On the 30th June last, at the invitation of the Council of the Surrey Archæological Society, I assisted at the opening of a Barrow at Teddington, near Kingston-on-Thames, but north of the river, and therefore in the county of Middlesex.

The main object of this paper is to exhibit to the Fellows a collection of the Notarial Marks used by the notarial members of the Scriveners' Company of London.

These marks are preserved in a book called the “Common Paper” of the Scriveners' Company, which is in fact the register of members of the Company from the year 1390 to the year 1628.

By the courtesy of our Fellow Thomas Brooke, Esq. a MS. Pontifical is exhibited, with pictured subjects of great beauty and in a splendid state of preservation. It has been briefly described in the Catalogue of the Brooke Library under thetitle Pontificate Romanum and is there set down as the work ofan English scribe, and assigned to the thirteenth century, but it will be presently seen that this description needs revision.

The announcement in the French journals of the month of August 1838, that by the researches of the distinguished antiquary of Normandy, M. Deville, the lost effigy of King Richard had been brought to light from beneath the pavement of the choir in Rouen Cathedral, induced me to take the earliest opportunity of visiting that city, with the special purpose of examining so interesting a memorial. During the last summer I had the occasion of correcting the observations previously made, and which I had reserved in the hope that no long interval would elapse, before a second similar investigation, conducted with the same enthusiasm, and rewarded by a like success, might enable me to add to this notice of the relics of the Lion-hearted Richard, some account of the Tomb of Henry his elder brother, whose remains were deposited near to the spot where the effigy of Richard has been discovered, and whose memorial shared the same fate, by which both tombs were barbarously condemned to be destroyed. Owing to unexpected circumstances no further researches have hitherto been permitted, and as I am not aware, that during the interval any accurate report of the discovery made in 1838, has been made public, I am induced to hope that a short notice on a subject so interesting both in relation to early art, and to monumental antiquities, may not be unacceptable to the Society.

As Rapin has made mention of an old inscription on the shrine of K. Edward the Confessor, in Westminster abby, when first erected; it is to be observed, that that which now is there differeth from it, having, as it is said, been wrote, and put in lieu of the former in the reign of K. Richard II. or later.

I have the honour of submitting to the Society, on behalf of my colleagues of the Executive Committee of the Silchester Excavation Fund, the report of our investigations during the six months from the 17th May to 27th November of last year (1907), being the eighteenth successive season of our exploration of the site.

In pursuance of the plan foreshadowed in last year's report, our investigations for 1907 were resumed in the grass field which occupies a considerable area near the middle of the Roman site.

Dans le courant du mois de Mars, 1856, j'ai commencé une seconde fouille archéologique dans le cimetière abandonné de l'ancienne église de Bouteilles près Dieppe. Le but de ma tentative nouvelle était encore la recherche de cercueils de pierre et de croix en plomb avec formule d'absolution. Cette fois j'ai trouvé deux croix et six tombeaux.

Of the great Murrains of the Middle Ages, we know little or nothing; the statements of the chroniclers about them are so meagre and vague, that we get but few facts except the dates of the years in which they occurred, and even in that particular the Chronicles are not always correct. Under such circumstances, I felt it my duty, when some original information relative to a Murrain in the Fourteenth Century came under my notice, to take some little trouble in selecting, and arranging the materials in order to place them before the Society. The additional knowledge of these visitations, thus obtained, may not be considerable, but a number of small facts may be of some service, in elucidating the character and effect of them.

The object of the following paper is to call attention to the highly decorative character of certain metal bowls belonging to the Iron Age, which have been found in Great Britain and in Norway, chiefly with the view of showing that they supply a connecting link between the flamboyant ornament of the Pagan Celtic metal work and the spiral ornament of the Christian Celtic MSS. and sculptured stones.

The MS. Psalter, which is exhibited by our Fellow the Rev. Canon Cooke, by the kind permission of the Governors of the Grammar School of Bury St. Edmund's, is a fine example of an English monastic service-book, and is of interest because it can be shown by internal evidence to have belonged to the great abbey of St. Edmund.

The village of Lacock is about three miles south of Chippenham, near the river Avon, and formed part of the extensive possessions of the first Norman Earl of Salisbury, whose heiress, Ela, was married to William Longespee, natural son of Henry II., who in her right became possessed of all the titles and possessions of her wealthy house.

In the Book of Common Prayer, in the Kalendar, on December the sixteenth, the words

O Sapientia

occur, which words some have fondly imagined to be the names of a Virgin and Martyr, whom they tried, “with much ingenuity and more ignorance,” to prove one of the companions of S. Ursula; (1) and others have confounded the

O Sapientia

with the mediaeval devotion of the XV. O's, (2) which in no shape or form was, at any time, part of a liturgical service, but merely fifteen private prayers each beginning with the letter 0, as may be seen in Mr. Maskell's Monumenta Ritualia. (3) These XV. O's, however, are of some interest, as they were printed by Caxton in English, and are to be found in most of our Prymers. (3)

Market Overton is situated about a mile from the northern border of Rutland and a little under two miles south-west from the point where the three counties of Leicester, Lincoln, and Rutland meet. Here, in August 1906, ironstone workings were begun on a fairly large scale, and these operations have continued to the present time and are likely to go on for a considerable period. In the course of the excavations a large number of antiquities have been found, ranging, in point of date, from the neolithic period down to mediaeval and later times. Some of the objects found were exhibited before the Society on Jan. 30th, 1908, when I had the honour of presenting a report as Local Secretary for Rutland. The present paper deals with finds which have occurred since my 1908 report, and will be confined to a consideration of objects of the Anglo-Saxon period, which far exceed, both in number and interest, those of other periods which have come to light at Market Overton. It is quite clear that two distinct cemeteries existed here, separated by an interval of some 400 yards. The Saxon finds described in 1908 occurred in what may be distinguished as the North Cemetery, measuring approximately half an acre in area. The present series of relics were all met with in the South Cemetery, the size of which was apparently about double that of the other.

The tombs at Ghain Tiffiha, which is situated on the west or Gozo side of Malta, three or four miles to the south of St. Paul's Bay, are all cut in the rock, and, though differing slightly in form and dimensions, have a general resemblance, as will be seen by the following descriptions.

The history of an English Cathedral is an integral part of the history of England. Kings have been its nursing fathers and Queens its nursing mothers. Its charters are an important part of the national records. Its foundation, its decay, its restoration, mark epochs in the religious progress of the country. He who would tell the whole story of a cathedral can scarcely pass over without mention any great event of the national history; alike in war and in peace, in time of religious calm and in periods of wild fanatical discord, the grey time-honoured walls of the cathedral have borne their part. It has been the home of religion, the centre of light, the sanctuary where were gathered together the relics of poets, statesmen, warriors, theologians, kings; the last resting-place of the best and greatest men that have adorned the nation's annals.

Preserved amongst the English State Papers is a mass of material illustrative of the history of tobacco-growing in this country from the time of its introduction to the time when Government finally succeeded in suppressing its growth—a task which was not accomplished till nearly sixty years had been spent in vigorous legislation on the subject, so strong was the feeling of the British farmer in favour of retaining it as an object of cultivation. The outlines of the history of English tobacco-growing have been already sketched on many occasions, especially since the question has lately been before the public—the antipathy of James I. to the use of the “noxious weed,” his contribution to literature against it, and the successive Proclamations and Acts of Parliament forbidding its culture; all these are matters that have been recently noticed, and need not, therefore, be enlarged upon in the present Paper, the object of which is to bring to the front existing evidence as to the extent of tobacco-cultivation in this country, its success, and the feelings with which its suppression was regarded.