During the comparatively brief period of its existence references to the chapel of our Lady of the Pew are not uncommon. But so quickly did its memory perish that John Stow writing some sixty years after its disuse was at first hopelessly in error as to its position. In the original edition of his Survey of London he connected it with the house of Bethlehem Hospital by Charing Cross. This error was corrected in the second edition, where our Lady of the Pew is described as a smaller chapel, which was sometime by the chapel of St. Stephen in the Palace of Westminster. Even when the more part of the history of the Pew was accurately brought together in J. T. Smith's Antiquities of Westminster, the author so little appreciated the character of the chapel, that after remarking ‘No etymology of the term le Pew has as yet been attempted’, he went on to allege: ‘no difficulty in settling it will remain when it is remembered that the French substantive Putts means a well, and known that in or about the Palace of Westminster were no fewer than four wells still remaining.’

The destruction at Rheims has called attention to a weakness which is found in almost all Gothic churches—the inflammable nature of the outer roof. The inner vault of the cathedral church is intact, but the outer roof was consumed in the great fire of 1914. It was of lead resting on a fine piece of carpentry at an unusually steep angle. The sweep of the roof from end to end was one of the great attractions of the external effect of the church. The present appearance (pl. I) is almost that of a great bath with high walls, for the distance between the two roofs was much greater than in the case of many contemporary churches. The outline of the extrados of the vault is somewhat obscured by the debris which has fallen on to it.

The piece of tapestry that forms the subject of this communication has but the shortest of histories (pl. VII). It formed part of the Heckscher Collection sold at Messrs. Christie's in 1898; and, attracted by the interesting character of the subject and the admirable preservation and brilliant colouring of the fabric itself, I secured it soon after the sale as it was on the point of going abroad. The Heckscher Collection was brought together in Vienna, and was of a miscellaneous character, containing some very fine works of art, among them an unusually perfect crosier head by Frere Hugo, the famous Flemish goldsmith, which I was fortunate in securing for the British Museum. It is hardly necessary to say that although the collection was formed in Austria, the objects composing it had been derived from a variety of sources, not least from England, as e. g. a Rhenish enamel formerly in the Beresford Hope Collection. No indication is given of the source whence the tapestry was derived. Since it has been in my possession it has been seen by a great number of my colleagues in continental museums and elsewhere abroad. All of these, French, German, Swiss, Flemish, and Spanish, were greatly intrigued as to its country of origin, but in every case each felt sure that it was not a product of his own country. Thus the panel acquired an added interest, and I had a photograph made, and circulated it among a limited number of authorities on the subject, both in England and abroad.

Many students of English ecclesiology have long known that, until it was destroyed by the ‘ingenious’ Mr. James Essex in 1770, there was standing in the cathedral church of Ely the twelfth-century stone screen that anciently formed the western boundary of the monks’ quire.

The suspension owing to the continuance of the Great War of all work upon the hill of Old Sarum, and the consequent lack of material for the usual report thereon, afford a useful opportunity for the discussion of certain points connected with the cathedral church of Sarum.

Some ten years ago, there was brought to me in Bristol a bundle of dirty and ragged old parchments, which I bought on the chance of their proving to have some interest when straightened out and cleared of dust and dirt. They were evidently parts of a service book of some kind, and they had on them some writing in an ordinary hand of the middle of the sixteenth century. I did what I could to put them in order, and then I showed them to Dr. Warner at the British Museum.

More than a hundred and twenty years ago the Society of Antiquaries of London conferred a great and lasting obligation on students of the history of Scotland during the Roman period. At its own charges, and without reasonable hope of pecuniary return, it published in a splendid folio the manuscripts and drawings that had been handed over to it by the executors of Major-General Roy. The pomp and circumstance surrounding the issue immediately secured for The Military Antiquities of the Romans in North Britain the place which it has ever since held in public esteem—a place to which, upon the whole, its intrinsic merits fairly entitle it. Roy was at once a zealous antiquary and a shrewd and capable observer, with a thorough knowledge of military engineering. It is true that the data on which his main thesis rests were too slight to support the elaborate superstructure of which they were made the basis. It is true also that his treatment of a large part of his subject was vitiated by his seemingly implicit belief in the genuineness of Bertram's egregious hoax, the De Situ Britanniae} Still, when every allowance has been made for the defects that inevitably resulted, his book remains one of our archaeological classics. As a storehouse of trustworthy topographical information regarding Roman sites, it can never be entirely superseded.

The two centuries after the official withdrawal of the Romans from Britain are almost a blank in the history of the capital, and it is only fitting that the Society of Antiquaries of-London should discuss any new evidence of the city's condition during that period of transition. The picture has indeed been painted by a master-hand, but even John Richard Green's arguments are weakened by certain inconsistencies, and archaeology may be called in to give precision and completeness to his plan of Anglo-Saxon London. ‘That this early London’, he writes, ‘grew up on ground from which the Roman city had practically disappeared may be inferred from the change in the main line of communication which passed through the heart of each. This was the road which led from Newgate to the Bridge. In Roman London this seems to have struck through the city in a direct line from Newgate to a bridge in the neighbourhood of the present Budge Row. Of this road the two extremities survived in English London, one from the gate to the precincts of St. Paul, the other in the present Budge Row. But between these points all trace of it is lost’ For the Roman road shown in his map as crossing the Walbrook at Budge Row there is indeed more warrant than he was aware of. The road has been actually found near its middle point, and the Saxon churches along it suggest that it had not been obliterated in the centuries before the Norman Conquest.

During the financial year 1916-17 the Tarxien remains were further cleared, the work continuing from the last week of April 1916 to the 12th September of that year (see Plan, fig. 1).