The following Letters need but little introduction on my part. They may be left to tell their own story, and may be useful to illustrate or to correct the history of the period to which they belong. I am indebted to one who is most conversant with that history for the headings prefixed, within brackets, to such of the letters as seemed to him to require some such elucidation. For the letters themselves, and for permission to transcribe them, the Society is under obligations to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and in particular to the courtesy of the Rev. Frederick Chalker, who filled the office of Librarian at that college in the year 1861, when I was allowed access to the valuable collection under his charge. The volume containing them is thus designated in Coxe's Catalogus Codicum MSS. qui in Collegiis Aulisque Oxoniensibus hodie adservantur. Pars. ii. 160, “cccxviij. Codex Chartaceus, in folio, ff. 229, sec. xvij. Ricardi Davis de Sandford Collectaneorum volumen secundum.” The series of Wotton Letters is immediately preceded by one from Henry VIII. to Secretary Knight. So far as I can ascertain, the letters here published are unedited. Their number might easily have been increased from other quarters, and especially from the Collection of State Papers in the Record Office. The present specimens, however, go far to cover the ground occupied by the writer in his diplomatic capacity at Venice and the Hague, while the last of them gives us a glimpse into his private life.

I have had placed in my hands by B. B. Woodward, Esq., F.S.A., the Queen's Librarian, a Map of the World, which he has found in Her Majesty's Library at Windsor, in the collection of papers in the handwriting of Leonardo da Vinci. Mr. Woodward's object in sending it to me was that I might ascertain as nearly as possible the date of its construction, from the nature of the geographical information which it contained. It was evident at a glance that, apart from the value attaching to it from its connection with so illustrious a name as that of Leonardo da Vinci, the map possessed an intrinsic interest in connection with the history of geography and cartography, inasmuch as it not only belonged to a period fertile in geographical discoveries, though scantily represented by maps which have come to our knowledge, but contained delineations of a stage in those discoveries not represented at all in any map with which I am acquainted. Independently of this, it happens to possess some special points of priority of information, which have led me to think it desirable to submit it, with the following notice of its contents, to the attention of the Society of Antiquaries.

In the autumn of the last year, on my way back from Newcastle, after the meeting of the British Association, I passed through Chester; a city which, for the antiquary, the archaeologist, and the architect, possesses peculiar charms; and which I never visit without renewed interest. On this occasion however I found Chester to be gradually changing its former character, in consequence of the overpowering influence of the railroad system, which makes it the great centre of the lines of communication in that district. At the station a very large hotel had been erected; and that undertaking having proved successful has probably led to similar speculations in the city itself. The principal hotel in the main street has been taken down, and is now being rebuilt; and in the adjoining street, Bridge Street, another large old inn, known as “The Feathers” (the site of the remains I am about to describe), has been destroyed. Many new and magnificent houses and shops are now occupying the places of the picturesque old wooden buildings of earlier times; but I am glad to perceive that the peculiar feature of Chester domestic architecture, the “Rows,” is still retained; though the ambulatories now constructed are much higher and lighter than the old passages.

Without at present attempting to discuss the question whether a city, town, or village occupied the present site of the city of London before the Roman invasion of this country, it is enough for the purpose of this paper to assume as a fixed fact, resting on irresistible evidence and which all parties admit, that the existing area of the city proper, that is, the space between the walls and gates which stood a little more than a century ago, was (with the exception of the Blackfriars' precinct) occupied by the Romans up to the time when their legions were recalled to the continent, and the Roman government ceased in this island. But. that the whole of this area was originally the city, is not, I believe, asserted by any antiquaries or historians; it is evidently too large to have been originally selected or laid out for a city, being capable of containing several of the cities and towns which were built and walled in by the Romans in this country.

In April of the year 1854 I had the honour of addressing to you a letter on the subject of a tessellated pavement of considerable beauty which was discovered in Bishopsgate Street in digging for the foundation of Gresham House. That paper was subsequently printed in the thirty-sixth volume of the Archæologia, and at page 209 the following passage occurs :—

“In the summer of 1853 the excavations on the north side of the Tower on Tower Hill showed in situ distinct remains of Roman work in part of the inclosure wall of Roman London on that side.

In the discussion which took place on the reading of my former paper on this subject, on the 26th of November last, remarks were made which want of time prevented me from answering. I now, therefore, propose to lay before the Society some of my further thoughts on this subject, and, first, to answer some of those remarks.

It is a commonly received opinion that London was planted by the Romans, and that before their arrival London had no existence. In the following remarks I propose—1. To show that London was, ab origine, a British city. 2. To endeavour to define what was the primitive site of it; and 3. To point out the gradual growth of London under the Roman domination.

Sir Harris Nicolas printed in the Testamenta Vetusta an Abstract of the Will of the Lady Alice West of Hinton Marcel, widow of Sir Thomas West, dated in 1395, and proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury.

The papers which have been recently published in our Archæologia have established, and in some measure illustrated, the important fact in the history of art, that the great painter Hans Holbein died in the year 1543, eleven years sooner than his biographers had previously supposed.

The value of Wills and Inventories as exponents of the domestic lives of our ancestors cannot be too highly estimated. To them we must look as to the most fertile sources from whence a knowledge is to be obtained of that curious unwritten history, the history of the people. The glimpses they afford of domestic manners are all the more precious, because of their rarity elsewhere.

1. The portrait of Queen Katharine of Arragon, engraved in Miss Strickland's Lives of the Queens, seems to be the counterpart of a picture formerly in the Lee Priory Collection, and now in the National Portrait Gallery. In this picture the eyes are very dark grey; but in all other portraits that I have seen they are either paler grey or blue.

The curious article which you have entrusted to me for exhibition to the Society of Antiquaries has at least three claims to the attention of that body ;—1st, as an authentic memorial of a celebrated person; 2nd, as an excellent specimen of a curious description of mathematical and nautical instrument, long superseded in actual practice, but full of interest in the history of the sciences to which it relates; and, 3rd, as a production of a skilful artist in this kind of work whose name has fallen out of remembrance.

The Portus Lemanis must clearly have been one of the great thoroughfares between Britain and the Continent, and it is not a little singular that the position of a port once so famous should never have been satisfactorily settled. The common impression is that it lay at the foot of Lymne Hill. For the benefit of those who are not familiar with this neighbourhood, I should mention, in limine, that the village of Lymne or Lympne stands about 2½ miles to the west of Hythe, on the highest part of the cliff which girds in the eastern portion of Romney Marsh. On the declivity of the hill, about half-way down, is seen the old Roman castrum, called Stuttfall, occupying 10 or 12 acres. There are walls on the north, east, and west, and the east and west walls run down to the marsh itself; but, what is remarkable, the south side towards the marsh had never any wall,” and hence the erroneous notion so generally prevalent that at the foot of the castrum was once the Portus Lemanis, and that in the course of ages the sea retired from Lymne, when the port shifted to West Hythe, and that the sea again retired, when the port was transferred to Hythe. I shall endeavour to show that these changes, if they ever occurred, must have preceded the historic period, and that in the time of the Romans, as for many centuries afterwards, the only port was Hythe. In fact Portus and Hythe are the same thing, Portus in Latin being Hyð in Saxon.

I propose to lay before the Society this evening some documents which appear to possess a certain interest as illustrating the administration of the Criminal Law in the reign of Edward I. One of these papers relates to the tribunal held under the presidency of the Justices of Trailbaston, the institution of which is one of the obscure events in our legal annals. I have written a few observations with a view to explain the nature of these papers, and their bearing upon the legal and social history of the country.

I beg to lay before the Society a few notes on an historical portrait, which I was so fortunate as to discover recently at Windsor Castle, and the original of which Her Majesty has been most graciously pleased to permit to be exhibited to the Society this evening.

On the 23rd of November last, I took occasion, in the course of some remarks on Dr. Thurnam's paper on the Wiltshire Long Barrows, to mention the titles of some papers which I had in my mind to communicate to this Society in the course of the present session; one of them was, “On the Roman Ports in Kent and Sussex.” Immediately afterward I was surprised by a discourse, pronounced in your hearing, by Mr. Lewin, who undertook to identify Hythe with the “Portus Lemanis.” My own views of the subject being quite at variance with the theory of that learned gentleman, I would have delivered myself, on the spot, of the sentiments which I entertained respecting his communication, while it was fresh before us; but the time was then too far advanced to permit a discussion, and the present date was therefore assigned to me as a peremptory term for answering the case set up by the learned advocate of Hythe.

On the beautiful domain of Trelowarren there are, in good preservation, very remarkable subterranean chambers, which appear to have been unknown to Dr. Borlase, the county antiquary, and are mentioned by one only of the Cornish historians, Polwhele. Polwhele's description, however, being unaccompanied by plans or accurate measurements, is of little use to the archæologist, and no more may be gathered from his remarks than that those galleries were not in his day, about fifty years ago, so easily to be investigated as at the present time.

At a time when the worked flints discovered in such profusion near Pressigny le Grand are attracting so much attention among French archaeologists, it seems probable that a few remarks upon them, and upon the controversy to which they have given rise, may be of interest to this Society.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century the town of Royston had entirely lost its monastic character. For more than half a century its venerable priory had been dissolved; the solemn chant was no longer heard within its walls; the holy brotherhood had been dispersed, and the youngest among them before this time had probably paid the debt of nature. A new era had arrived. The site of the priory, with the buildings upon it, and a manor, including a great part of the town, had been sold to Mr. Robert Chester, one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber to King Henry VIII., and the conventual edifices had been converted into a private mansion. About the same time as the priory, the free hospital of St. James and St. John of Jerusalem, and the free chapel of St. Nicholas, had been secularized; and the hermitage at the cross, beneath which lay the long-concealed but since celebrated cave or oratory, had been transformed by the lord of the manor into a market house and a prison, designed for the use of both sides of the parish, then newly created.

A good deal of attention has been bestowed on the crystal balls supposed to possess magical powers, and in which visions of the unseen world might be revealed to those who had sufficient faith in the powers of these wonderful mirrors. I do not propose entering into any discussion on the merits of these crystals; but I will with your permission lay before you, from among the State Papers of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, some curious documents bearing upon alchemy, magical glasses, and magic in general.