During the early ages of Christianity, when the minds of men were yet under the dominion of their prejudices for the pagan superstitions, it had become necessary on the part of those who held the reins of civil and ecclesiastical government, either to endure the practice of certain ceremonies and amusements to which the common people had been long accustomed, or to substitute others in their stead, which bore at least some resemblance to them. One of the most ancient of the latter kind, and which appears to have been the greatest favourite, was that known by the appellation of the Feast of the Calends. It had arisen out of the Roman Saturnalia, and resembled in a great degree the excesses of a modern carnival. Amidst various other absurdities men ran through the streets disguised as old women, and even as brute animals, whence this ceremony has been sometimes distinguished by the names of Vetula and Cervula.

I have the pleasure to transmit to you the following discussion, which contains a very interesting memoir of Antioch during the Crusades. In it the writer, Mr. Damiani, has discovered much accuracy of research and acuteness of conjecture. On these accounts it will obtain the notice of the Society, and, I flatter myself deserve its attention.

Walter, abbot of Westminster, died the 27th of September, in the second year of king Richard I. and in the year of our Lord, 1191.

The manor of Paddington was assigned for the celebration of his anniversary, in a solemn manner, under this form.

“A true Inventorie and Appraisement of all the Plate now being in the Lower Jewell House of the Tower in the Custodie of Mr. Carew Mildmay, made and taken 13 Aug. 1649.”

The essay I have before mentioned accompanies this letter. Allow me to thank you for your offer to do or say any thing I may wish respecting it, but you alone must decide whether its merits be sufficient to claim any other attention than the perusal of a friend. In drawing up this essay, I have endeavoured as much as possible to use my father's own words, yet had he lived to complete it himself, we may suppose he would have substituted something very different from the words of his rough notes, and that probably he would have given the whole a more perspicuous arrangement than I have done. In considering its merits, you must not permit it to go before the public if it appear to you trifling, or at all unworthy the high opinion you have ever so kindly expressed of my father: but should you think it worthy public notice, you are at liberty to present it to the Society of Antiquaries, with the accompanying plates of lead: which will be more usefully preserved in their collection, than in the cabinet of any private person.

Soon after you communicated to me the anecdote relating to Lord Capel's wish, that his heart might be taken from his body, after his murder by Oliver Cromwell, and preserved for the purpose of its being interred with the body of Charles the First, when the restoration of the family to the crown should take place, I mentioned the circumstance to my friend Richard Stanley, Esq. of the Temple, one of the members of our Society, whose father was my immediate predecessor in the rectory of Hadham, Herts, and whose grandfather Dr. Stanley, Dean of St. Asaph, had possessed the same benefice from 1690 to 1722, when he resigned it to his second son, Francis, my immediate predecessor. Dean Stanley had, in the early parts of his life, been chaplain to the Earl of Essex, and during his whole life was very much in the confidence of the family.

I embrace this opportunity of conveying to you an account of an engraved plate, which I have had the loan of for copying, and which belongs to a neighbour of mine. It is of a high-coloured brass, or pale copper, about nineteen inches square, and weighs ten pounds. I can obtain nothing more of its history, than that it originally came from Netley Abbey, and that a relation of the person to whom it now belongs, found it several years ago in a poor man's house, where it served for a back of a grate, and that it was purchased from the latter for a moderate gratuity. It is now clean and bright, and seems not to have suffered the least injury. You will receive a fac-simile of this plate, taken off by myself, by rubbing a piece of paper laid upon the plate, and I should think sufficiently correct for you to judge by. [a] I beg leave to observe, that the shape of the beacon is nearly similar to one in Archaeologia, Vol. I. pl. 1. and from being repeated four times, was probably meant for the crest of the knight represented in the plate, whose name perhaps may not be so easily ascertained.

It is with great deference I presume to offer any conjectures towards an attempt at explaining the ancient sculptures and inscriptions on the two pillars in the abbey church of Rumsey, which appear in the last volume of the Archaeologia, after those ingenious observations contained in the subsequent paper to that account; but, as the following thoughts occurred to me upon reading it, I take the liberty of communicating them to you, whose judgment is so well able to ascertain how likely they may be to merit the attention of the learned Society of Antiquaries.

About the time in which Bishop Herbert de Losinga founded the cathedral of Norwich [a] he appears to have also begun the construction of a monastery on the south side of that building: this religious house was destined to the reception of Benedictine monks, [b] who were to be employed in the cathedral service: the work was completed in 1101, in the September of which year the foundation-charter was signed by Herbert, and sixty monks who had been collected together, and who had for some time resided in the Priory of St. Leonard, [c] were then removed, and fixed in the new monastery. [d]

I have the honour of submitting through your channel to the Society of Antiquaries the accompanying account of the ancient fortresses of Greece. In drawing up this paper, it has not been my object to collect from the writings of the ancients, all that has been said by them on this interesting subject, but to lay before the Society the result of my own observations upon it, during the course of my late tour in that country. A comparison of these remains with what the cotemporaries, or descendants of those who raised them, have transmitted to us in their writings, may form the subject of a future memoir. I have here confined myself to a few remarks on the origin of the fortified cities of ancient Greece, the characteristics of the different æra's in which they were built, and of the situations which were chosen for them. Far from pretending to exhaust the subject, I have merely endeavoured to point out an object, deserving, as I conceive it, the labours of the antiquary and the historian. I beg the indulgence of the Society, for the inadequacy of the performance to the task.

A communication having been lately read before the Society of Antiquaries, on the subject of certain remains of a fabric discovered in taking down the decayed dormitory and refectory, appertaining formerly to the monastery founded by Bishop Herbert de Losinga, near the cathedral church which he had built at Norwich, apparently of a more ancient date than the structure of which they made a part, I venture to offer to the consideration of the Society, some observations and conjectures, respecting those remains; referring, for the being better understood, to the drawings made of them, of which the Society are already in possession.

When I was in Norwich, in July last, I made some drawings of a building then pulling down, and since almost destroyed. As the style and character of this building is of singular beauty, for the early date to which I suppose it to belong, I shall only describe the parts, by a reference to the drawings; after transcribing the following extract from Blomefield's History of Norfolk.

As you were pleased to intrust me with the whole direction of opening the tumuli in your manors of Corton, Boyton, and Sherrington, this week, I shall give you the particulars of the discoveries as they occurred to me.

Herewith I send you copies of two Writs, one of them directed by king Edward the first, in the 21st year of his reign, (anno 1294) to the chief justice of Chester, commanding him to invite the principal knights of that county, to attend the marriage of his eldest daughter Elianor, to the Earl of Barr, at Bristol, and the other addressed to the Bishop of Carlisle, inviting him to attend on the same occasion. These, together with several others of the same kind, were found last summer among the unsorted records, in the chapel of the White Tower.

The roll from which the following extracts are taken, contains an account of the expenses of the king's family [p] for seventeen weeks, beginning with Midlent Sunday, in the 18th year of his reign, when they were at Langley in Buckinghamshire.

In answer to your question, whether I had given any attention to Gothic architecture during my late continental tour, I have to say, although that style of art necessarily formed but a subordinate part in my system of foreign study, I could not avoid looking with much interest at every specimen of it which occurred in my route; not only from the pleasure of contemplating a species of art to which every Englishman, from early habits and its own intrinsic merit, must feel considerable attachment, but from a curiosity to see in what manner it had been treated by foreigners. The examples of this style in Germany are numerous and splendid; and though there are many in Italy, it may be remarked that they are generally in a more mixed and unformed character of design, a defect that may be ascribed to the aspect which the face of that country, different from all others, formerly presented with regard to more ancient architectural remains.

The beautiful drawings by Mr. Smirke, junior, of different fragments of ancient ecclesiastical architecture in the south of Europe, are extremely interesting to every one who has studied that subject; and it is most earnestly to be wished, that such of our artists as travel into Germany and Italy, would give some portion of their time to the collection of specimens similar to those exhibited by Mr. Smirke; the accuracy of which is not less to be admired than the elegance of their execution. In reasoning, however, from such specimens, as to the style of architecture in use at different periods, much caution is requisite, lest repairs and additions of a later date should be confounded with the original structure. Of such additions and mixture of style our own cathedrals afford so many instances that it is needless to particularize any.

You flattered me much by considering the specimens I had sent you of foreign architecture, worthy of being submitted to the inspection of the Society of Antiquaries; and it was no less gratifying to me to find they had been noticed by so distinguished a member of the Society as Sir Henry Englefield.

The seal produced to this Society sometime ago, by our worthy member Mr. Leathes, is that of the liberty of Bridgnorth, and differs from the common seal of the borough itself, as may be seen by the enclosed copy of an entry made by the heralds at their visitation of the county of Salop, in 1623. (Pl. XXVI.) This entry however, is not so full and descriptive as entries of that kind generally were, as it does not describe the form of government of the borough, or the connection between that and the liberty.