At a Council of the Society of Antiquaries held at Somerset House this day, I was authorised, as President, to address your Grace on the following subject:

A controversy of great interest has recently been engaged in as to the exact place of Cæsar's landing in Britain. Two essays of especial weight and value have lately appeared upon it: one by Mr. Lewin, separately published, the other by the Rev. Dr. Cardwell, late Principal of St. Alban's Hall, Oxford, which came forth in the Archæologia Cantiana of last year. Mr. Lewin contends that the landing place was at Hythe, and Dr. Cardwell that it was at Deal. The question between them seems to turn chiefly, if not entirely, upon the direction of the Channel tides. It is admitted that Caesar was off the Dover coast at three o'clock p.m. on the fourth day before the full moon (Aug. 27, B.C. 55), and the question is then, whether in that position the tides would have borne him to the north or to the south.

The Will of John or Hans Holbeine, recently discovered by Mr. Black in St. Paul's Cathedral, and communicated by him to the Society, with some remarks, on the 14th of February, 1861, has excited the interest not only of the Fellows of our Society, but also of artists and connoisseurs both in this country and abroad.

Having been invited to address to the Society any remarks which might occur to me on the subject of the communication from the Admiralty, I would first observe that the result of this investigation proves the great advantage of the course pursued by the President and Council, namely, that of referring to official authority for the determination of critical points applying to the question at issue. The Society have expressed so fully their sense of the liberality and courtesy of the First Lord and the Board of Admiralty, and the care bestowed on this matter by the Hydrographer, that it is needless for me to speak on that subject. I will therefore proceed to advert lightly to the history of these investigations, and state how the hydrographical inquiry undertaken by the Admiralty bears upon the matter.

The Will of Hans Holbein, discovered by Mr. Black, and so successfully identified in your recent communication to the Society, is a piece of historical evidence of which it is scarcely possible to over-estimate the value. It has, in fact, material influence upon the whole history of Art in this country for some years after its date, upsetting and contradicting an incalculable number of hasty and injudicious assertions, and rendering necessary a fresh series of investigations, to be conducted upon safer premises and with more careful conclusions than those which have satisfied the biographers and connoisseurs of former days.

As probably many of those who have heard the Correspondence with the Admiralty read have not made the subject of Cæsar's Invasion their particular study, it may be useful to state the precise question which the recent survey by the Admiralty was intended to settle. It is well known that the first invasion was in the year B.C. 55, and in the harvest month at the south of England, i.e. in August, and it is mentioned incidentally by Cæsar that the full moon occurred on the fourth day after his arrival. The expression is “post diem quartum quam est in Britanniam ventum” (Bell. Gall. iv. 28); and this, according to the Latin idiom, would mean the fourth day, not exclusive but inclusive of the day of arrival, as in the familiar passage of Cicero, “Neque te illo die, neque postero vidi … post diem tertium veni.” (Cicero, Philip, ii. 35.) The full moon here referred to has been ascertained by exact calculation to have occurred on the night of the 30th August, B.C. 55. The day of Cæsar's arrival therefore was on Sunday, 27th August. He tells us that he reached Britain himself at 10 A.M. and waited for the rest of his fleet until 3 P.M. when he advanced eight miles, with the tide in his favour, “et ventum et æstum uno tempore nactus secundum.” (Bell. Gall. iv. 23); so that, assuming him to have anchored off the cliffs between Dover and Sandgate, if he sailed with the flood-tide he would go eastward towards Deal, and if with the ebb tide he would go westward towards Hythe.

I beg to address you a few notes which have been suggested by the perusal of your interesting paper upon the contemporaries and successors of Holbein. It is not easy to over-estimate the value of the researches which you have brought to bear on the subject. The termination of Holbein's career, 1543, as shown by Mr. Black's discovery of his will, and confirmed by the Director's investigations, furnishes us with one of the most important turning-points in the early history of art in England that have been met with for many years.

It is now nearly two years since I had the honour of communicating to this Society an account of the discovery of flint implements fashioned by the hand of man, in undisturbed beds of gravel, sand, and clay, both on the Continent and in England.

The tablets which form the subject of the following communication are two of the most remarkable of those of the Ptolemaic period, which is not rich in inscribed monuments of this kind. There is, indeed, a series of tablets of this period in the British Museum, and others are in the Louvre at Paris. None of them, however, surpass in interest those now to be described, which relate to the family of Pasherenptah. It will be seen from their contents that they shed great light on the mythology of the Ptolemaic period, add to our knowledge of the annals of the Lagidæ, and afford additional facts with regard to the functions and organisation of the Egyptian hierarchy.

The most careless student of the Antonine Itinerary cannot fail to remark its frequent discrepancies; not only will he find stations mentioned which it is very difficult to identify, but distances given as terminating at points where not only are no evidences of former occupation to be found, but where (in some instances) none can be supposed to have existed. Should, however, the impress of Roman occupation be yet discernible, the Roman name of the site has frequently been either lost or misappropriated.

It is not without reason that singularities in the tenure of land have always excited considerable interest among antiquaries. For in that state of society which prevailed in Europe during the middle ages, the relation of the individual to the soil on which he lived determined his most important relations with his fellow men and his political and social condition. An accurate and minute acquaintance with the nature of tenures is therefore an object of no slight consequence with the student of medieval history.

By the kind permission of William Selby Lowndes, Esq., I have the pleasure of sending you four illuminations, on vellum, for inspection by the Society of Antiquaries. From the alphabetical table at the foot and back of one of them they seem to have belonged to a MS. law treatise of about the time of King Henry VI.; to which reign, from several points in the illuminations themselves, as well as from the character of the writing, I attribute the date of these interesting representations of the King's four superior courts at Westminster.

The surface of that part of Europe which lies between the Baltic and the German Ocean on the north, and the Carpathians, the Sudeten Gebirge, the Riesengebirge, Thüringerwald, and Hartz on the south, is composed of sand or clay, and affords no other building stone than granitic boulders, supposed to have been transported thither from the Scandinavian mountains. These boulders furnished the stone from which many churches were built in the twelfth and earlier part of the thirteenth centuries; but the deposit being superficial was soon exhausted, and the hardness of the material precluded the use of ornamental detail.

As no one appreciates more justly than yourself the value and importance of early heraldry in archæological pursuits, I address to you this communication, the object of which is to bring before the Society of Antiquaries a Roll of Arms comprised in the MS. No. 6589 of the Harleian Collection. Unfortunately nothing is known of the original, nor does it appear to whom it at any time belonged. The copy in the Harleian Collection was written in 1606 by Nicholas Charles, Lancaster Herald, who supposed the original to be of the time of Henry III. Judging from internal evidence, it is not quite so early; yet it should seem to have been not later than about 1280. It will be seen from the copy which follows, that it consisted of about 180 coats, comprising the arms of the emperors of Germany and Constantinople, and of most of the kings of Christendom, of several French and German dukes and counts, and about an equal number of English coats, among which are those of a few earls and several barons; and intermixed with the English arms are others with French names prefixed, possibly those of persons from the English dominions in the south of France.

By permission of the Right Hon. the Earl of Verulam I am enabled to exhibit to the Society of Antiquaries a folio MS. volume which contains an account of the Treaty held at Newport in the Isle of Wight in the months of September, October, and November, 1648, between King Charles I. and certain Commissioners appointed by the Parliament.

Roux-Mesnil est un modeste village dont le nom rappelle le conquérant de la Normandie. Il est situé au milieu de la plaine qui sépare la vallée de la Scie de celle de la Varenne, à une distance à peu près égale du château d'Arques et de la ville de Dieppe. L'église de ce hameau, abandonnée en 1812 et complètement détruite en 1839, était située au milieu des champs labourés, dans un bosquet planté d'arbres et de pommiers, qui forment au sein de la campagne un verdoyant oasis.

The first of the two following rolls, the entire blazon of which has never before appeared in print, has for many years been preserved in the Library of the Society of Antiquaries. How or when it came into their possession does not appear, and the only fact that has been ascertained as to its previous history is, that about the year 1610 it was in the custody of Nicholas Charles, then Lancaster Herald, to whose pains we owe the preservation of the second roll, known of late by his name, and now also published for the first time.

I beg leave to lay before the Society of Antiquaries a further report of my researches in the Anglo-Saxon Burial Ground at Long Wittenham, which were renewed in the summer and autumn of last year, with the kind co-operation of the Vicar, the Rev. J. C. Clutterbuck. These researches terminated earlier than I anticipated, and the result appears to show that the cemetery did not extend beyond the limits of the plot of ground called “the Free Acre,” described in my former report. I may mention that I have since ascertained that this plot was formerly known as the “Town Furlong,” and that its enclosures were levelled and obliterated about sixty years since.

Three interesting Coptic papyri have lately been brought from Egypt by Mr. Stuart Glennie, forming an important addition to those which have already been obtained by different recent travellers, and of which a very considerable number is now in the collection of the British Museum.

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.

The interest which you so kindly took in the communication that I made to the Society at the beginning of the present year upon the portrait at Windsor Castle, presumed to represent Prince Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII., induces me to address this letter to you. I do so the more willingly as it enables me to state the result of a few investigations begun at your suggestion, and also to acknowledge the liberal assistance I received from various sources whilst prosecuting my researches.