On January 4th of this year (1906) when visiting some works that had been started for the relief of the unemployed at Hadleigh Road, Ipswich, I was fortunate enough to discover that the high land which was being levelled was the site of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery. The slope overlooks the river Gipping, and is on the west side of the town, near the railway. (See plan, Fig. 1.) Already over 150 men had been at work for two months, little dreaming that treasures of antiquity were being thrown away at nearly every stroke of the pick. Five skeletons had been found, but these had been pronounced quite recent, and were re-interred without further notice being taken of them.

Some of those present may perhaps remember that nearly three years ago I read to the Society some specimens of Chancery Bills in the fifteenth century, in order to show the kind of information which they afford about the methods of business and the social habits of the period.

Three chief subjects are dealt with in the sculptures of medieval portals: Christ in Judgment, the Virgin Enthroned with the Infant Christ, and the Coronation of the Virgin. Of these the first is the most important.

The treasury or portion of Grod is a convenient term, based on the language of the seventeenth canon of the Council of Chelsea in 787 and other authorities, to express that portion of a Christian man's income and property which is or ought to be devoted to religious and charitable purposes, the maintenance of the bishop and clergy, the support of the sick and the poor, and the upkeep of the fabric and the necessaries of public worship. The birthright (patrimonium) of the poor, another convenient phrase which comes to us from the thirteenth century, consists of one portion only of the treasury of Grod, the part devoted to the support of the sick and the poor.

One of the greatest disasters that has befallen an important historical monument in this country for over half a century was the burning of the Abbey Church of Selby in the early hours of the 20th of October last.

In the year 1855 the British Museum acquired a set of four knives with enamelled handles in a leather case decorated with incised designs. The handles are richly ornamented with shields of arms, mottoes, and floral motives in translucent enamel upon silver, the grip having in addition strips of the speckled maple-wood used in the manufacture of mazers. These knives deserve description and careful illustration both for their artistic merit and also for their historical interest, it being possible to identify the two different persons for whom the instruments and the sheath were severally made. These persons were John the Intrepid, Duke of Burgundy, father of Philip the Good, and his daughter Isabel, Countess of Penthièvre.

The report which I have the honour of submitting to the Society, on behalf of my colleagues, of the work carried out by the Executive Committee of the Silchester Excavation Fund in 1906, is the seventeenth successive account of our investigations.

The excavations of 1906 occupied a comparatively short period, from the middle of July until the end of September, and were carried on entirely upon land belonging to Viscount Tredegar, F.S.A., President of the Oaerwent Excavation Fund Committee. The first portion of the time was spent in the exploration of a building to the nortli of the amphitheatre (Block Kn) and of the mound within and parallel to the north city wall. In Block Kn no discoveries of any special interest were made, and its plan may best be published when the examination of this portion of the mound is completed, which will probably be during the present summer.

In July of last year, on the kind invitation of Mr. J. B. Carrington, I was able, through the courtesy of the authorities of New College, Oxford, to examine at leisure the splendid crosier of their Founder, Bishop William of Wykeham, which Mr. Carrington had offered to cleanse from an accumulation of dust and dirt. One of the things at once apparent on examining the staff was its somewhat rickety condition, and in view of the fact that any mishap might be productive of deplorable injury, at the request of the College I drew up a report on the crosier and the steps that should be taken to make its several parts secure. As a consequence of this report the staff has been entrusted, on my recommendation, to Mr. C. Krall, who has carried out with his usual skill only such repairs as were absolutely necessary; it being the special instruction of the College that nothing further should be attempted. The wisdom of this course can not be too highly commended.

The site of the abbey of Stanley is a wide valley two and a half miles east of Chippenham, in Wiltshire. It is upon the south bank of a little river called the Marden, which rises on Calston Down some five miles to the east, and joins the Avon just above Oliippenham. Stanley owes its origin to one Drogo, a chamberlain of the Empress Maud, at whose instigation her son Henry, then Earl of Anjou, gave a place called Locwell (now Lockswell) in the manor of Chippenham in perpetual alms to Grod and St. Mary of Quarr, in the Isle of Wight, for the purpose of there founding a monastery.

There used to be exhibited in the Abbey Church of Westminster, distinct from the later and better known “Waxworks,” a remarkable series of figures of deceased royal and noble personages, that came to be known as “the Ragged Regiment,” from the condition to which most of them had been reduced by course of time.

The accompanying illustrations (Plates LXIX. and LXX.) were recently taken from a war balloon by Lieut. P. H. Sharpe, R.E., and represent Stonehenge from a point of view from which that famous monument has probably never before been photographed.