On the first page of M. Delaville le Roulx' sumptuous Cartulaire Général of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem there is printed a charter relating to Clerkenwell, in which the Hospitallers are mentioned, and which is there assigned to circa 1100. As the Order itself was only founded (if indeed it was) in the year preceding, this would be the earliest charter in which it is mentioned in Europe, and its well-known priory at Clerkenwell, the first to be founded. It is again on the authority of this charter, which “se place vers 1100,” that M. Delaville le Roulx asserts in his introduction that:

“L'Ordre comptait dans les Iles Britanniques de nombreux établissements, dont les plus anciens remontaient aux premières années du xiie siècle ” (p. clvii.).

In the immediate neighbourhood of my house in the village of Appleshaw, on the north-western border of Hampshire, the sites are unusually close together of those dwellings of the Romano-British period which are, with a certain vagueness, termed Roman villas. Appleshaw is distant five miles north-west from Andover; one mile north of Andover two Roman roads intersect, the one running from Old Sarum north-easterly to Silchester, the other from Winchester north-westerly to Cirencester. At Finkley, close to the point of intersection, pottery and other Roman material has from time to time been unearthed, and the locality is one of those which have, by a somewhat unconvincing reference to the Antonine itinerary and to etymology, been identified with the unascertained site of Vindomis. Imagine these two roads at their crossing to stand like an upright capital X over the town of Andover, with that town in the lowest angle; my own nearer neighbourhood will lie in the western or left-hand angle. Three-quarters of a mile east of my house is the lately-examined site upon which I have to report particularly this evening. One mile north and a little west (all the distances mentioned are measured in radius from my house) is a villa on the Redenham estate, excavated some fifty years back by Sir John Pollen, the landowner. It appears that no plans were made and no record kept.

When the churchyard on the north side of St. Alban's Abbey was being levelled and turfed last year I was, by the kind permission of the rector and churchwardens and of the Rev. G. H. P. Glossop, M.A. (senior curate, who had generously undertaken the work), enabled to make some excavations to obtain a ground plan of the parochial chapel or parish church of St. Andrew, which adjoined the north-west side of the abbey church. As to the use of such parochial chapels, which existed at so many of the Benedictine houses, I have referred in a paper on this chapel, which I read before the St. Alban's Archæological Society last summer. I may, however, say that the origin probably dates back to the time of the reformation of monastic rule in this country by Dunstan, Oswald, and others, when the inconvenience of the presence of the laity in the monastic churches was first felt. The additional constitutions of the Benedictine Order likewise tended to make the monasteries more exclusive, and disputes arose in consequence between the monks and the laity as to the use of the church, usually ending in a composition being made, under which most of these parochial chapels were built. The first we hear of St. Andrew's chapel is a little while after the dedication of the Norman church of St. Alban in 1115, when we find it was dedicated by Herbert de Losinga, bishop of Norwich. The position of this Norman chapel is not known, but it is evident that its existence was but short, for it was rebuilt and considerably enlarged, apparently at the end of the twelfth or beginning of the thirteenth century by abbots John de Cella and William of Trumpington.

For the ninth successive year we have the honour of laying before the Society of Antiquaries a report of the work of the Silchester Excavation Fund.

Operations in 1898 were begun on 2nd May, under the direction of Mr. Frederick Davis, and continued until harvest by Mr. Herbert Jones. Later works, and the filling up of the excavations, were carried out by Mr. Mill Stephenson, who brought the season's work to a close on 26th November.

The exploration of the site on a systematic plan was begun by the Fund in 1890, and has continued yearly with such success that out of the 100 acres within the city wall over 60 have now been fully examined.

The monk Fitzstephen, who wrote a graphic account of London in the twelfth century, which is printed separately by Stow in his Survey, tells us that there are “on the northern side, in the suburbs, excellent springs, the water of which is clear, sweet, and salubrious, amongst which Holywell, Clerkenwell, and St. Clement's well are of most note, and most visited, as well by the scholars from the schools as by the youth of the city, when they go out to take the air in the summer evenings”; and Stow, who materially extends the list, mentions the religious plays performed by the parish clerks at Clerkenwell and at Skinners' well hard by, where in 1409 they gave a dramatic performance which lasted eight days.

The document which I have the honour to exhibit to the Society is a grant of arms under letters patent of Edward IV. to a foreigner, Louis de Bruges, seigneur de la Gruthuyse, who was created earl of Winchester in 1472.

The object of the following paper is to call attention to the highly decorative character of certain metal bowls belonging to the Iron Age, which have been found in Great Britain and in Norway, chiefly with the view of showing that they supply a connecting link between the flamboyant ornament of the Pagan Celtic metal work and the spiral ornament of the Christian Celtic MSS. and sculptured stones.

As the rude and primitive processes by which metals were extracted from their ores and adapted to the uses of man in early times are fast disappearing, and will soon cease to be practised in the few regions of the world where they still survive, it has appeared to me to be advisable that some record should be preserved of them before they fall entirely into disuse and become forgotten.

The identification of the eighteen worthies commemorated in the Perpendicular heraldic glass in the hall windows at Ockwells Manor House (now the seat of our Fellow, Mr. Edward Barry) is the subject of this letter, which I have the honour of submitting for the consideration and attention of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Ever since 1838, when Mr. Gally Knight published his Normans in Sicily,” with a folio volume of drawings by Mr. George Moore, who accompanied him on his Sicilian tour, the cathedral church of Cefalú has been known to antiquaries and architectural students as the most important example of the earliest Sicilian Norman pointed style. Many years later it was visited by Professor Freeman, who unhappily did not survive to carry his Sicilian history into the medieval period; had he done so there can be little doubt that the present paper would have been wholly superfluous. The late Mr. Fergusson, the architect, also seems to have been familiar with the main features of the architecture, but whether from Mr. Knight's work or from actual inspection I am not in a position to say.

During the past few years important excavations have been carried out in various parts of Egypt, with the result that they have contributed very largely to our knowledge of the predynastic and early dynastic times, which previously to about five years ago were very little known, as such finds had not been conducted in a scientific manner. Natives have for many years grubbed into early sites and have discovered certain objects, and those they considered marketable they have sold to Europeans and to the Museum at Grizeh; other objects probably quite as interesting which they perhaps did not think they could sell have been lost, together with the localities and other details. Fully twelve years ago I had from the late Reverend Greville Chester some slate palettes, and red glazed earthenware pots with black glazed tops, and other objects similar to those found by Professor Petrie at Naqada, which he at first supposed belonged to a people he provisionally termed the “New Race.”

The attention of archseologists was first drawn to this important building on the appearance of the first volume of the late Mr. Hudson Turner's Domestic Architecture in England, now nearly half a century ago, but since that time no fresh account or description of it has been printed. It is the intention of the present paper to examine it more carefully, and to describe and illustrate it in detail.

The MS. exhibited this evening by the Provost and Fellows of Eton College belongs to a class of which very few now exist in this country. It consists of a collection of motets and magnificats for several voices, the music of each part being so written upon opposite pages that when the book is open the different parts can be sung by all the singers at the same time. This was the earliest method of writing part-music. It is found in the great collection of church music formerly preserved at Trent, a collection which contains numerous specimens of the English composers of the fifteenth century; it is also found in the Modena MS. (the chief source of our knowledge of John Dunstable) at Bologna, and, indeed, in all early MSS. of mensurable music. The system was even followed by the printers of the great editions of Orlando di Lasso and of Palestrina, the arrangement of the various parts being precisely the same as in those of the MS. now before us. Subsequently superseded by the use of part-books, from which each singer could sing his own part, it was not until the seventeenth century that full scores appeared; before then they are practically non-existent, even in MS. Though we know from the evidence of the Bologna, Trent, and Modena MSS., that the early school of composition of which Dunstable was the founder must have rapidly arrived at a high degree of elaboration, if not of perfection, the traces of it now to be found in this country are extremely slight. It is this fact which makes the Eton MS. so valuable, for the compositions it contains are without exception by Englishmen, several of whom, as I shall presently hope to show, were men of high reputation in their day. So rare have collections of this sort become, that I believe I am right in saying that there are now in England only two other MSS. of the kind which, for size and importance of their contents, can at all compare with the Eton volume. These are respectively preserved in the Libraries of Lambeth Palace and of Caius College, Cambridge, both dating from a little later than the Eton book.

Original wills and testaments of the first three centuries immediately following the Norman Conquest exist only in instances of extreme rarity. In the muniment rooms of the various ecclesiastical courts examples earlier than the commencement of the fourteenth century appear almost unknown, although there is said to be at Lincoln a collection dating from the year 1283. Stray examples may here and there be found in such collections of early charters and deeds as those preserved at the Record Office, and it would seem that it is to the calendars of these now in course of publication that we must chiefly look for the possible discovery of any further examples.

We have the honour of laying before the Society of Antiquaries, on behalf of the Executive Committee of the Silchester Excavation Fund, an account of the excavations carried out by the Committee in 1897, for the eighth successive season.

There attaches to the history of the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Charles I., a melancholy interest that cannot fail to awaken sympathy, even in those unsympathetic individuals who feel none for the family to which she belonged; for that reason anything which brings before us incidents in her life is, I think, worthy of record.

That iron could be melted and cast in moulds like other metals appears to have been known to the ancient Greeks, and it is not improbable that other nations of antiquity also became from time to time aware of the property; especially if it is the fact that primitive furnaces were sometimes constructed on exposed hillsides where the winds of heaven performed the function of bellows. Philosophers in all ages must have suspected, if indeed they did not absolutely know, that iron obeyed the universal law, melting as other metals do, but under a more intense heat. The absence of iron-casting in medieval times may be ascribed to the primitive hearths in general use, which were incapable of heating the ore to the melting point, while, no real demand existing, the iron-masters were never stimulated to furnish a supply.