make to attempts to construct absolute and relative chronologies. Two ranges of alloys in particular have been profitably studied: alloys predominantly of gold, of the late sixth and seventh centuries, in which a progressive decline in the gold content allows dating estimates to be made on the strength of the results of metallurgical analysis (Hawkes, Merrick and Metcalf 1966; cf. Brown and Schweizer 1973 for the application of such results), and the predominantly copper alloys that are characteristic of the diverse and plentiful range of artefacts—particularly dress-jewellery—found in Anglo-Saxon graves of the Migration Period, dating from the fifth century to some point in the second half of the sixth. Study of these copper alloys has been organized in terms of particular artefact-types—for instance studies by Peter Northover and Tania Dickinson of saucer brooches and by Catherine Mortimer of cruciform brooches (Mortimer 1990: the unpublished results of Northover and Dickinson's earlier work are reported in this thesis)—and in the form of comprehensive surveys of the material recovered from individual cemeteries, such as Spong Hill, Norfolk (Wardley in Hills, Penn and Rickett 1984, 38–40), Watchfield, Oxfordshire, and Lechlade, Gloucestershire (Mortimer, Pollard and Scull 1986; Mortimer 1988).

Our Fellow and Local Secretary, Canon Greenwell, has recently devoted much time, thought, and labour to the piecing together of the broken portions of St. Cuthbert's coffin that were removed from the grave in 1827. Special attention having thus been directed to the matter, it was thought desirable that another examination of the grave should be made in order to recover, if possible, some of the missing fragments. For Dr. Raine expressly states that the new coffin provided in 1827 was “deposited in the bottom of the original grave, upon a mass of broken wood, iron rings, and iron bars, the remnants of the two outer coffins of the Saint, which had been thrown into the grave.” It was further considered that an examination of the human remains might throw some light upon the longdisputed question of the identity of the body that was placed in the grave in 1542 with that of St. Cuthbert, which had for nearly 840 years been enclosed in the coffin. After many delays, caused by the strong feeling in the minds of some whose objections rightly carried great weight, it was decided that the grave should be opened, the coffin of 1542 carefully raised, the other contents of the grave taken out, and the coffin returned to its place with its contents undisturbed.

I have had placed in my hands by B. B. Woodward, Esq., F.S.A., the Queen's Librarian, a Map of the World, which he has found in Her Majesty's Library at Windsor, in the collection of papers in the handwriting of Leonardo da Vinci. Mr. Woodward's object in sending it to me was that I might ascertain as nearly as possible the date of its construction, from the nature of the geographical information which it contained. It was evident at a glance that, apart from the value attaching to it from its connection with so illustrious a name as that of Leonardo da Vinci, the map possessed an intrinsic interest in connection with the history of geography and cartography, inasmuch as it not only belonged to a period fertile in geographical discoveries, though scantily represented by maps which have come to our knowledge, but contained delineations of a stage in those discoveries not represented at all in any map with which I am acquainted. Independently of this, it happens to possess some special points of priority of information, which have led me to think it desirable to submit it, with the following notice of its contents, to the attention of the Society of Antiquaries.

Last winter, while at Rome, some sketches in the album of Padre Garrucci, of the Collegio Romano, made me acquainted with the discovery of certain archaic tombs at Palestrina, the ancient Præneste, which appeared to me to be of a very remarkable class.

A tomb, or more strictly speaking a stone coffin with a coped top, which for some centuries past has been described as the tomb of King William Rufus, in Winchester Cathedral, was opened, and its contents ascertained, by direction of the Vice-Dean (the Ven. Archdeacon Jacob) on August 27th 1868. Subsequently to the examination it then underwent, its position within the building was changed on the 15th September following. No previous notice of the transaction having been given, except to a few persons residing in the town of Winchester, I have to regret that it was not in my power to be present either at the opening or the removal. As an interest of no ordinary kind attaches to this monument, I have considered the matter to be of sufficient consequence to collect together a summary of the particulars. The tomb has long been reputed to be the resting-place of the first of the great line of English sovereigns of the present dynasty buried in England; but besides this, the fatality which caused his death, the mystery in which it was shrouded, the superstitious hatred of the man, which believed the wrath of Heaven to have followed him in the Cathedral where he lay, and to have hurled over his grave the ruins of the central tower, all contribute to invest with peculiar associations this venerable memorial; to which I have now to add another point of interest, namely, that an archæological question arises for solution as to the actual identity of the tomb so recently opened, and the remains it contained, with the tomb and the remains of the Red King.

Wooden vessels were in widespread use in British households after the tenth century. Most were turned, both inside and out, and bear witness to highly developed lathe techniques. This paper considers the preceding period with a view to finding links with woodworking techniques developed either in antiquity or in the early medieval period. The quest is hampered by the limited quantity of material, as wood does not normally survive in the archaeological record. On the other hand, by taking the largest possible sample (in this case from the whole of western Europe), a scenario for the origin of medieval vessel turning can be proposed.

This article provides a critical survey of English manuscript art (in its broadest sense) of the period c. 1030– c. 1080, paying particular attention to decorative features and general design. Consideration is first given to the circumstances, distribution, context and main types of decorated book production. The corpus of relevant extant material is then analysed in terms of its continuities with, its development of, and its departures from, the traditions of the previous generations. Finally, one representative aspect of the influence of Anglo-Saxon manuscript art in this period on the work of Continental scriptoria is explored.

Twice during the past year it has been the privilege and duty of the Society to present an address to its Sovereign—once to congratulate His late Majesty, King George V, on the celebration of the Silver Jubilee of His accession, and once to express our deep sorrow at His death and our loyal prayers for the prosperity of His successor, His present Majesty King Edward VIII. I am glad now to be able to announce to you that King Edward has been graciously pleased to continue to the Society the royal patronage which it has enjoyed from His predecessors since its foundation.

For the fourth time the Society's Anniversary Meeting takes place under the shadow of war, and once again our activities are confined and controlled by the imperious demands of our present case. Since our last Anniversary, however, the prospect has markedly lightened and we begin to see, although as in a glass, darkly, the term of our tribulation. Even in our darkest hour we have never ceased to anticipate a brighter future, though it became more and more apparent that our present was shadowed by perhaps the darkest menace that has ever threatened the human race. Now, however, that the binding of the Teutonic beast, and all who bear his mark, is more obviously in view, we may well be encouraged to look more confidently ahead and to make preparations to shoulder those responsibilities which will inevitably fall upon us in the future.