I have once more to thank you for the renewal of your confidence and to express my intention of continuing to serve the interests of the Society with such ability as I possess. There never was a period when our work was more necessary, for the destruction brought by peace is even greater than the destruction wrought by war on the visible evidence of past history. The excavation of sites before they are built over or used for other purposes is a matter of constant urgency. The destruction of country houses no longer required for their original purpose must be controlled. But as our material becomes restricted, the increasing knowledge which we acquire through research throws ever more light on the past. The task of this Society, and it has never been pursued with greater zeal, is the dissemination and enlargement of our knowledge of the cultures of the past of all dates and in all lands.

In the preparation of its Dorset inventory the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England) has drawn new attention to a remarkable earthwork which has long been known to exist on Bindon Hill, adjoining Lulworth Cove, Dorset. The significant topographical features are as follows. For many miles of Dorset coast the cove is the only natural harbour where in all weathers small craft may lie up with safety. In terms of human time, it must long have approximated to its present shape, the product of a fairly simple geological process. The successive strata hereabouts (from bottom to top) are Purbeck limestone, Wealden clay, and chalk; but they are all here uptilted towards the south through nearly 90 degrees so that in effect they lie side by side with the limestone as an outermost barrier against the sea. In ages past a chalk-stream wore a gap through the limestone down to sea-level, admitting the sea to the Wealden clay, which it then proceeded to scoop into a basin until stopped by the more solid chalk beyond. The tiny descendant of this incisive stream still flows unnoticed beside the road down to the harbour.

The last act performed by King Charles I when he was standing on the scaffold beside his executioner was to hand the Lesser George of the Order of the Garter, which he was wearing suspended from a ribbon round his neck, to Bishop Juxon, uttering as he did so the word ‘Remember’. The George was taken from the bishop by the Parliamentarians, but was eventually recovered by Charles II.

It is only natural to suppose that so sacred and so portable a relic was taken away by James II. He is stated by Madame de Sévigné to have used a George which had belonged to his father when investing the due de Lauzun with the Garter in February 1689. This is not recorded to have been the Scaffold George, but it shows that he took his family's insignia of the Garter with him into exile. In the eighteenth century it was universally believed that Charles I's Scaffold George was in the possession of the exiled Stuarts. Sir R. Payne-Gallwey quotes a letter written from Rome in December 1785. This letter describes Prince Charles Edward as wearing the George ‘which is interesting as being the one King Charles had on when he was beheaded, and that he desired to be sent to his son’.

During the course of excavations undertaken in 1941 on behalf of the Ministry of Works on Beaulieu Heath in the New Forest a small, and hitherto unrecorded, barrow was discovered by the writer (fig. i). After the conclusion of the official work this small barrow was excavated in order to establish its cultural position in an area rich in barrow burials, but which does not, to the writer's knowledge, include many others of similar character. It should, however, be mentioned here that such inconspicuous little mounds are hard to find, and the present example was discovered shortly after a heath fire had burnt off the heather.

On 29th November 1950 workmen employed by the Merseyside and North Wales Electricity Board were relaying a cable on the west side of Castle Esplanade, Chester. In cleaning up the western side of the trench with a spade, 18 in. below the present pavement level and 29 ft. to the south of St. Martin's Court, one of the men cut through a small earthenware vessel and a shower of coins and silver bullion poured into the bottom of the trench. It is distressing to record that although the Grosvenor Museum is only 100 yards from the site, the discovery was not reported. No significance was attached to the find; one of the men stated later that they thought they were milk checks. Three of the men put handfuls of coins into their pockets; others were distributed to children near, and the rest shovelled back into the trench. The engineer-in-charge took several to his office for thepurpose of identification, but later forgot about them. One of the men sent some of the coins to Hunter Street Girls' School, by his niece, for identification, and the mistress immediately sent them to the Curator of the Grosvenor Museum.This happened on 10th December, and the Curator at once appreciating the significance of the discovery, set to work to recover as much as possible of the hoard, and reported the matter to the City Coroner. As a result he recovered a hundred coins, twelve ingots of silver, and a fragment of the vessel.

The object of this paper is to invite attention to some early treatises on English heraldry in the hope of stimulating interest in that somewhat neglected phase of this study. None of the manuscripts in question has been printed, but first it may not be amiss to recall briefly the half-dozen tractates which have been printed.

The work of the Price family, William known as ‘the elder’, Joshua, and William the younger, is of considerable interest in the history of glass-painting in England, not merely because they lived during a period in which, for lack of patronage, glass-painters were few, but from the degree of accomplishment, both artistic and technical, shown in their work.

The castle of St. Georges-d'Espéranche has a direct and immediate interest for English readers as being the place where, on 25th June 1273, Count Philip of Savoy rendered homage to his great-nephew, the as yet uncrowned King Edward I, for the Alpine passes and towns which, by an arrangement dating from 1246, were held by the counts of Savoy of the kings of England. Amongst those noted as being present with the king on that occasion were Otto de Grandison, John de Vescy, and Roger de Clifford; these men had been in Edward's company on the crusade from which he was then returning and, a few years later, were to play prominent parts in the English wars and settlement in Wales. Others who were probably there were Robert de Tibetot, the future justiciar of west Wales, and Payn de Chaworth, lord of Kidwelly, who in 1277 was to be captain of the English army in west Wales and who, at about that date, rebuilt the inner ward of Kidwelly Castle. St. Georges is interesting, however, not only as the scene of this vividly recorded incident of the king's travels, but also because the castle itself is a building which may not be unrelated, through its builders and the personal familiarity with it of Edward, Edmund of Lancaster, and their confidantes, to the new castles built in Wales in the last quarter of the thirteenth century.

Mail has been used since very early times and it is therefore surprising that so little is known about the methods and tools used for its construction. As it appeared unlikely that original tools or further information would come to light, recent research has been carried out on new lines. It was hoped that the methods found to be the most practical would produce mail similar in appearance to the medieval riveted mail. These methods would have to be accessible to armourers of the past and as far as possible be methods still in use in the present day, for basic techniques seldom die out. Many of these techniques are so fundamental that it is doubtful if they have changed much in the last 2,000 years. Because so much mail was produced the method would have to be a fast one allowing for division of labour within the workshop. The most skilled task, which is the final linking, would have to be done by the master craftsman, who could be kept supplied with the necessary rings and rivets. The early stages in the production of mail—the simple, laborious tasks—would be left to apprentices and assistants. Such a system is often found in a small workshop.

In a previous article the writer described the technique used by the armourers of the past to make mail. Very little is known about the craftsmen who made it. It is not yet possible to date pieces of mail with the same degree of accuracy with which pieces of plate armour can be dated. There are several reasons for this lack of knowledge. In the first place mail is a structure which does not lend itself to the use of armourer's marks, and though pieces are marked in one way and another, experts are so far unable to trace them to their sources. Secondly, a mail garment is not necessarily restricted to one known wearer, but because of its stretching and contracting qualities will fit almost anyone reasonably well. Thirdly, at the time when mail-making was at its height the armourer's craft had not developed to the same extent and had not yet acquired the social and decorative importance which it was to have in later years. Thus the mail-maker was more obscure and his work had no characteristic sculptural quality by which it could be recognized. On the other hand, in the early days of armour, mail garments were few and very valuable with the result that they frequently changed hands, the stretching quality permitting their use by different owners. Lastly, mail suffers from rust because it exposes a vast surface of metal to the air. When it is worn the constant friction between one ring and another wears it out comparatively quickly even if it is never permitted to get rusted. For this reason the rings in mail shirts are often thinner round the hips than on shoulders, chest, or back. Most of the early mail has been destroyed by wear and time and only fragments remain. It is not possible to say with certainty to what type of garment these fragments once belonged.

Bishop Cuthbert Tunstal of Durham (1530-59), civil servant, scholar, and friend of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, may also claim distinction for his building activity at Durham Castle. During his episcopacy he constructed the gallery fronting the twelfth-century work of Bishop Puiset, the lower stages of the clock-tower, and the chapel since generally known by his name. This last work superseded the original Norman chapel which must, by the second quarter of the sixteenth century, have become increasingly unsuitable for the everyday use of the bishop's household. The Tunstal chapel (plan, fig. 1) was enlarged by Bishop Lord Crewe (1674–1721), who added two more bays to the east, the termination of Bishop Tunstal's work being at a point corresponding to the west jamb of the second window from the east. The chapel is situated on an upper story, the room below now being the University College Junior Common Room. The builders made use of the foundations of a shorter earlier building, the east wall of which (plan, fig. 1, section BB) was retained as a limit to the lower room and as a support for the chapel floor. Nevertheless, beyond this wall the east bay of the chapel overhung the sloping side of the motte, leaving a triangular space beneath the floor (section AA, fig. 2). They therefore packed this space with large stones and rubbish, which included broken pottery, the whole being sealed by a layer of rubble and mortar on which the chapel floor could be laid. Just below the rubble a drain formed by a U-shaped piece of lead with a stone cover ran to a weep-hole in the south wall.

During 1949 three souterrains were revealed and recognized in Angus. The excavation of two of them, Ardestie and Carlungie I, extended over three years (1949-51) and full reports are in preparation. Both Ardestie and Carlungie I have been completely excavated, both now lie open for inspection, and both are preserved as ancient monuments under the guardianship of the Ministry of Works. The third site is Carlungie II. Its fate has been very different. After a short exploratory excavation the structure was reburied, and there is nothing above ground to catch the eye.