The following account of some Roman antiquities lately discovered near Hopton, which Mr. Gell was so obliging as to reserve for my inspection, I did intend to have had the honour of presenting to the Society ; but, as it will be rendered more acceptable by the addition of your learned observations, I shall solicit for its admittance into your interesting account of Roman antiquities (Derbeiesscira Romana), which I hope you intend to continue.

When I was last at Hopton, I went again to examine those three singular sculptured stones in the churchyard at Bradburn; two of these (see plate III. No 1 and 2) are fixed in a wall so near together as to form a narrow pass, the common way of making stiles in Derbyshire; the other is placed as a corner-stone in the foundation of the porch, which evidently appears to be coëval with the church.

There having been published in Bibliotheca, Topographica Britannica [a] an engraving of the porch of Chalk church from the correct pencil of Mr. Tracy, Mr. Clarke declined sending a view of it, when he transmitted for the inspection of the Society his other drawings of different parts of that edifice [b]; but it was my desire that he would favour me with the delineation now exhibited, conceiving it to be a suitable accompaniment to them. And I had, as an additional motive for my request, the hope of obtaining a satisfactory elucidation of the subject represented from a person who, I knew, was very conversant in architectural embellishments. In this instance, however, I did not succeed, Mr. Clarke acknowledging in his answer, that he could not account for a sculptured relief so improperly placed.

Having observed several singular tenures, customs, and usages, in my manor of Great Tey, in the hundred of Lexden and county of Essex; I conceive that illustrations of the most remarkable may be acceptable to the Society of Antiquaries.

In this letter I have ventured to describe fome Druidical remains in Derbyshire hitherto unnoticed, which, if you think sufficiently interesting to be communicated to the Society, I must beg you will do me the honour to present to them.

It was under the reign of Henry the Second of England that there flourished a celebrated Anglo-Norman poet named Wace, whose works, at that time the delight of the monarch and his court, are at present to be esteemed as one of the most ancient monuments of French literature; but inasmuch as France owes these precious relics to a king of Great Britain, and as their author was born in a country which has continually remained since the Conquest under the power of the English, you will, doubtless, my Lord, peruse with some degree of satisfaction a memoir upon the life and writings of this Poet. The discussion will probably be seemed interesting, both upon account of its novelty, and from the circumstance of this writer being altogether unknown to the English Biographers; besides, most of those learned men who have written upon his works have been entirely mistaken, either in the series of them which they have given, or in the opinions which they have adopted relating to them.

If we compare the expences of the Royal Household in former times with those of later dates, and observe the alteration of the value of money, and the progressive rise in the cost of provisions, the result will probably be, that the expence of His present Majesty's Household is not more than it was in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and is much less than it was in the time of her successor.

By virtue of this proclamation the lordships, towns, parishes, commots, hundreds, and cantreds of Oswestry, Whitington, Masbrook, Knoking, Ellesmere, Downe, and Churbury hundreds, in the marches of Wales aforesaid, and every of them, and all and singular honours, lordships, castells, mannors, towns, hamlets, lands, tenements, and hereditaments, lying and being within the compass or precinct of the said lordships, towns, parishes, &c. were united, annexed, and joined to the country of Salop, and the lordships of Oswestry, Whitington, Masbrooke, and Knoking, were thus united, to be called and known by the name of the hundred of Oswestry and county of Salop, &c. and the lordships of Ellesmere were united to the hundred of Purihill, and those of Downe to the hundred of Churbury.

As the ornaments of churches have of late been considered in the different publications of this Society, give me leave to communicate a drawing of a Table (as we find these carvings called in ancient wills) now remaining in the North wall of the church of Melford, in the county of Suffolk, and which a few years ago was dug up from beneath the pavement, where it is not improbable it had lain many years.

The Urn and stone Chest, of which the annexed drawing is a representation, were found on the 26th of October last at Ashby Puerorum in Lincolnshire, by a labourer employed in cutting a ditch, to separate the cultivated part of a ploughed field from a road which passes along one side of it. The top of the stone chest lay three feet below the surface of the ground, no elevation whatever was observable in the soil over it, and the road near which it lay is not an ancient highway, having been set out as such under the powers of an Enclosure Act a few years ago.

Llanvetherine is an obscure village in Monmouthshire, about five miles from Abergavenny, and ten from Monmouth. It takes its name from the patron St. Veterinus, to whom the church is dedicated. The parish is of very considerable extent, but not proportioned. It is supposed to contain above 2,000 acres of land, which are here called Covers: three covers make two statute acres. The parish register begins 1690. The church itself is not very antient, and the only thing remarkable about it is a large square (stone placed against the South wall of the chancel, whereon is rudely cut the effigy of a Saint in a long gown and hat, bearing in his left hand something resembling a small box or basket, and in the other a label, whereon is inseribed in Roman characters S. VETERINUS. No account of this Saint could be obtained on the spot, except that the stone abovementioned was discovered many years ago in digging a grave in the church yard, and placed where it now stands. From the mutilated inscription round it it appears to have belonged to the grave of some former rector of the parish, the words Jacob and P'son Ec. being still legible.

Mr. Thomas Fisher has favoured me with the inclosed delineation of a triple stone seat in the chancel of the church of Upchurch, a parish in East Kent, Situated between Rainham and the river Medway; and, as, to the best of my recollection, these stalls differ in form from any specimen hitherto exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries, I am inclined to believe that this representation of them may not be unacceptable.

Inclosed I send you, for the information of the Society of Antiquries, a letter I have received from the Reverend Mr. John Carter of Lincoln, accompained with very neat and accurate drawings of some curious and sepulchral antiquities lately discovered in the same field to the East of that town, in which former discoveries had been made of the like ancient sepulchrals, an account of which I communicated to the Society in 1791. See Archæologia, vol. X. p. 345.

Not long since, when Mr. Thomas Fisher had an opportunity of examining sundry letters and other papers deposited in a room over the Town Hall in Rochester, he was induced to sketch the paper, or water-marks, as they are sometimes called. His fac similes of this kind are sixty-four[a]; of which two are from writings dated in 1473, seven from those of the sixteenth century, and the residue from those of the seventeenth, with an exception of one of the year 1712. There is not one that has a star of eight points within a double circle, the device of John Tate, supposed to have been the first Paper-maker in England, and who is recorded to have had, if I mistake not in the reign of Henry VII, a mill at Hertford [b].

Historians assert, that the Belgæ[a], or Attrebatii, a people of Gaul, were the first emigrants who settled in the Southern parts of this island long before the Roman eagle was advanced hither. Little can be learned relating to them or the ancient Britons before Cæsar's invasion, which was fifty three or fifty four years before Christ. About that time, we learn, that the kingdom of the Iceni, whose inhabitants were called Cenimagni, comprehended the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, and Huntingdon, and that they, with other kingdoms in this island, submitted by their ambassadors to Cæsar; and that afterwards, in order to keep the people in subjection, the proprætor Ostorius Scapula, who was sent hither about the year of Christ 47[b], established garrisons, and disarmed the suspected people in various parts of the island [c].

Hampton Court Garden is a large plat, environed with an iron palisade round about next the park, laid all in walks, grass plats, and borders. Next to the house, some flat and broad beds are set with narrow rows of dwarf box, in figures like lace-patterns. In one of the letter gardens is a large green house divided into several rooms, and all of them with stoves under them, and fire to keep a continual heat. In these there are no orange or lemon trees, or myrtles, or any greens, but such tender foreign ones that need continual warmth.

I Will thank you to present to theSociety of Antiquaries a drawing and explanation of a marble monument or tablet fixed in a wall on the North-west side of the Tower of London, and in the apartments of the Deputy Lieutenant, called the Council Chamber. It was erected, as appears from the inscription, by Sir William Wade, knight, Lieutenant of the Tower in the year 1608, evidently with a view of perpetuating the infamy of the conspirators concerned in the Gunpowder plot. It is composed of marbles of several colours; see the annexed plate, in which the different inscriptions are (slightly sketched, and referred to by the letters A. B. C. D. E. and figures 1. 2. 3. 4. in the following pages.

I Have to beg of you to communicate to the Society the memoir herewith sent upon the first vacant occasion. The original is to be exhibited with the copy, which, if worth keeping, I intreat you to deposit in the Society's collection.

I have taken the liberty of inclosing to your Grace a slight drawing, which is a tolerably accurate representation of a curious antique font in the church in Thorpe Salvin, near Kiveton.

Will you allow me to submit to you some explanation of the drawing of the font at Thorpe Salvin, Yorkshire, which, by the condescension of his Grace the Duke of Leeds, has been lately communicated to the Society.

I conceive that four of the compartments represent the seasons of the year. Winter is figured by an old man warming himself before a fire in a chimney. Spring, by one riding out a hawking, as would probably appear from an attentive inspection of the original. Summer, by a man reaping corn and bundling it up into sheaves; and Autumn, by a husbandman sowing seed. The other compartments exhibit the ceremony of Baptism, with the parents and sponsors.