In turning my attention lately to some parts of our Anglo-Saxon history, I was struck by the obscurity attending the nature and extent of the authority pertaining to those shadowy sovereigns, called by the Saxon chronicler Bretwaldas; a name which writers of the 19th century have usually adopted to distinguish them. “Whether,” says Turner, “this was a mere title assumed by Hengist, and afterwards by Ella, and continued by the most successful Anglo-Saxon prince of his day, or conceded in any national council of all the Anglo-Saxons, or ambitiously assumed by the Saxon King that most felt and pressed his temporary power; whether it was in imitation of the British unbenneath, or a continuation of the Saxon custom of electing a war cyning, cannot now be ascertained.”—Vol. i. p. 331 (1828.)

The antiquities I have the honour, by the Duke of Bedford's permission, of transmitting an account of to the Society of Antiquaries, were found on two different parts of his Grace's estate during the spring of the years 1844 and 1845. Those to which the attention will be directed first are two small statues, with a sepulchral amphora and its contents, discovered together at the earlier period, by some labourers whilst they were engaged in cutting a drain betwixt Wansford and King's Cliffe, and upon the western side of an extensive wood, called Bedford Purlieus. From the proximity of this spot to the Ermine Street, to Castor, Alwalton, and Chesterton, places whose names alone are indicative of Roman possession, and whose soil has at various times disclosed abundant memorials of this early occupation, it might not unreasonably be expected that similar evidences would be extensively scattered throughout the district. The direct trending of the road by the side of which these remains were discovered, renders it far from improbable that it was one of those vicinal ways that fed the great military one traversing this part of England; and that funeral memorials should have been placed in such a locality is a circumstance far from unusual.

Among the various subjects of inquiry suggested by the numerous Greek Vases recently discovered in Etruria, there is one that has been little pursued, although it appears to me to be replete with interest. It is true that the duc de Luynes, in the able description of one vase belonging to himself, has set the example, but it has been but little followed. The inquiry to which I allude is the significance of the various objects depicted on the shields of divinities and heroes, and the degree in which they may serve to identify the personages that bear them.

The object of the present communication is to lay before the Society of Antiquaries of London, first, a concise history of the extraordinary variations of opinion among the antiquaries who have devoted themselves to the study of the Roman antiquities of Britain, respecting the site of a station the name of which is preserved by Antonine, Cambodunum or Camulodunum, the copies of the Itinerary varying; and secondly, a piece of evidence which I have lately discovered which seems to me to go very far towards determining this long doubtful and unsettled question. I may add that if the evidence which will be produced is thought sufficient to establish the point, the opinion respecting the site of Cambodunum which has now for more than half a century had possession of the public mind will be shewn to be untenable, and a course of one of the principal roads made, or at least used, by the Romans, be shewn to be drawn with more of the wisdom which is justly attributed to that wise and noble people.

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.

It is perhaps not generally known that the different archives of France are full of documents of the greatest interest to English history, many of them dating back to a remote period when such documents are less common than in more recent times. The archives of the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, by far the most difficult of access to foreigners, is especially rich in records of different kinds relating to the affairs of this country during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and in a recent visit to Paris I obtained, through a friend, copies of a few letters of Henrietta Maria (the Queen of Charles I.) and of Oliver Cromwell, which you may perhaps think worthy to be laid before the Society.

On making some researches amongst the Records of the Corporation, assisted by our able and intelligent officer Mr. Firth, my attention was led by him to a History of the Muster of the Citizens in the reign of King Henry VIII., contained in the Journal, No. 14, folio 166.

An old and valuable Fellow of our Society having at a recent meeting invited the junior branches to transmit communications, I have thought that the account of this Muster might form an interesting Paper, and I have therefore copied it, and forward it to you herewith.

In the general confusion of the Middle Ages, one class of the people, the burghers or inhabitants of cities and fortified towns, alone succeeded in preserving something approaching to real independence. This independence was not, as it has become a sort of maxim in law to believe, a boon granted from the Crown by the Norman monarchs, but it was a right arising out of uninterrupted possession from a period of remote antiquity. It is by a comparison with what happened on the continent of Europe that we can best understand the manner in which such independence was preserved in our own island. An eminent French antiquary, M. Raynouard, has clearly proved that the Roman municipia (or civic corporations) in Gaul survived the invasions of tlie Barbarians, and he has traced them through various modifications in name and form, though they remained the same in spirit, under the different races of the Frankish monarchs. The more extensive researches which have since been made, under the directions of MM. Guizot and Augustin Thierry, fully confirm the opinions of Raynouard on this subject. There can be little doubt that this was equally the case in Britain, where the circumstances were precisely the same. When the Barbarians began to settle in the Roman provinces, the fortified towns, often obstinately defended, opposed the greatest difficulty to the invaders.

I beg to submit through you to the Society of Antiquaries, drawings, from actual admeasurement, by Mr. C. W. Edmonds, of that interesting monument of the Celtic period, popularly known as “Wayland Smith's Cave,” (PI. XVII.) situated at Ashbury, in the county of Berks.

At a period when Antiquarian researches are prosecuted with so much zeal and vigour, anything that may assist our knowledge of the manners and customs of the early races in Britain cannot but prove interesting. We are, it is to be hoped, no longer in danger of seeing the most curious remains of antiquity gradually perishing under the united assaults of ignorance and cupidity.

The following description of the Church of Mạ́rtula Máriam in Abessinia, built by the Empress Helena in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and restored by the Jesuits in the century following, the ruins of which were discovered by me during my recent journey in that country, may perhaps be considered of sufficient interest to be submitted to the Society of Antiquaries.

I send you, according to promise, a few remarks on the interesting brass and inscription which you exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries at their last meeting,

The interest which, at the last meeting of your Society, you appeared to take in the traditions connected with the cromlech known as that of Wayland Smith, described in the paper by Mr. Akerman, has encouraged me to offer a few remarks on the subject, which, though not possessing much novelty, have not hitherto been, I think, laid before English readers in a connected form. As Mr. Akerman has observed, the Antiquaries of former days have treated with too much contempt the local legends connected with the monuments of our early forefathers; and through their neglect we have lost irretrievably a large portion of the valuable materials which connected the popular belief of our peasantry hardly a hundred years ago with the mythology of our forefathers at a remote period, when it differed comparatively little from the other branches of the same primeval stock which are now so widely separated. During a century these materials, the popular legends and traditions of the peasantry have been rapidly disappearing before the march of modern improvements; and I would earnestly impress upon the members of this Society the utility of collecting and preserving as many of them as still exist.

Among the many interesting objects which have been brought to light in the progress of the restoration of Hereford Cathedral, a work which, I am proud to say, is entirely worthy of the congratulations and admiration of every lover of ecclesiastical architecture, and its noble achievements of early periods, that which supplies materials for the present communication will not be the least entitled to the notice of the Society of Antiquaries.

Herbert, in his edition of Ames's Typographical Antiquities, at the end of the Account of the Books printed by Machlinia, the contemporary of Caxton, says,

“A Chronicle of England,

“Partly written, and partly printed, on paper and vellum; was in the possession of the late John Anstis, Esq., Garter. It is a miscellaneous piece, and has printed in it, First, ‘The promise of Matrimonie.’ Second, ‘The Lettre annuelle port.’ Third, ‘The obligation of Nisi.’ Fourth, ‘Tharticles of the Convencion, bitwene the Frensshe King and the Duke of Austrice, late called due of Burgoine.’ Quarto.” Dr. Dibdin, in the later unfinished edition of Ames, copies this paragraph: adding that he was not able to enlarge the account.

By the kindness of Miss Gurney of North Repps, in Norfolk, I am permitted to lay before your Lordship and the Society a jewel or ornament, (Plate VII. fig. 1.) composed of an ancient cast from a gold coin of the Emperor Mauricius, set into gold of rough workmanship, with a ring or loop at top to suspend it by, and bits of red glass or stones, let in, in a double row on that side which bears the obverse of the coin, forming a border to it. To these rather a rich appearance is given by bits of stamped gold being placed under each.

In the paper which I had the honour of communicating to the Society of Antiquaries last year on the Origin and History of the Badge of Edward Prince of Wales, I stated that there was no contemporary authority for the popular idea that the Ostrich Feathers were derived from the Crest of the King of Bohemia who was slain at Crecy, and that it could not be traced to any earlier writer than Camden.

An accident, which in historical and antiquarian investigations often supplies information, when all the obvious and direct sources of knowledge have been exhausted, has just shewn me that I was mistaken, and I lose no time in submitting to the Society what I have discovered on the subject.

As I believe I was the first to draw public attention to the absence of all contemporaneous authority for the derivation of the badge and motto of the Prince of Wales from the personal insignia of John King of Bohemia, slain at the battle of Cressy, and to express my doubts in consequence respecting such an origin, I read with much pleasure the interesting paper of Sir N. Harris Nicolas, in the last published part of the Archæologia, and now venture to offer a few remarks in further illustration of the subject.

The history of Britain, during the latter years of its existence as a Roman province, is that of a series of rebellious usurpations in opposition or rivalry to the wearer of the imperial purple at Rome; and the manner in which these usurpations were carried on proves not only how the Romano-British population of this island had become essentially Roman in its character, but that the imperial power was fast drawing towards an end. About the middle of the fifth century, as the communications with Rome were cut off by the inroads and conquests of the barbarians in the other provinces, another race, of whom we are in the habit of speaking collectively as the Saxons, who had certainly been settled on the eastern coasts of Britain for years, and who had joined in supporting the Romano-British usurpers, began to contend for mastery in the island. In the dim cloud that envelopes the subsequent history, we can just trace the faint outlines of civil contention, until in the course of the latter half of the fifth century the different tribes of Germanic invaders had established their power over the greater part of what is now called England.

In a letter dated St. Petersburg, the 15th of March last, which I have received from Prince Alexander Labanoff, the accomplished editor of the “Correspondence of Queen Mary of Scots,” he expresses anxiety to ascertain the opinion of the best English antiquaries respecting the alleged residence of that princess at Hardwick Hall, now, as is well known, the property of the Duke of Devonshire. He states, that in 1839 some doubts were expressed to him by le savant Dr. Hunter, meaning, I conclude, our esteemed brother-member of the Society of Antiquaries the Rev. Joseph Hunter, whether in reality Queen Mary had ever been at Hardwick. At the time when those doubts were expressed to him, Prince Labanoff did not concur in them; but, on a further comparison of dates and consideration of circumstances, he has become convinced that those doubts are perfectly well founded. “After long research,” says he, “I am bound to acknowledge that no trace exists of any visit of Mary Stuart to Hardwick Hall; on the contrary, her correspondence appears to prove that she never was at that place.”

During the autumn of 1845 I employed workmen to trench some ground at Chesterford, called the “Borough Field,” a great part of which had been previously dug by the parish for gravel, and produced a great variety of Roman remains. The remainder, however, to the extent of half an acre, never having been disturbed, gave good promise of a successful search, which was afterwards amply fulfilled.