Amongst the various methods of transferring inheritances in use with our ancestors was that of conveying them by a Horn, either in Frank Almoigne, or in Fee, or in Serjeantry. Ingulphus, abbot of Croyland, particularly specifies the Horn amongst those things whereby lands were conveyed in the beginning of the Conqueror's reign. His words are too remarkable to be omitted on this occasion; ‘Conferebantur etiam primo multa ‘praedia nudo verbo, absque scripto vel cbartâ, tantum cum dominī ‘gladio, vel gateâ, vel cornu, vel craterâ; et plurima tenementa cum ‘calcari, cum strigili, cum arcu; et nonnulla cum sagittâ. At first ‘(says he, speaking of the Conqueror's time) many estates were ‘transferred by bare word of mouth, without any writing or char ‘ter, only by the Lord's sword, or helmet, or born, or cup; and ‘many tenements by a spur, a scraper, a bow; and some by an ‘arrow.’ It should seem by this account given us by Ingulphus, which is to clear and express, that the implement was always such as was well known to have belonged to the donor or grantor.

The Society having been indulged with a drawing of the Pusey Horn, now in the possession of Mrs. Jane Allen, of Pusey, Berks, sister of the late Pusey, esquire, and representative of the family, have caused it to be engraved in Plate II. The first of our writers who mentions this horn, and the grant made by it, is Mr. Camden, who, speaking of the manor of Pusey, says, “the family of Pusey still hold “it by a horn, anciently given to their ancestors by Canute, the “Danish king.” Dr. Hickes informs us, that both the horn and manor were in his time possessed by Charles Pusey, who had recovered it in Chancery before Lord Chancellor Jefferies; the horn itself being produced in court, and with universal admiration received, admitted, and proved to be the identical horn, by which, as by a charter, Canute had conveyed the manor of Pusey 700 years before. The Doctor describes the horn as being that of an ox, of a middling size, having in the middle a ring of silver gilt, and neatly mounted on two hounds feet, which support the whole.

King Edward the Confessor had a royal palace at Brill, or Brehul, in Bucks, to which he often retired, for the pleasure of hunting in his forest of Bernwood. This forest, it is said, was much infested by a wild boar, which was at last slain by one Nigel, a huntsman, who presented the boar's head to the king; and for a reward the king gave to him one hyde of arable land, called Derehyde, and a wood called Hulewode, with the custody of the forest of Bernwood, to hold to him and his heirs per unum cornu, quod est charta praedictae forestae. Upon this ground Nigel built a lodge or mansion house, called Borestall, in memory of the slain boar. For proof of this, in a large folio vellum book, containing transcripts of charters and evidences relating to this estate (supposed to have been written in or before the reign of Henry the Sixth), is a rude delineation of the site of Borstal house and manor, and under it the figure of a man presenting on his knees to the king the head of a boar on the point of a sword, and the king returning to him a coat of arms, Arg. a fess G. between two crescents, and a horn Vert, as represented in Plate I. No 2.

At your request, I send you a drawing of a horn which formerly belonged to the gild of Corpus Christi, the original founders of our college. It appears from the manuscript Historiola of the College (probably written by Jocelyn, secretary to archbishop Parker) that this horn was presented to the gild by their alderman, John Goldcorne, about the year 1347. “Johannes de Goldcorn, “quum suo tempore erat aldermannus gildae, dedit magnum cor “nu potatorium ornatum operculo cum suis appendicibus ex ar “gento deaurato, quo usi sunt ejusdem gildae fratres in festo prae “cipue Corporis Christi sane liberaliter.” See Fuller's History of the University of Cambridge, page 45; and Masters's History of Corpus Christi College, page 3. The operculum, or cover, mentioned by Jocelyn and Fuller, is since lost, though it was probably fixed by a chain to the two rings marked (a) in the drawing. The head at the extremity of the horn may probably be intended for the reigning monarch Edward the Third. On the front of the large end are the arms of the College.

I, Thomas Butler knt. erle of Ormond, do make this my last will and testam't, &c. Item I give and devise to my dar dame Anne St. Leger—to my dar dame Marg't. Bolin, late the wife of Sir Wm. Bolin knt. my manor of Newhall in Essex—Item when my lorde my father, whole soul God assoile, left and delivered unto me a lytle whyte horne of ivory, garnished at both thendes with gold, and corse thereunto of whyte sylke, barred with barres of gold, and a tyret of golde thereupon, which was myn auncetours at fyrst time they were called to honour, and hath sythen contynually remained in the same blode, for wych cause my seid lord and father commanded me upon his blessing, that I shuld doo my devoir to cause it to contynue still in my blode as far furth as that myght lye in me soo to be doone to the honor of the same blode. Therefore for the accomplishment of my seid father's will, as farr as it is in me to execute the same, I woll that my executors delyver unto Sir Tho. Boleyn knt. son and heir apparent of my said dar Margaret, the said lytle white horn and corse, he to keep the same to the use of thissue male of his body lawfully begotten.

These Horns, as they are improperly called, being certainly the teeth of some very large sea fish, represented in the annexed plate, were given by King Henry I, to the Prior and Convent of Carlisle, when he enfeoffed them with the tythes of all assart lands within the forest of Englewood, to be held per quoddam cornu eburneum, as expressed in the following record. In like manner the keepership of Bernwood forest, together with the manor of Borstal, in the county of Buckingham, were granted in see by King Edward the Confessor; and the manor of Pusey, Berks, by King Canute the Dane, by the delivery of hunting horns, both which are preserved at Pusey and Borstal at this day.

This curious horn, or rather elephant's tush converted to the use of a horn, is the property of the Right Honourable Thomas Lord Bruce, who, with equal politeness and generosity, has favoured the Society with a sight of the original, and the public with a representation of it in the annexed copper plate.

The first mention which I have happened to meet with of the old Welsh instrument sent herewith is in Leland's Collectanea (where, amongst some Latin words for which he gives the Saxon appellations) Liticen is rendered cruth. This agrees almost in so many letters with the Welsh instrument called a crwth, by which name it is still known in some parts of North Wales.

Joachim Camerarius, in his Treatise “De curandis equis, which he published in 1556, boldly asserts, that “the ancients “were not accustomed to shoe their horses.” And Guido Pancirolus, in his “Nova reperta,” observes, that “some are of “this opinion, because such shoes are not seen in their equestrian “statues; the reason of which was not known to him.”

One of the poetical names for an horse in the classics is sonipes; a term taken from the clatter or sound of the feet in running, especially upon hard ground, whence Virgil says,

“Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum.”

It has been a prevailing notion, that England formerly produced some wine; and something in support of that opinion was offered to the Society in 1763, on the introduction, progress, state, and condition, of the vine in England, and the memoir was so well received as to merit a place in the Archaeologia. A gentleman of great knowledge, however, a considerable Antiquary, and a worthy member of the Society, has since been pleased to combat this notion, and to assign certain reasons for his dissent, in that noble and very elaborate work Observations on the more ancient Statutes, &c. p. 207, & seq. Whence it should seem a duty incumbent upon me, either to give up the point in question, or to invalidate his arguments; and the latter, under the Society's favour, I propose here to attempt, with all proper deference and regard to the superior abilities of the Honourable and very learned Mr. Barrington.

As you was so obliging the other day as to permit me to peruse some objections which Mr. Pegge bath made to what I have said in “The Observations upon the ancient Statutes,” with regard to vines not having been cultivated in England some centuries since; I have read his remarks with that attention with which the arguments of so learned an antiquary will always deserve to be considered.

The annexed plate, copied from Dr. Stukeley, represents the boundary cross of Croyland Abbey. It is a very curious monument, and perhaps a singular instance of any such remaining for eight hundred and twenty-five years in the same state and situation; the record of its being so placed continuing and existing at the same time.

Something was said in the Essay on the Coins of Cunobelin, p. 15, on Belatucadrus, a deity either of the Romanized Britons, or of the Romans resident in Britain; and it was there asserted, he was the same with Mars, being esteemed a local name of this deity. Since then, an inscription, accompanied with a memoir, has been produced by my late most respectable friend Bishop Lyttelton; in which paper his Lordship, concurring with the late Prosessor Ward, reckons him to be a local deity, as do most others, but with a reference to Apollo, who was worshiped, as they observe, by the Druids. And herein they have on their side, Sammes, Selden, Hearne, Montsaucon, and the authors of the Universal History. Notwithstanding the weight of all this authority; I see no reason to depart from my former assertion and hope I may stand acquitted by the candid, if, in justification thereof, I here resume the further consideration of the subject.

Among the unknown Gods which seem to have been introduced at Rome, or worshiped in her provinces, and occur in inscriptions in the later periods of her empire, the Deae Matres have given no small trouble to Antiquaries.

Meeting with some few matters of Antiquity, in a journey last summer from Stockton in Shropshire through South Wales, I think it my duty to offer them, such as they are, to the Society.

Bridgenorth, the ancient Brugge, was built in the tenth century, by Ethelfleda, widow of Ethelred, earl of Mercia. The castle has been very strong, not only by its walls and baslions, but also by its situation on a rock, very steep on three sides, over the river Severn.

The workmen employed to cut the new canal of communication between the Forth and Clyde, digging in August 1771, near one of the most considerable stations on Graham's Dyke, at Auchindavie, had the good fortune to light on four altars of different sizes, with inscriptions on one side of each, very legible. They had been thrown into a pit with the iron heads of two large sledge hammers, and the shoulders of a bust of the same materials with the altars, viz. of the grit stone of the county. Whether these hammers had belonged to the proprietor of the altars, or were used to demolish the temple, is uncertain. But as they were all buried together in the same pit and at the same time, they had probably served some purposes about the temple or fort, perhaps for knocking down victims.

St. Francis of Assise instituted, as we are told by Hospinian, three different classes of Religion. The first, which was the strictest and most perfect order, and of which he himself was a member, was the Fratres Minores. The second, consisting of Sisters, was the poor Clares; and the third was the Poenitentes; or, as they are called by Anthony a Wood, Poenitentiarii. These last had their beginning A. D. 1221, when one Lucius was the first Brother. This account, however, does not at all accord with that which is given by John Bale, on the authority of Thomas Eccleston. He says, the order commenced in Provence, A. D. 1245, when the General Council of Lyons was sitting, by means of an expelled Novice; which is very inconsistent with St. Francis's being the founder of it, since he died A. D. 1226. Of these two different accounts of the rise of this Fraternity it may perhaps be no easy matter to determine which is the truest. I incline however to the latter, as Eccleston was a Franciscan, and flourished so soon after the time. Yet one may justly wonder at the Rev. Mr. Tanner, for saying he could find no account of the original of this Order. But be this as it will, the Order was confirmed by Pope Nicholas IV, according to Hospinian, who began to sit A. D. 1288, and died 1299.

I have often thought it most astonishing, that a mode of diversion so cruel and inhuman as that of cockfighting, should so generally prevail; that not only the ancients, barbarians, Greeks and Romans, should have adopted it, but that a practice so savage and heathenish should be continued by Christians of all sorts, and even pursued in these better and more enlightened times.

In August 1770, a stone was found in digging a cellar at York, at a place called the Friar's-Garden, one of the highest parts of the city. The workmen, in their progress, came to the foundation of an old building of Roman brick, the mortar or cement of which, was so hard as not to be penetrable by the Sharpest tools, the bricks breaking before the mortar. This part of the foundation was a segment of a circle: the remainder of it being under the adjoining house could not be traced out; there is reason, however, to apprehend, that the whole composed a rotunda. In digging the ground a little further, within the segment of the circle abovementioned, the men found a large gritstone, three feet long, two feet one inch broad, and eight inches thick.