The identity of the figure with a lamb carved on the upper stone of the Anglo-Saxon cross at Ruthwell, Dumfriesshire, was interpreted by Paul Meyvaert (in 1982 and 1992), as an apocalyptic image of the Deity instead of John the Baptist. Close inspection of the panel, however, makes it difficult to accept such an explanation. Instead, an adaptation of the early Christian images of the Baptist is proposed, and it is argued that the details of the panel are best understood in the light of the introduction of the Agnus Dei chant into the Mass by Pope Sergius I (687–701), and of biblical commentary which saw the Baptist himself as an apocalyptic figure associated with the Lamb, the paschal sacrifice, commemorated each day in the Mass.

Destroyed by fire in 1834, St Stephen's Chapel at the Palace of Westminster was undoubtedly one of the most opulent and enduringly influential English building programmes of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Focusing on the programme of wall-painting which flanked its high altar, this paper seeks to clarify the royal chapel's importance not only in terms of its stylistic innovation, but as an arena for Edward Ill's kingly image-making. The study explores the ways in which the chapel space was used and the audiences for which its dynastically forward-looking images were intended. Scrutinising the representations of Edward III and his family, and the biblical scenes beneath which they kneel, it tests the hypothesis that the Westminster murals reflected more than just conventional mid-fourteenth-century devotional preoccupations and were, in fact, indicative of the Plantagenet's own Christian ideology of his kingship.

That excellent scholar the lamented Kemble has pointed out the correspondence which exists between the mortuary urns of our ancestors, the borderers on the Elbe and the Eider, and many of our own. The same correspondence may be expected to be found in the institutions we have in common, and I now beg to submit to the Society of Antiquaries some account of probably the most striking example of the old Mark Confederation, the foundation of our elective institutions. In the republican community of Ditmarsh—which existed till the promulgation of the new Danish Code of Laws in 1554—we may see the germ of our power of self-government and of our jury system. Their system of house-marks was certainly once in use amongst our own yeomen, although now nearly obsolete; a system which throws, I think, considerable light on the papers on the Hide of Land and certain Manorial Customs, which, through your encouragement, I submitted to the Society, and which are printed in Volumes XXXIII. and XXXV. of the Archæologia.

In submitting the following remarks to the Society of Antiquaries, I must, at the outset, declare that my object is rather to review the evidence we possess, than to offer any conjecture or theory of my own. It will be by all allowed, that the careful bringing together of facts already known, but scattered and disconnected, must, at all times, tend to assist archaeological research, and save the trouble and tedium of referring to detached notices bearing on the subject of our inquiry.

The communication which I desire to make to the Society on the present occasion will be found to be in some respects peculiarly unsatisfactory. It is a tale of an interesting manuscript, imperfect; of inquiries respecting it, unavailing; of researches, baffled on every hand; and now of an ultimate appeal to this Society, in the hope that some Member may supply the deficiencies which I have not been able to remove.

M. Paul Marchegay of Angers, ancien Archiviste du departement de Maine et Loire, has forwarded to the Society transcripts of some letters which he has found among the records of the Tremoille family, preserved at Serrant in Anjou.

They consist chiefly of twenty-one unpublished letters written by Elizabeth Queen of Bohemia, and three by the King of Bohemia, all addressed to various members of the Tremoille family. One letter, however, which is of an earlier date, relates only indirectly to Elizabeth, and should properly be considered before those written by the unfortunate daughter of James I. or her husband.

Few of the structural works of former years require more patient and careful investigation than those generally attributed to the Celtic People.

It is very remarkable that, while some classical writers have alluded to their religious rites and ceremonies, they scarcely notice the stone structures, and are silent on their sepulchres and modes of burying the dead.

The village of Wenhaston is situated in the north-eastern part of the county of Suffolk, between the towns of Halesworth and Southwold. The church, dedicated in honour of St. Peter, stands on high ground, commanding the valley of the Blyth, and about two miles from the grand old priory church of Blythburgh, to which it formerly belonged. Though not to be compared with many of the fine churches in the neighbourhood, yet Wenhaston church possesses various points of interest which may be briefly enumerated, as they may assist us in assigning a date to the panel painting of the Doom, which, by the kindness of the vicar, the Rev. J. B. Clare, is this evening exhibited.

At a meeting of the Society on 16th February, 1899, Mr. A. T. Martin, in his Report as Local Secretary for Gloucestershire, gave an account of some recent “trial excavations ” at Caerwent, and formulated a scheme for the systematic exploration of the site. The suggestion having been approved and encouraged by the Society, it was shortly afterwards decided, at a meeting of local antiquaries held at Clifton, to appoint a Committee, and to start a Fund to be called the “Caerwent Exploration Fund.” At a meeting held at Caerwent on 11th September, 1899, Lord Tredegar was elected President, and other officers and a Committee were appointed. Also an Executive Committee, consisting of Messrs. Alfred E. Hudd, A. T. Martin, J. E. Pritchard, and John Ward, was elected (to which Mr. Thomas Ashby, jun., was added later), under whose superintendence the excavations have been made.

The intimate connection which existed between chivalry and feudalism in the early age of both these institutions has not been sufficiently observed. Those who have set themselves to write the history of chivalry have been attracted by its romantic side, and have neglected the more substantial aspect which it presents when considered in relation to the political fabric. Our legal antiquaries, on the other hand, have sparingly recognised the influence of chivalry in the early history of the feudal establishment; and, while it was impossible to banish knight's service and tenure in chivalry from any account of the feudal system, they have been rather disposed to regard feudal knighthood as a legal fiction, and to disconnect the chivalry of tenure from the chivalry of arms.

The accompanying notes are made for the purpose of introducing to the Society the beautiful copies of ancient frescoes from the churches of Athens which have been lent for exhibition by the Marquis of Bute. His lordship had these copies made during his stay at Athens in 1885. He has given a full account of them in an essay on “Some Christian Monuments of Athens,” published in the Scottish Review (July 1885), and the descriptions of the pictures given in this paper are quoted from his lordship's essay. These paintings and the monuments containing them are of course subject to decay, but they are, it appears, in greater danger of wilful destruction from speculative excavations to unearth monuments more ancient, or from attempts to make use of the materials of such monuments for new buildings. It is from no wanton vandalism that such destruction arises, but it is evidently the result of the uncultivated condition of the present race of Athenians. In the article in the Scottish Review the writer thus comments on this unsatisfactory state of things:—

A decree of Otho L, dated May 20, 1836, placed at the disposal of the Ministry of Public Worship every ruined church in Greece, however important historically or however precious artistically, as a mine for the building of new places of public worship, the new University of Athens, &c. This decree is conceived as if no such things as History or Art existed. The results have been terrible, and Finlay, as an eye-witness, speaks of “the destruction of numerous mediæval churches which formed a valuable link in the records of Athens, and an interesting feature in Athenian topography, while they illustrated the history of art by their curious and sometimes precious paintings.”

It is with unfeigned hesitation that I venture to bring forward a new restoration of the Halicarnassian Mausoleum. For more than a century the form of this celebrated monument has been the enigma of architectural antiquaries, and down to the present time no solution has received so unanimous an assent as to be deemed conclusive. It is not indeed surprising that the earlier theories, those of Caylus, Choiseul-Groufner, Canina, Texier, and others, should have been discordant, and to most minds unsatisfactory; for they were founded solely on the notices of the building found in ancient authors, and these notices are brief, desultory, sometimes veiled in figurative language, and sometimes to all appearance contradictory to each other, if not to themselves. Even the ingenious and tasteful designs of the late Professor Cockerell and Mr. Edward Falkener were prepared in ignorance of any material remains beyond the few slabs of sculptured frieze procured in 1846 by Sir Stratford Canning from the citadel of Budrum. But when at length it was resolved to supplement theory by fact, and to procure monumental in addition to literary evidence, when the resoures of the British Government were liberally placed at the disposal of an eminent archaeologist, to excavate the whole site of the Mausoleum, and bring to England all the remains of its architecture or sculpture which could illustrate its construction, it might have been expected that the mists of uncertainty would have disappeared in a flood of light. But very different has been the event.

The survival of types is a recognised feature in the philosophy of geology. Long after their contemporaries have disappeared we find stray shells outliving catastrophe and change, and recalling the features of times which have passed away. Similarly we encounter in our historical inquiries, even if we choose for our guides the most patient and scrupulous of writers, errors that have survived a crushing exposure of many years' date. They linger about the sentences of fastidiously critical historians, the relics of an uncritical age, to the great delight of some simple-minded scholars, who for the first time in their lives discover the fallibility of their master.

The Papers which I have the honour of laying before the Society contain a summary of my explorations and investigations of the dolmens of Japan during a long residence in that country.

We have but little exact knowledge of the mode in which the Japanese disposed of the bodies of their famous dead in the very earliest times. The somewhat vague statements of their ancient traditional records would seem to point to burial or mere deposition on the summits of natural hills as their earliest practice, but the most ancient remains yet discovered have not been found in such localities, but on the lower grounds bordering the plains, and on the plains themselves.

It will be readily admitted that few objects of archæological research are better deserving of our attention than those which illustrate the jurisprudential system of our ancestors, and the history of our venerable laws.

A most extraordinary feature of the judicial code of ancient times was the practice of the Ordeal Trials, in which the solemnities of religion were united with the administration of secular justice, and a mode of divination resorted to for the discovery of hidden truth; and since those modes of trial were for many ages a part of English law and usage in the trial of criminal causes, though now (perhaps happily) they are matter of history alone, the author proposes in the present discourse to put together as concisely as he can the information and examples he has collected in elucidation of the origin and practice of the Ordeal Trials, and to invite references to any judicial records which may further illustrate the subject.

By the kindness of James More Molyneux, Esquire, of Loseley, I am enabled to lay before the Society of Antiquaries a transcript of another of the Loseley MSS. some of which have already appeared in the eighteenth volume of the Archæologia, and a collection from which was published in 1835 by Mr. A. J. Kempe, a Fellow of this Society. It is an account of the presents received and the expenses incurred at the wedding of the daughter of Mr. (afterwards Sir William) More, of Loseley, in 1567, and will, I think, be found of considerable interest as throwing light on the wedding customs among the landed gentry of that period, the more especially as I am not aware of any similar account having hitherto been published.

I have the honour to lay before the Society an archaeological survey in which will be found the principal and most of the minor archaeological discoveries which have been made in Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire North-of-the-Sands, in other words in the diocese of Carlisle and the parish of Alston, which though in the county of Cumberland is not in the diocese of Carlisle. The Survey is based upon the model of the able Survey of Kent by our Fellow Mr. George Payne, printed in Archaeologia, with one or two deviations which I venture to think improvements. For instance, arranging the Topographical Index in three columns instead of four, so obtaining more space in the three left, while the duty done by the abolished column (Mr. Payne's second column) is discharged by appropriate cross-headings. In the first column, that headed “Locality,” I have given, after the name of a place, the reference to the quarter (N.E., N.W., S.W., or S.E.,) of the 6-inch Ordnance Map in which the place is or should be marked. The labour of doing this is no light work, and the mere turning over and over of some hundred and fifty of these sheets entails considerable fatigue. But once done, its convenience to all using the index is obvious. Thus two places of the same name allocate themselves at once without the necessity of a long description, e.g. in Cumberland, Kirkland, 15 N.W. and Kirkland, 51 S.E. at once define and differentiate themselves.