The excavations of 1908 began on 15th June, and were continued until 6th November, under the direction of Messrs. Ashby, Hudd, and Jones, assisted by Mr. F. King as architect.

From time to time the Society has the privilege of examining and publishing important examples of mediaeval art brought to its notice by the Fellows. Of these a fair number are fortunately in the safe keeping of museums or corporate bodies in this country, and such are mainly the most important. I have in my mind treasures like the relics of the Black Prince at Canterbury [would that they were better cared for!], the crozier of William of Wykeham at New College, and “King John's Cup” at Lynn. Such legacies as these are not likely to leave our shores, short of some national catastrophe. For the rest, still very numerous, that remain in private hands, there can be no doubt that the tendency at the present time is rather in favour of their finding homes in foreign than in English collections. Our riches in such directions, however, help to make London a market or exchange for works of art, and the wealthy buyer is forced to come here to increase his collections. In this way we have before us this evening a monument of mediaeval art workmanship of a kind and importance that is but seldom found in the open market.

In the days of King Edward the Confessor the Manor of Eye next Westminster, entered as Eia in Domesday Book, was held of Queen Edith by William the Chamberlain. This William, to use the significant words of the record, lost the manor (manerium amisit) at the Conquest by William of Normandy, when it fell into the possession of Geoffrey de Manneville or Mandeville (latinized as Magna Villa), who, as perhaps chief of the Conqueror's companions in arms, profited in the acquisition of some 118 English manors, situated in ten counties, chiefly in Essex and Suffolk. This baron by many tenures, about twenty years after the Conquest, being in possession of the Manor of Eye adjoining the estate of the Abbey of Westminster, and no doubt desiring in a measure to atone for his misdeeds, gave the manor to the Abbey. He, in the words of the grant, “for his soul and the soul of Athelays his wife buried in the cloister of Saint Peter, where next to her he also was to be buried, and for the souls of his sons and daughters, gave to Saint Peter of Westminster the manor which near his church he had held, namely Eye, in perpetual heritage,” etc. The grant is undated.

Lord Carnarvon, in his Presidential Address of 1880, gave a list of Fellows who had held the office of Director. The list comprises the names of many men who distinguished themselves in the service of the Society; and I now submit to the Society such information as I have been able to get with respect to each of them.

In seeking to recover the form and extent of the church which St. Edward built, we have two sources of direct evidence to guide us. First, there is the scanty evidence in stone, which consists of three Norman bases which remain beneath Abbot Ware's pavement in the presbytery. Secondly, we have the written evidence of a description of the church in a biography of the king written immediately after his death.

Implements fashioned from the antler of the red deer have long been known to have formed part of the tools with which primitive man and his successors in much more recent times carried on the varied industries that claimed his care and skill, enabling him to turn to good account the many products of soil and chase which thoughtful Nature had placed at his disposal. Almost every part of the antler was utilized; the tines being removed in order to form gouges, punches, hand levers, and piercing instruments, while the beam, when deprived of its tines, was cut up into sections from which adzes and such-like cutting implements wrere formed, or hammers were devised. A useful instrument which served as a rake, or scraper, was made from the branching points at the cup; while a clever combination of beam and tines produced a tool which served the double purpose of pick (or lever) and rake (or scraper). Much ingenuity was shown in devising and considerable skill in forming such implements, but in no case is this more evident than in that of the deer-horn pick. Generally speaking, the pick was formed from an antler by severing the cup end and removing the bez and the trez tines, thus leaving the beam to form the haft and the brow tine to form the pick (fig. 1), while the burr remained in position in order to give strength to the weakest part, the angle of intersection between the handle and the “blade”, and to add weight to the blow. The “false brow”, or undeveloped bez, was sometimes left in place (plate XVI, no. 1), but this was rather the exception than the rule. The upper portion of the beam or the longest point beyond the “cup” was often left in position to form an elongation of the shaft which assisted greatly in directing the blow, while it added very materially to the leverage of the pick. Fig. 1 offers a very good example of a double-handed pick with an elongated shaft, and with blunted point and stem worn smooth by usage.

The desire of the writer is to afford some general information on the present condition, and presumable future, of these most interesting remains, and to enlist as far as possible the sympathies of all students of art and history in the preservation of mediaeval monuments, which, from circumstances of geographical position and present ownership, are comparatively unknown and uncared for.

The object of this paper may best be described by explaining how it came to be undertaken. The date 1481, which occurs (Table XLIV. 15) on an Italian medal of the Sultan Mahomet II, by Constantius, happened to be called in question. On inquiry it became clear that there was no reason to suspect this particular date on the ground of the forms of the numerals. But it was equally clear that there were other problems of the same kind more difficult of solution, and that the only way to approach them with any hope of success was to collect and classify as large a mass as possible of securely dated instances of the use of these so-called Arabic numerals. As always happens, the material proved to be a thousand times more plentiful, and by no means less difficult of verification, than he who light-heartedly undertook the research had supposed.

To talk of St. Paul's School before Colet will to most people seem pure absurdity. Even those who know there was such a school think that it was only a poor sort of choir-boys' school, and would be inclined to apply to it, mutatis mutandis, the famous Scotch bull on the roads in the Highlands:

If you'd seen these roads before they were made,

You'd hold up your hands and bless General Wade.

A portion of the town of Largs is built on a raised beach which here attains a breadth of nearly a mile, though in general it is a mere strip of flat land along the coast. This low ground is fertile, and beyond it rises a picturesque background of grassy hills which shelter the town and bay on the east, a combination of natural advantages which must have rendered the locality an attractive place of abode for man from the earliest times. A plot of cultivated land, near the termination of Nelson Street which intersects the raised beach, was acquired by a townsman as the site of a small villa. The area selected was slightly more elevated than the vacant ground on the east side, but its relative height with respect to its western boundary was uncertain, owing to the land there having been already built upon. It would, however, be no exaggeration to describe it as a low gravelly mound. While digging the foundations of the proposed villa nothing of an archaeological character attracted attention, but later on, in course of some outside operations close to the south wall of the newly erected building, the workmen came upon a small cinerary urn containing calcined bones. The vessel was shaped like a modern flower-pot, without any ornamentation, and stood mouth upwards, having, apparently, been simply deposited in a hole in the gravel. It appears to have been extracted in fragments, and dispersed among private collectors.

The Album Amicorum, or Stammbuch as it was called in Germany, where it originated, consisted of a collection of blank leaves of paper or vellum, sometimes kept loose, more often bound up as a book, the leaves being destined to receive the signatures and armorial bearings of the owner's friends and acquaintances; often the signatory added his motto or device, some classical or biblical quotations or sentences, some good advice, and a dedication. Generally speaking, the custom or fashion of the Album did not extend beyond Germany and Switzerland, and only few of them are met with in the Low Countries, Italy, and France. English Albums I have not met with, but at the British Museum (17083) there is a Scottish one to which I shall refer later on.

The Palace of Hampton Court is a building to which even the most unimaginative person cannot be indifferent. Built by one of the greatest and most splendid of English statesmen, and completed by one of the most magnificent of our kings, it has always been a royal pleasure-house, recalling rather the intimate private life of our sovereigns than their formal acts of state. In four years' time it will complete its fourth century of existence, and though much of its first splendour has long perished, it remains essentially a royal building; no one could take it for anything but a palace. This being so, its careful preservation is a matter of public interest, and needs no urging in this room, but for this very reason it has been thought well to lay before the Society an account of an important piece of work now being carried out there, namely, the excavation and repair of the moat and the stone bridge which spans it at the west or entrance front of the palace

In submitting to the Society our twentieth and final report on the excavation of Calleva Atvebatuni, it may be pointed out that for the first time our work during the past season has lain altogether outside the Roman town. We were able in 1908 to bring to an end the excavation of the whole of the 100 acres within the wall, but, as was then foreshadowed, there still remained to be examined the outer defences and the ditch encircling the wall itself. This formed the work of 1909.

The series of relics exhibited to the Society come from an early settlement at Peterborough, dating from a time when flint was in general use, perhaps before the introduction of metal, at least among the poorer inhabitants of the country. The site is a promontory rising out of the Fens and lying on the north-east side of the town. The river Nene joined the Fens about half a mile to the south-west of the site, which is only a few feet above sea-level, and was almost surrounded in times of flood. So far as can be determined at present, the extent of the settlement is several acres, but the ground has not yet been moved except on the west side, where unfortunately no observations were taken. There were no surface indications of human habitation, and no burrows noticed on the promontory or in its neighbourhood. The subsoil is gravel, fine and coarse, varying in depth from 8 to 10 feet. The top 18 inches of gravel, underlying the soil, is reddish brown, mixed with a reddish loam, which sometimes occupies natural pockets 3 to 8 feet deep, cutting down through the gravel and at times reaching the cornbrash below.