Bound up with other additional matter in the heirloom copy of Wren's Parentalia, on which I read a short paper on the 17th June, 1909;, is an engraving by Hulsbergh. It is an emblematical design of a pyramid dotted with medallions, on each of which is written the name of a Wren building and a reference number. At the sides are two tables giving the costs of each building, set out to the uttermost farthing. No doubt many students of Wren have wondered, as I did, where Hulsbergh got these detailed figures, and by good fortune I have found their source in Bodley's Library, Oxford.

Sir Henry Ellis, Lingard, and others have called attention to the irregularity of the entries relating to churches and priests in the Domesday Survey, and have consequently disparaged the evidence that the Survey affords of ecclesiastical organization of the eleventh century. Although there is some truth in their assertions, yet there are certain points which evolve from a study of the subject which I venture to think are worthy of the consideration of this Society.

The authorities relied upon for the following account of the Abbey Church and treasures of St.-Denis are in the first instance the three well-known published volumes:—

Jacques Doublet: Histoire de … S. Denys. Paris, 1625. 4to.

S. G. Millet: Le Tresor Sacré … de Sainct-Denis (4me éd.). Paris, 1645. 12mo.

Michel Félibien: Histoire de … Saint-Denys. Paris, 1706. fol.

I shall cite these frequently by the initial letters, D, M, and F.

It has been thought, with a good deal of reason for such an opinion, that the age of a quarry or a rock-cut tomb may be determined by the apparent character of the tooling of surfaces. This is most easily defined in the following way.

Bronze Age tooling of rock surfaces of a soft kind, subsequently hardened with age, may perhaps be detected by the marks of a celt driven with a mallet, or possibly a heavy stone. The cut of the implement is short and deep, and of course leaves a rougher surface than the single-handed pick of iron. With the introduction of iron tools the work of finishing surfaces as well as of cutting into the stone seems to have been executed with single-handed picks having points or cutting edges of variable width. At a later period came the use of the chiselshaped pick with serrated edge. It is doubtful whether this was used in the Levant previous to the Byzantine or Constantinian era. The use of the chiselshaped pick causes a long sweeping cut on the stone, an effect also produced by mere chopping sideways with the stone-mason's chopper. The chopper and the chisel-pick play a great part in the finishing off of the elaborate rock-cuttings of the Levant.

From the foregoing it will be noticed that little more than a distinction into the two classes of work done with iron implements, and work done without iron implements, can be attempted for chronological purposes as far as the evidence on rock surfaces survives. The quarries and tombs of Cyprus referred to in the following notes must be considered to belong to the iron implement class; in other words, to the Graeco-Roman and Byzantine history of the island.

The ‘Prison of Saint Catharine’ is an ancient monument on the outskirts of the ruins of Salamis, on the east coast of Cyprus. It consists of two chambers, of which the inner, rectangular with gable roof east-to-west and door at one end, is cut out of a single block of limestone, and roofed with another, which projects slightly above the modern surface of the ground. The junction of the two blocks is about half-way up the gable roof. The outer chamber is much larger and lies transversely to the inner, with its long axis north and south, and the inner chamber door in the middle of its west wall. Nearly opposite in the east wall is the outer entrance, approached from ground-level by a descent of rough steps, between walls of large squared masonry, now much damaged. The walls of the outer chamber consist of enormous upright slabs, crowned by a massive cornice, of a wide cavetto between two fillets, of which the upper projects considerably beyond the lower. On this cornice rests a semicircular vault of very large stones, the largest of which are set on end and occupy as much as a third of the vault. Within, they are carefully dressed, like the wall surfaces, but outside they were left rough, and have suffered further damage from exposure. They were not, however, intended to be seen, for there are remains of an outer casing of massive squared masonry, consisting of a cornice below, of the same profile as that of the vaulted chamber; and over this a plinth of three courses, the upper and lower plain, the middle bearing a simple cyma moulding, convex above. One course of the wall face is traceable still above the plinth, about half-way up the vault. The ends of the vault above the cornice are filled with rough walling, mostly recent, but including a number of stones from the plinth. A breach in the north wall serves as an entrance now, with a modern flight of steps. The building is now buried up to the level of the cornice and the great roof-slab, in a low mound; but the natural ground-level is only about a metre lower.

After two short seasons spent in investigating the high terrace of the lower Thames, it was considered desirable to examine the gravel of a tributary, in order to equate if possible the various deposits in the two valleys, and to confirm or correct the sequence deduced from former excavatións at home and abroad. Two sites near Rickmansworth, at and just below the junction of the Gade and Colne rivers, have been known for years as productive of palaeoliths, and every facility was readily afforded for examining the gravel in pits at Croxley Green and Mill End by the respective owners, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and Lord Rendlesham, and the lessees, the RickmansworthGravel Co., Ltd., and Messrs. Horwood Bros. Leave of absence was granted by the Trustees of the British Museum, and nine days were devoted to the work in October, the means being provided from a fund under the control of our Vice-President, Sir Hercules Read, Keeper of the Department concerned. Assistance from the geological side was given unofficially by Mr. Dewey, of H.M. Geological Survey, who has read through the paper in manuscript, and contributes an appendix dealing with some of the geological problems involved.

The material dealt with in the first section of this paper can only be called ‘recent’ in a secondary sense. It is not so much a discovery as a rediscovery of old evidence long overlooked.

The last testament and inventory of John de Veer, the thirteenth earl of Oxford, are documents of their class of more than usual interest and importance: firstly, by reason of the nature of their contents; and secondly, because the testator was a man of great wealth and high social standing. He was consequently the possessor of many beautiful and valuable things; and though, alas, not one of them is now known to exist, their appearances and characteristics are vividly brought before us in the descriptions set down in the inventory of the earl's effects.

Among a large number of weapons and other objects recently transferred from the Tower armouries to the British Museum is one of the curious stirruplike objects of bronze familiar as being found in Late-Celtic burials with the remains of chariots or horses. Unfortunately it has no history.

The ground immediately to the east of the city ditch of London was occupied in medieval times by three important religious foundations, an abbey of Franciscan nuns, another of Cistercian monks, and the great hospital of St. Katherine by the Tower. With the exception of one wall on the site of the first-named house, no trace of any of them survives, though the great church of St. Katherine remained until the last century. The Abbey of St. Mary of Graces, with which we are immediately concerned, was the latest foundation of the Cistercian Order in England; over half a century separates it from the latest of the previous houses, and only a few Carthusian houses, the Bridgettine nunnery of Sion, and some convents of Observant Franciscans are of later date. The house was commonly known as Tower Hill or New Abbey, and is said to have been also called Eastminster in contradistinction to the great Benedictine house in the western suburbs; for this title, however, I have not yet found any ancient authority.

The design and execution of the tomb of the Lady Margaret, with its recumbent figure, in the south aisle of the chapel of King Henry VII at Westminster, have long been attributed to Pietro Torrigiano, a Florentine artist. Until the documents here printed came to light in the Treasury, or Muniment Room, of St. John's College this seems to have been a matter of inference or tradition rather than a fact based on documentary evidence.

It is a matter of common knowledge that for some years past excavations have been in progress on the site of St. Austin's Abbey at Canterbury, and the Society of Antiquaries has shown a practical interest in the work by occasional help from its Research Fund. There is every reason, therefore, that the Society should be made acquainted with certain discoveries of exceptional interest that have lately been made within the abbey church by the authorities of St. Augustine's College.

It is natural that in the period of nearly six hundred years that has elapsed since the foundation of her college some of those who have had part in the Countess of Pembroke's beneficence should have attempted to put together materials for her life. The most definite effort was made on the occasion of the college's quincentenary in 1847 by the then Master, Dr. Gilbert Ainslie. Dr. Ainslie, who was responsible for the excellent arrangement and catalogue by which the Pembroke deeds are still referred to, wrote out his results in a manuscript book which is now in the possession of the college. His critical acumen, as seen in this work, is wholly admirable: he realized and corrected numerous errors, some of which have continued in printed books down to the present time. He also covered, in his search for information, a very wide ground. This last, however, did not include original documents except (the exception is a large one, it is true) the college muniments and possibly some British Museum and other library manuscripts: the Public Records he knew, as a rule, only from Rymer, the Record Commission publications, and the like; and there are, of course, many printed authorities now in existence which he would gladly have consulted.

Towards the close of the fourteenth century extensive building operations were undertaken at Canterbury Cathedral. The more important of these were the rebuilding of the nave and the erection of a new chapter-house. At Canterbury, as at Gloucester, the cloister was to the north of the nave, and as the chapter-house was erected to the east of the cloister it was necessary to reconstruct in some measure the roof of both the south and east walks, but the opportunity was taken to construct an arcading on each side of the cloister garth, and to throw a vaulted roof across from the arcade to the walls. This work was in hand during the time of Prior Chillenden—prior from 1391 to 1411—and he proceeded in the cloisters with a brutal disregard for the beautiful work left behind by his predecessors, whose walls he used so far as they served him. The prior had been munificently assisted by a wealthy archbishop, viz. Archbishop Courtenay, who died the 31st July, 1396.

The iron dagger in its bronze sheath shown in fig. 1, which I am able to illustrate, thanks to the kindness of Mr. Guy Maynard, the Keeper of the Saffron Walden Museum, was found in a rabbit-hole in Hertford Warren.