The drawing now exhibited is made from one of those curious historical paintings which have been long since introduced to the notice of this Society by our late learned Vice President Sir Joseph Ayloffe, Baronet, in an account of some ancient historical paintings at Cowdray in Sussex, published in the Transactions of this Society, Archaeologia, vol. III. p. 239—272. In that memoir may be seen a minute description of many of those valuable representations which preserve several interesting parts of our national events, and exhibit to our view the state of the arts, and the dresses, manners, and usages, which prevailed amongst our ancestors about the middle of the sixteenth century.

After returning you my best thanks for the favour of your letter of Nov. 27., 1784, wherein you are so obliging as to impart to me an account of your late and further discoveries of antiquities on Stanton-Moor in the county of Derby, with drawings of the urns which you was then so fortunate as to find, I should be wanting in gratitude did I not communicate to you, in return, my sentiments upon them, in hope that they may prove acceptable to you.

You know my opinion as to the originality of the Hebrew language: to this you must attribute the trouble I am now giving you.

If there was a time when all the inhabitants of the world spoke Hebrew, then we are justified in our attempts at tracing to that primary source any word in any language spoken on the habitable globe: and an argument connected with these data, though it may not carry conviction with it, will not, I hope, be considered, primâ facie, as absurd and impossible.

Dr. Stukeley exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries, Nov. 9, 1763, drawings of a compleat pack of cards copied from the pasteboard cover of an old book made up of several layers of cards. These were purchased at the sale of the Doctor's coins, May 15, 1766, by the late Mr. Tutet, a worthy and learned member of this Society, who bound them up in his neat and careful manner in two volumes, inserting in the first leaf of the first volume the following account of them.

Since the last paper which I had the honour to lay before the Society, giving some account of a picture representing lord Burleigh with three others playing at cards, I have found some confirmation that those exhibited in the hand of one of these players, relate to Primero, because the Sydney Papers mention that queen Elizabeth formed a party at this game with the Lord Treasurer, Mr. Secretary, and the Lord North.

You have expressed a wish that I should give you as exact an account as I am able of the discoveries which have lately been made by the workmen who were employed in digging a new sewer in Lombard-street and Birchin-lane. In matters of this sort minute exactness as to situation can be of little importance, but the modern custom of numbering the houses will enable me to point out the places of most of the ruins with tolerable accuracy. Some small progress had been made in the work before I heard of it. About the latter end of October I was informed by a friend that many fragments of old pavement were dug up, and on enquiring I found that not only pavements, but walls, some coins, and numberless fragments of earthen ware of various forms and sorts were daily discovered which bore the most undoubted evidence of their antiquity and their Roman origin. I shall endeavour to give you first an account of the discoveries of the pavements and walls, in order to the understanding which you will recollect that Lombard-street runs nearly from the Mansion-house at the West to Gracechurch-street at the East end, and consequently that Birchin-lane runs nearly from Lombard-street South to Cornhill North.

I take the liberty to send your Lordship the thoughts which have occurred to me on seeing the famous Roman urn, called the Barberini Vase, in the collection of the late duchess dowager of Portland. I should have had the honour of sending this account many months ago, if I could have procured a tolerable drawing of it; or the engraving made from it by Bartolozzi, after the celebrated Cypriani's drawing. Indeed, two such artists as those only could do justice to so admirable an original.

Mr. Willis, in endeavouring to ascertain the place where some battles were fought between Edmund Ironside and Canute, which are mentioned by our old historians in such a manner as to have left the spot doubtful to Mr. Camden and others, observes, that Dr. Stukeley, in his letter to lord Pembroke, speaking of Figbury-ring, near Salisbury, says, “To the east is Clarendon, which your lordship first observed “from old writings ought to be called Clorendun, from the fa-“mous camp half a mile off the park near the Roman road; “this was made or repaired by Constantius Chlorus, father of “Constantine the Great: this camp therefore properly written “is Chloridunum, being a beautiful fortification of a round form, “on a dry chalky hill.”

The attention of the Society has been lately much taken up with the explanation given by M. Gebelin of the Taunton inscription in New England. That French author being inclined to ascribe the inscription on the rock to Phœnicians or Carthaginians, I beg leave to offer a few observations thereon.

As the notice and preservation of such antiquities as relate to the royal families of this kingdom is one of the objects of this Society, I take the liberty of exhibiting to it a curiosity which has lately fallen into my hands, together with some observations I have made thereon, and such others as have been communicated to me by our worthy member Mr. Brooke, Somerset herald.

A notion seems generally to have prevailed, that where neither Ecclesia nor Presbyter is entered in a clause of Domesday Book, it may be inferred that at the time the survey was made there was not a church in any of the districts to which the clauses refer. The late bishop Lyttelton and doctor Nash have countenanced this idea, and the silence of this venerable record is considered by Mr. Pegge as a formidable answer to the reasons advanced by Mr. Brooke to shew, that the church of Aldbrough in Yorkshire was a Saxon building.

Whatever ground there may be for supposing the city of Winchester to have been built near 1000 years before Christ, there seems to be no doubt of its having been a Roman station, and probably one of their cities; a pavement of brick, and coins of Constantine the Great, and others, were discovered in digging the foundations of the palace, which was begun by Charies II. It is said to have had formerly six gates, four principal of which still subsist. The Britons called it Caer-Gwent, or the White City, from its chalky situation, and it is agreed to be the Roman Venta Belgarum of Ptolemy and Antoninus.

This letter brings to your hands and accompanies some curious specimens of Roman antiquities found at Sandy in Bedfordshire, and at Lincoln; such as, I believe, are quite novel and nondescript as to England.

In making a common-sewer along Lombard-street in the autumn of the year 1785 and the following winter, the labourers met with a great number of Romaan antiquities, particularly tesselated pavements and earthen ware. The first pavement that I have heard of was near Sherborn-lane, and was composed of bricks about an inch square, and bedded in very firm mortar. Between this and the Post-office a wall was found perforated perpendicularly by two flues, one circular, the other square. Opposite the Port-office was dug up a foundation (or floor) of common Roman bricks, each about eighteen inches by twelve in size.

The institution proposed for the subject of the following memoir, is of very ancient and even divine original: and as it has undergone, at times and in different countries, so many alterations and revolutions, and I may add such horrible and scandalous abuses, the history of its various fate and fortune may deservedly become a proper object of enquiry and elucidation.

An inscription which we find in the Vigna Giustiniani at Rome contains these words; “Signum æreum Panthéum.” The existence of Panthéa is therefore certain. But what is it that constitutes a Panthéum? Upon this point we have nothing but conjecture to guide us.

You do not want to be informed that the introduction of Parochial Registers was in consequence of the injunctions of Thomas Lord Cromwell. From whence he formed his resolution of bringing them into general use is not apparent; but their utility and advantage to posterity could not escape his sagacity and discernment. As he had lived abroad, and consequently had much intercourse with men of different countries, from these he might have formed his opinions, and at a fit season have carried them into execution. The known period when this was done makes the supposition no ways improbable; it being certain that in Spain it had been in use many years before. Very few years have elapsed since the place where, and time when, the famous Cervantes was born, and baptised, were known. Some Antiquaries of late among his countrymen have made it a point to investigate the matter with precision and indisputable certainty, by means of registers of churches still in being.

There is great reason to apologize for offering observations on our ecclesiastical architecture, which has already been so ably discussed by many eminent members of this Society. But as a minuter attention to it, than was consistent with their more general plans, has suggested ideas different from those advanced, and presented new views of the subject, I am emboldened, through your obliging intervention, to submit them to the candour and judgement of this learned and respectable body.