A very considerable number of English Silver Pennies having been lately found in Lincolnshire, it may not be uninteresting to the Society of Antiquaries to receive a short account of them. The whole collection consisted of more than 5700 coins, which were all of the same type, namely, that usually attributed to Henry II.

Some time in the reign of Elizabeth, Richard Watts Esq. built the alms-houses in the city of Rochester which continue to bear his name: and he afterwards devised the greater part of his property for the support of the charitable establishment which he had founded. Amongst the directions which he gives for the management of the alms-houses, he desires that there shall be provided “six good mattrices or flock-beds, and other good and sufficient furniture, to harbour and lodge poor travellers or wayfaring men, being no common “rogues nor proctors, and they the said wayfaring men to harbour “and lodge therein no longer than one night.”

I beg, through your hands, to transmit to the Society of Antiquaries the first of a short series of Papers on the History and Use of Seals in England.

Numerous and large works on Seals have appeared upon the Continent, but in England, with the exception of Mr. Lewis's Treatise, they have only been incidentally illustrated.

The observations which I propose to lay, from time to time, before the Society, will perhaps be found to contain some curious facts; but they are rather intended to produce inquiry than offered on my own part, as even approximating to a complete Memoir.

The two short Poems annexed, independently of the superiority they possess over most of the minstrel productions of their age, appear to present so lively a picture of the popular feeling towards the commencement of the weak and disastrous government of Richard the Second, that I am persuaded they will not be altogether unacceptable to the admirers of our ancient literature.

I beg to transmit to you the enclosed Papers, (which have fallen into my hands in the course of professional business,) conceiving that they may be interesting to the Society of Antiquaries. Should you coincide with me in this opinion, have the goodness to submit the originals at your next meeting, and then return them to me. The copies which I have also enclosed are at your service.

Upon looking into some of the earlier volumes of the Archaeologia, I find that typographical antiquities have occasionally engaged the attention of the Society of Antiquaries. Allow me, through your hands, to transmit an Account of a Tract in the Library of the British Museum, printed by Pynson, of which, as far as I can learn, no other copy is known. It throws light on a transaction at the close of the reign of Henry the Seventh, on which the information of our historians is, to say the least, scanty; and it has been noticed by no collector of the titles of English works printed in the sixteenth century.

I have the honour of laying before the Society some remarks on the original Seal belonging to the abbey of Wilton; and when its great antiquity, the stile of its workmanship, and the quality and character of the person whom it represents, are considered, it cannot fail of being regarded as an article of much interest and curiosity.

In the passages collected by Mr. Brand in the following note, a term occurs, the signification of which does not appear to have been hitherto ascertained.

“In ‘Whimsies; or, a new Cast of Characters,’ 12mo. Lond. 1631, the unknown author, in his description of a pedlar, Part ii. p. 21, has the following passage: Can it allude to the custom of exchanging betrothing rings? ‘St. Martin's Rings and counterfeit bracelets are commodities of infinite consequence: they will passe for current at a may-pole, and purchase a favor from their May Marian.’

Some time ago I had the pleasure of communicating to the Society the Copy of a Letter from Cardinal Wolsey to Thomas Cromwell, immediately on his disgrace; dated from Esher in Surrey. I have since laid my hand upon another of the Cardinal's Letters, addressed to Gardiner, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, preserved among the Lansdowne Manuscripts in the British Museum. It adds another to the many proofs of which we are in possession, that Wolsey clung to life even with a fallen fortune and a broken heart.

During my travels in Upper Egypt, in the course of the year 1811, I had the good fortune to meet with a mummy, in a catacomb near Thebes, which appeared never to have been opened before, containing some writing upon papyrus in a state of perfect preservation; and as these writings are but rarely found in mummies, I felt great anxiety to bring the one which fell into my hands safe to Great Britain. For this purpose I had a tin box made for holding it, in order to prevent it from being crushed amongst my packages. I myself proceeded by land to Constantinople; but having sent my baggage by sea, it was unluckily soaked by salt water, and the tin case corroded, so as greatly to injure the manuscript. I have, however, collected some of the fragments, and made accurate copies of them (Pl. I. II.), which I have now the honour of presenting to the Society of Antiquaries; conceiving that they may afford additional specimens of the antient Egyptian character, of which I believe there are not many in Great Britain, and may possibly contribute to the assistance of scientific men, in various parts of Europe, who are giving their attention to that interesting country, established by all profane and sacred history to have been the birth-place of science and wisdom.

From the same volume whence I transcribed a Letter of Cardinal Wolsey, among the Lansdowne Manuscripts in the British Museum, I transmit you the copy of a Paper in the hand-writing of King Edward the Sixth, dated in the endorsement 1552, and entitled, “A Summary of Matters to be concluded.”

Among the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum is one, marked 6148, which appears to have been once archbishop Cranmer's rough Copy-Book of Letters.

When we reflect on the political changes that have recently taken place in Europe, by the total obliteration of some states, and the dismemberment or new organization of others, the mind sickens at the view of the authors of these changes, usurping the thrones of her ancient sovereigns on no better claim than the right of conquest; and we cannot but draw a mournful parallel between these and the events of darker ages, and imagine those days returned when Rome fel under the barbarous yoke of Alaric, and the usurping crescent of Mohammed the Second glimmered upon the throne and empire of Constantine the Great.

It may possibly be considered an inquiry, rather curious than useful, to trace from the earlier periods of our history the practice of assuming Surnames and to ascertain at what time this custom became established in England. Of the various classes into which they may be divided, it is not my intention to speak, further than to notice, very briefly, the most obvious sources whence they were at first derived in this country. This branch of the subject would lead me into a much wider field than the present limits admit, and as it has already engaged the attention of different antiquaries, amongst whom Camden stands foremost, the reader, who may be tempted to inspect a minute classification of them, will find in his “Remaines” materials sufficiently copious to satisfy his curiosity.

In the year 1789 I communicated to this Society some account of the remains of a Roman building which had been discovered in 1770 and 1787 at Comb-End Farm, in the parish of Colesbourn, belonging to Samuel Bowyer, Esq. about six miles distant from the Roman station of Corinium, now Cirencester; which account is printed in the ninth volume of the Archaeologia. In the year 1794 I had an opportunity of investigating another part of the same remains, when in the month of October an opening was made about fifty feet east of the pavement discovered in 1779, at a place where the inequality of the ground seemed to Indicate the remains of some building underneath, and the foundation walls of a room thirty-eight feet in length and fifteen in width soon appeared; the walls were of stone, somewhat more than two feet thick.

Among the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum are three Volumes which purport to contain Copies of the Council Books from the month of May 1545, the 37th year of King Henry the Eighth, to 1558, the first year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. From an entry at the end of the second volume it appears that they wereextracted, or rather abridged, by Ra. Starkey, about the year 1620.

Several writers have endeavoured to trace the arts in Italy as far back as possible, and they have given us voluminous histories of their artists; but travellers in general attended little to what was produced there, either in painting or sculpture, till the time of Raphael and Michael Angelo, and the succeeding ages, whilst they flourished in their greatest vigour. The ancient pictures were considered as barbarous rude things, whose only merit was their antiquity, and the sculptures were entirely overlooked.

The enclosed copy of a Deed, enrolled on the Clause roll of the 31st year of K. Henry VI., will, I flatter myself, be in some degree interesting to the Society of Antiquaries, as it serves to ascertain the true description of one of the oldest Inns in London the Bell-Savage on Ludgate Hill, in the parish of St. Bride Fleet Street; which has for more than a century, from the time its name was noticed by Addison in the Spectator, occasioned a great variety of conjectures. It appears from this record, that they have all been unfounded, as the Inn took the adjunct to its name, from the circumstance of its having belonged to, or been kept by a person of the name of Savage. The Sign appears to-have been a bell hung within a hoop. Many instances of the same kind occur in the ancient descriptions of inns. In the Clause Roll, 43d of Edward III. we find the George on the Hoop; in the 26th of Hen. VI. the Hart on the Hoop; in the 30th of the same king, the Swan and the Cock and Hen on the Hoop; with many others.

The silver Cup (Pl. XVII. fig. 1, 2). and Torques (Pl. XVIII. fig. 1, 2), which, through the kindness of Mr. Walker, were exhibited to the Society at their last meeting, were found on the 12th of February, 1815, at Halton Moor, about five miles from Lancaster, in some newly inclosed land; and were afterwards sold to a silversmith, who resides in that city. When the cup was found, it contained 860 silver pennies, and six pieces of stamped gold; it also contained the Torques, the diameter of which must have been very considerably reduced, by pressure of the two ends, before it could be admitted within the cup.

The village of Bignor, in Sussex, is pleasantly situated on the north side of the South Downs, at the distance of about nine miles from the sea, six miles from Petworth, and about the same distance from Arundel. Within half a mile of the village runs a Roman road very distinctly marked, leading from Chichester by way of Pulborough (where it crosses the river Arun) to Dorking, and from thence to London. On this road there was great reason to expect some traces of a Roman station about Bignor, as Richard of Cirencester, in his fifteenth Iter, next after Regnum, proceeding eastward, introduces a station which he terms “Ad decimum,” not noticed in the Itinerary of Antonine; and Bignor is, by the Roman road, about ten miles disstant from Chichester, the Regnum of the Romans. No Roman remains had however been noticed near this place till the year 1811, when a mosaic pavement was discovered by the plough in the month of July, in a field called the Deny, about a quarter of a mile east of the church, part of a copyhold estate held under the Earl of Newburgh by Mr. George Tupper, a respectable farmer, by whom it is also occupied. The inhabitants of the village have a tradition, that Bignor formerly stood in this field, and the common field adjoining, on the east, called the Town-Field.