Among the numerous country palaces sold, desecrated, or destroyed after the execution of Charles I in 1649, the features of Greenwich, Richmond, and Nonsuch are perhaps the most familiar by reason of the various representations of them which have survived. Nevertheless, in spite of the complete dissimilarity of their appearance, views of Richmond and Nonsuch have more than once been mistaken for one another. The difference in design is well shown in the two somewhat archaic engravings of the palaces inset in the top corners of the map of Surrey in Speed's Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (1611). Yet an oil-painting of Nonsuch, now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and attributed to David Vinkeboons (1578–1629), was wrongly described as a view of Richmond (of which there is a companion painting in the Fitzwilliam) when it was engraved in 1765 and published in Vetusta Monumenta (ii, pl. XXIII) in 1789. Sir A. W. Clapham was the first correctly to identify the Nonsuch painting, which has also been called Theobalds Palace.

In November 1924 Professor A. Kingsley Porter gave to the William Hayes Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a medallion of stained glass which was alleged to have come from Canterbury Cathedral. The foreman of the cathedral glassworks has now identified this panel as one which was given or sold without authorization to a collector early in the 1920's. Now the panel must be attached to a series in the cathedral. This provides an occasion for a brief reconsideration of the style and date of the Canterbury windows.

About three years ago my attention was first drawn to the fact, that the Stones both inside and outside numerous ancient buildings in England bore in many cases a peculiar mark or symbol, which was evidently the work of the original builders. It immediately occurred to me, that these Marks, if extensively examined and compared, might serve to aid in connecting, and perhaps discriminating, the various bands of operatives, who, under the protection of the Church, mystically united, spread themselves over Europe during the middle ages, and are known as the Free Masons.

Relying by our constitution upon the freedom of discussing subjects of antiquity with decency, and on the candour of Governor Pownall, I beg leave to offer some remarks upon his memoire on the Roman Earthen Ware, printed in the fifth volume of the Archaeologia, p. 282.

In a volume of Miscellaneous Papers among the Cotton Manuscripts in the British Museum, is a short but curious Memoir on the state of Norham Castle in the time of Henry the Eighth.

A very short extract from that part which relates to provisions for the garrison was copied by Mr. Pinkerton in his History of Scotland: but I think the whole Memoir affords an important detail, not only of the œconomy, but of the general expense attending the keeping up of an ancient fortress.

Amongst many curious papers at Mr. Molyneux's ancient seat at Loseley in Surrey, some of which I have, with his permission, laid before the Society, is one which perhaps at this time is unique, and as such not altogether unworthy of notice, though it is only a Scheme for a Lottery; it is, however, of so early a date as 1567, and is the first Lottery of which I have found mention, though such there may have been earlier. If you think it worth laying before the Society you will please to do so.

Late medieval wooden caskets decorated with leather have attracted much greater attention in Germany and Belgium than in England. The Spitzer collection is one of the first that included examples of them, and the first major survey that mentioned them was that of Dr. H. Kohlhausen in 1926. His discussion of Minnekästchen, the romantic name given in the nineteenth century to caskets with secular subjects, included both caskets of wood alone and wood covered with leather. He discussed leather caskets now in the Deutsches Ledermuseum at Offenbach and in the Cluny Museum, Paris but, since he was solely concerned with secular iconography, he did not discuss other leather caskets whose style and technique indicated that they had a related origin. The whole group of leather caskets, including the two already mentioned and also caskets at Lucca and in the collection of Mr. Robert Martin on loan to the Cloisters, New York, was first discussed as a whole by Dr. G. Gall in his magisterial survey of European leatherwork. He assigned the Offenbach and Cloisters caskets to northern France or Flanders in the second half of the fourteenth century and the Lucca casket to Northern France or Flanders around 1400. Earlier in 1952 Mme A. M. Marien Dugardin reviewed the evidence for a number of leather caskets mainly in Belgium museums but including the example in the Cluny Museum and concluded from their use of Flemish for the inscriptions around their lids that they were Flemish in origin. In 1975 Mr. H. Bober discussed the Martin casket on loan to the Cloisters and concluded that it was of Flemish origin and dated to about 1400 or slightly earlier. In contradiction to the previously expressed views R. Didier in 1978, in the catalogue of the exhibition Die Parler und der Schöne Stil, discussing the lid of a casket preserved at Nivelles rejected a Flemish origin for the group and suggested that the caskets found an origin in the French sphere of influence, probably in Paris. This article will see how far the casket recently acquired by the British Museum (pis. xxviii-xxxin a) relates to these caskets and will review the evidence for its place of production.

I beg to submit to the inspection of the Society of Antiquaries, the Drawings which I caused to be made in August last, by Mr. John Swaine junior, student of the Royal Academy, from the Effigy of John de Sheppy, Bishop of Rochester, which was discovered in the year 1825, during the repairs which took place in Rochester Cathedral, under the superintendance of Mr. Cottingham the architect.

The institution proposed for the subject of the following memoir, is of very ancient and even divine original: and as it has undergone, at times and in different countries, so many alterations and revolutions, and I may add such horrible and scandalous abuses, the history of its various fate and fortune may deservedly become a proper object of enquiry and elucidation.

The roof of the nave of Tewkesbury Abbey belongs to the first half of the fourteenth century; the bosses are carved in stone. Those down the central rib represent scenes from the life of Christ; those on the sides are angels, some with censers, some with musical instruments, and some, at the east end, with instrumentsof the Passion; there are also the four evangelistic symbols. For purposes of reference I have numbered the central line of bosses from the west end C 1, C 2, etc.; those at the side are numbered from the east end, on the north side N 1, N 2, etc., and similarly on the south side. I have numbered them thus as the central bosses obviously begin with the Nativity at the west end, while the side series have the most important figures at the east end.

In considering the regulations which governed the scoring of the different points in joust or tourney we have certain materials preserved to us which are at once interesting and useful but at the same time confusing in the extreme. These materials consist of written or printed rules and regulations, either of a general nature or framed for some particular contest, sample ‘cheques’ or score sheets, and also actual scores of the points made at certain jousts.

This carving has been photographed and cast by the courtesy of the Warden of New College, into whose possession it came some years ago from a tenant of the college, Mr. William Harris, of Stanton St. John, Oxfordshire. His family had been college tenants for many years, the names of members being found in the parish registers as early as the year 1667. There is no record to show how it came into the possession of the Harris family, but it was certainly in their farm-house over sixty years ago.

King Edward the Confessor had a royal palace at Brill, or Brehul, in Bucks, to which he often retired, for the pleasure of hunting in his forest of Bernwood. This forest, it is said, was much infested by a wild boar, which was at last slain by one Nigel, a huntsman, who presented the boar's head to the king; and for a reward the king gave to him one hyde of arable land, called Derehyde, and a wood called Hulewode, with the custody of the forest of Bernwood, to hold to him and his heirs per unum cornu, quod est charta praedictae forestae. Upon this ground Nigel built a lodge or mansion house, called Borestall, in memory of the slain boar. For proof of this, in a large folio vellum book, containing transcripts of charters and evidences relating to this estate (supposed to have been written in or before the reign of Henry the Sixth), is a rude delineation of the site of Borstal house and manor, and under it the figure of a man presenting on his knees to the king the head of a boar on the point of a sword, and the king returning to him a coat of arms, Arg. a fess G. between two crescents, and a horn Vert, as represented in Plate I. No 2.

It is well known that early in the reign of Hadrian a wall was built across Britain from the Solway to near the mouth of the Tyne, and that about twenty years later, under Antoninus Pius, another wall was built still further north, from the Clyde to the Forth. Forty years before the wall of Hadrian, Agricola, in the early years of the reign of Domitian, penetrated even further than the line of the Antonine wall. It is with the period from the first advance of Agricola until the coming of Hadrian that the following paper deals.

I have the honor of returning to you the Roll of Egyptian Papyrus, belonging to the Society of Antiquaries; which I have succeeded, not without some difficulty, in unrolling in its whole extent. The circumstance of its having been for some months in salt water occasioned the folds, in many parts of it, to adhere so closely together, that they could only be separated by dipping in boiling water.

The journalist, after stating the motives which induced him to visit the island of Elephanta, the preparations made for his excursion, the persons who accompanied him, and the precautions taken for their safety against the incursion of Caun Ainge Angery who often plundered the island, mentions his landing on the S. E. side thereof. The island takes its name from an elephant in stone. (plate XXI. fig. 1.) with another on its back which stands on a small hill and serves as a sea mark, but no tradition remains of the persons who formed or caused the rock to be formed into this shape. As they advanced towards the pagoda through a smooth narrow pass cut put of the rock, they observed another hewn figure which was called Alexander's horse (plate XXI. fig. 2.) though why so named they could not learn.