The following Letters need but little introduction on my part. They may be left to tell their own story, and may be useful to illustrate or to correct the history of the period to which they belong. I am indebted to one who is most conversant with that history for the headings prefixed, within brackets, to such of the letters as seemed to him to require some such elucidation. For the letters themselves, and for permission to transcribe them, the Society is under obligations to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and in particular to the courtesy of the Rev. Frederick Chalker, who filled the office of Librarian at that college in the year 1861, when I was allowed access to the valuable collection under his charge. The volume containing them is thus designated in Coxe's Catalogus Codicum MSS. qui in Collegiis Aulisque Oxoniensibus hodie adservantur. Pars. ii. 160, “cccxviij. Codex Chartaceus, in folio, ff. 229, sec. xvij. Ricardi Davis de Sandford Collectaneorum volumen secundum.” The series of Wotton Letters is immediately preceded by one from Henry VIII. to Secretary Knight. So far as I can ascertain, the letters here published are unedited. Their number might easily have been increased from other quarters, and especially from the Collection of State Papers in the Record Office. The present specimens, however, go far to cover the ground occupied by the writer in his diplomatic capacity at Venice and the Hague, while the last of them gives us a glimpse into his private life.

In the autumn of the last year, on my way back from Newcastle, after the meeting of the British Association, I passed through Chester; a city which, for the antiquary, the archaeologist, and the architect, possesses peculiar charms; and which I never visit without renewed interest. On this occasion however I found Chester to be gradually changing its former character, in consequence of the overpowering influence of the railroad system, which makes it the great centre of the lines of communication in that district. At the station a very large hotel had been erected; and that undertaking having proved successful has probably led to similar speculations in the city itself. The principal hotel in the main street has been taken down, and is now being rebuilt; and in the adjoining street, Bridge Street, another large old inn, known as “The Feathers” (the site of the remains I am about to describe), has been destroyed. Many new and magnificent houses and shops are now occupying the places of the picturesque old wooden buildings of earlier times; but I am glad to perceive that the peculiar feature of Chester domestic architecture, the “Rows,” is still retained; though the ambulatories now constructed are much higher and lighter than the old passages.

In April of the year 1854 I had the honour of addressing to you a letter on the subject of a tessellated pavement of considerable beauty which was discovered in Bishopsgate Street in digging for the foundation of Gresham House. That paper was subsequently printed in the thirty-sixth volume of the Archæologia, and at page 209 the following passage occurs :—

“In the summer of 1853 the excavations on the north side of the Tower on Tower Hill showed in situ distinct remains of Roman work in part of the inclosure wall of Roman London on that side.

Sir Harris Nicolas printed in the Testamenta Vetusta an Abstract of the Will of the Lady Alice West of Hinton Marcel, widow of Sir Thomas West, dated in 1395, and proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury.

The value of Wills and Inventories as exponents of the domestic lives of our ancestors cannot be too highly estimated. To them we must look as to the most fertile sources from whence a knowledge is to be obtained of that curious unwritten history, the history of the people. The glimpses they afford of domestic manners are all the more precious, because of their rarity elsewhere.

The curious article which you have entrusted to me for exhibition to the Society of Antiquaries has at least three claims to the attention of that body ;—1st, as an authentic memorial of a celebrated person; 2nd, as an excellent specimen of a curious description of mathematical and nautical instrument, long superseded in actual practice, but full of interest in the history of the sciences to which it relates; and, 3rd, as a production of a skilful artist in this kind of work whose name has fallen out of remembrance.

The Portus Lemanis must clearly have been one of the great thoroughfares between Britain and the Continent, and it is not a little singular that the position of a port once so famous should never have been satisfactorily settled. The common impression is that it lay at the foot of Lymne Hill. For the benefit of those who are not familiar with this neighbourhood, I should mention, in limine, that the village of Lymne or Lympne stands about 2½ miles to the west of Hythe, on the highest part of the cliff which girds in the eastern portion of Romney Marsh. On the declivity of the hill, about half-way down, is seen the old Roman castrum, called Stuttfall, occupying 10 or 12 acres. There are walls on the north, east, and west, and the east and west walls run down to the marsh itself; but, what is remarkable, the south side towards the marsh had never any wall,” and hence the erroneous notion so generally prevalent that at the foot of the castrum was once the Portus Lemanis, and that in the course of ages the sea retired from Lymne, when the port shifted to West Hythe, and that the sea again retired, when the port was transferred to Hythe. I shall endeavour to show that these changes, if they ever occurred, must have preceded the historic period, and that in the time of the Romans, as for many centuries afterwards, the only port was Hythe. In fact Portus and Hythe are the same thing, Portus in Latin being Hyð in Saxon.

On the 23rd of November last, I took occasion, in the course of some remarks on Dr. Thurnam's paper on the Wiltshire Long Barrows, to mention the titles of some papers which I had in my mind to communicate to this Society in the course of the present session; one of them was, “On the Roman Ports in Kent and Sussex.” Immediately afterward I was surprised by a discourse, pronounced in your hearing, by Mr. Lewin, who undertook to identify Hythe with the “Portus Lemanis.” My own views of the subject being quite at variance with the theory of that learned gentleman, I would have delivered myself, on the spot, of the sentiments which I entertained respecting his communication, while it was fresh before us; but the time was then too far advanced to permit a discussion, and the present date was therefore assigned to me as a peremptory term for answering the case set up by the learned advocate of Hythe.

At a time when the worked flints discovered in such profusion near Pressigny le Grand are attracting so much attention among French archaeologists, it seems probable that a few remarks upon them, and upon the controversy to which they have given rise, may be of interest to this Society.

A good deal of attention has been bestowed on the crystal balls supposed to possess magical powers, and in which visions of the unseen world might be revealed to those who had sufficient faith in the powers of these wonderful mirrors. I do not propose entering into any discussion on the merits of these crystals; but I will with your permission lay before you, from among the State Papers of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, some curious documents bearing upon alchemy, magical glasses, and magic in general.

L'image des grands hommes est toujours précieuse pour la postérité; mais cette image le devient encore davantage si elle se rapproche du temps où ont vécu les héros, et si la représentation offre les plus grandes chances de ressemblance avec les modéles. A dèfaut des traits du visage, les anciennes statues, lorsqu'elles sont contemporaines, ont au moins le mérite de la fidélité du costume, chose toujours importante dans la reproduction d'un personnage historique. Aussi est-ce avec un soin extrême et presque avec un culte que nous devons traiter les portraits que le passé nous a laissés de ceux qui furent son honneur et la gloire de la patrie.

The Roman city known to us under the name of Silchester forms part of a large farm upon the Hampshire estates of his Grace the Duke of Wellington. The land was occupied till very lately by Mr. Barton, whose name is familiar to archæologists in connection with the place as having formed a small but interesting collection of coins and antiquities found within or around the walls. At Mr. Barton's death, in 1864, this collection was purchased by his Grace.

It has been to me an agreeable task to comply with your request that I should examine and give you some account of the parcel of early documents, the exhibition of which before the Society of Antiquaries Miss Portman has been good enough to procure.

I am enabled by the kindness of the Earl of Verulam to exhibit to the Society the original of a Document of some interest in the commercial history of this country.

It may be of interest to the Society to collect together such notices as occur of Edward Grimston, the ambassador to the Duchess of Burgundy, and the person represented in the interesting portrait by Peter Christus.

By the kindness of the Earl of Verulam, I have been able to make use of various documents, apparently unpublished, which assist in throwing some light on the ambassador's history.

I have carefully examined the very interesting portrait of Edward Grimston which the Earl of Verulam has been good enough to send to our Society for examination. I am glad to hear that his Lordship intends to have the surface, both back and front, protected by glass.

The tombs at Ghain Tiffiha, which is situated on the west or Gozo side of Malta, three or four miles to the south of St. Paul's Bay, are all cut in the rock, and, though differing slightly in form and dimensions, have a general resemblance, as will be seen by the following descriptions.

The human remains from Tomb 1 at Ghain Tiffiha comprise the more important bones of two skeletons. They are generally well preserved, though very light and brittle, as would appear from the almost entire destruction of the animal matter. They are uniformly stained of a dark reddish-brown hue, and here and there incrusted with a tufaceous or stalagmitic deposit of the same colour. The bones from Tombs 2 and 3 are, on the contrary, of a pale or drab clay colour. The dark colour of the former is attributed by Captain Swann to the percolation through cracks in the limestone rock of water tinged with the highly-coloured soil with which many fissures in the upper limestone of Malta are filled. The Tombs 2 and 3, on the contrary, had become filled with clay from “Clay-bed No. 3,” and hence the difference.

Early as the Romans were known to have visited the southern and southwestern shores of England, it is remarkable that so little should be left to testify to it. Historians inform us that on the banks of the waters that flow into the Plymouth Sound there was once a Roman station, but no record or evidence remains that can establish the precise locality of the ancient Tamara. Attempts have not been wanting to fix it somewhat near the present village of Tamerton, but it appears to me that there is little to support this idea beyond advantageous topographical considerations. The remains, however, of an old Roman road are still in existence on the property of the Rev. Collins Trelawny, which appear to suggest that the line by which those old travellers passed from station to station westward to the tin districts of Cornwall lay much nearer to Plymouth.