I. The fragment of papyrus contains eight parallel and equidistant lines of the original manuscript, with five interlineations in a different hand, apparently unconnected with them, and consisting chiefly of numbers, with some abbreviated words. It is a sort of genealogy, perhaps the beginning of a deed; the characters are much like those of the manuscript deciphered by Schow, but more distinct; and there is every reason to think them at least as ancient: so that if Schow was right in considering the Borgian manuscript as of the second century, we must refer this fragment to the same period. It was sent over from Egypt by Mr. Salt, together with a variety of other remains of antiquity, many of them extremely interesting, but without any account of the exact place in which it was found. In modern characters it must stand nearly thus:

Along the southern part of the vale of the Severn, beginning at the Somersetshire Avon, and extending upwards of forty miles in a north easterly direction, may be traced a chain of Ancient Fortresses, so situated as to be capable of communicating with each other by signal: but before a description of them is attempted, it will be satisfactory to give a slight one of the surrounding country, and also an extract from Taylor's Map of Gloucestershire, loosely taken on a reduced scale, [PI. XI.] in which is inserted the names of a few large and well known towns, in order to give the bearings, and also those of several other places of less notoriety, but which will afford entertainment to those who are fond of antiquities of various sorts.

Since the early part of the year 1815, when I communicated to the Society of Antiquaries an account of the remains of a Roman villa discovered at Bignor in Sussex, further discoveries have been made, to a considerable extent, as will appear by the annexed plan, (Pl. XIII.) in which the several rooms, contained in the plan published in the eighteenth volume of the Archaeologia, are marked with figures from No. 1 to No. 26, and from 28 to 44.

In the month of February 1818, some labourers rooting up an old ash-tree in a field called Sarendells, in the parish of Great Witcombe, in the county of Gloucester, discovered a large hewn stone about six feet in length; on the removal of which, it appeared to have rested upon two other large upright stones. Sir William Hicks, Bart. of Witcombe Park, the proprietor of the ground, immediately gave directions that the earth should be removed, in order to pursue the discovery, when it was ascertained that each of the two upright stones was six feet two inches in height; and that they formed a door-way leading into a room 19 feet 7½ inches by 13 feet 7 inches, (No. 1 in the annexed plan, Pl. XIV.) the walls of which remained in a very perfect state, to the height of from five feet four inches to six feet. When first opened they were covered with a coat of stucco two inches thick, painted in pannels of different colours. The greater part of this soon fell off in consequence of the continual rains which immediately followed the discovery.

On finishing and delivering to the Society of Antiquaries the Drawings which complete the series from the Bayeux Tapestry, I think it necessary to address you on the subject, for the purpose of stating what licences I may have thought proper to take in the discharge of my commission, and at the same time to point out such circumstances as have presented themselves to my notice during the minute investigation in which I have been necessarily engaged. I shall beg leave to offer with the latter such comments as I have made, hoping if I have produced nothing that will lead to just conclusions on the age of the Tapestry, I shall at least have furnished some useful materials for others. I believe in a former paper I observed that the work in some parts of the Tapestry was destroyed, but more particularly where the subject draws towards a conclusion. The traces of the design only existing by means of the holes where the needle had passed. On attentively examining the traces thus left, I found that in many places minute particles of the different coloured threads were still retained; a circumstance which suggested to me the possibility of making extensive restorations. I accordingly commenced on a small portion, and found it attended with so much practicability as well as certainty, that I believed I should be fully justified in attempting to restore the whole; more especially when I reflected that in the course of a few years, the means of accomplishing it would no longer exist.

In the observations which I addressed to you on the historical fact supposed to be established by the Bayeux Tapestry, I purposely abstained from investigating the age of that venerable and interesting relick. Such an attempt, indeed, would have been foreign to the object of my inquiry, believing as I then did, and as I still do, that, to whatever period this work may be ascribed, it cannot justly be considered as furnishing any evidence whatever of Harold's mission to the court of Normandy. But as the whole subject of the Tapestry is now fairly before us, most ably illustrated both by the pencil and the pen of Mr. Stothard, jun. I am tempted to avail myself of the opportunity thus afforded me of adverting to the question which has been so long at issue. This may perhaps seem the less necessary, when I profess myself to be abundantly satisfied with the proofs adduced by Mr. Stothard in support of the tradition which makes the Tapestry coeval with the events it celebrates.

The favorable reception which the Society of Antiquaries has been pleased to give to my paper on the Body-armour antiently worn in England, induces me through your means to lay before them some remarks on those parts of military Costume which were worn with it. The subject however is one of considerable difficulty, because several of the garments greatly resembled one another, and because they were worn sometimes under the hauberk, and sometimes without as armour themselves. On this account Strutt and other writers on the subject have considered them as the same, or confounded them one with another. It would be presumption therefore in me to speak positively in this attempt at elucidation, so that all I shall advance will be offered as conjecture.

I propose to show, that the following document, which was published by Selden, in his Titles of Honour, the second Edition, p. 846, from a MS. on parchment, in a hand of the time, is supposititious. Truth can only be established on the ruins of falsehood. This document has been introduced into Parliamentary Proceedings; it has been cited in our Peerages; it has been quoted by intelligent Antiquaries: and after it has deluded the legal, and antiquarian world, for so many years, the time is come, when its pretensions to genuineness may be examined, and its spuriousness exposed.

An article having appeared in the Times newspaper of the 25th September last, relative to the ruins in St. Martin's-le-Grand, which (in consequence of sundry buildings having been taken down, in order to clear the ground for the site of the New Post-Office) had, then, lately been exposed to view; I was induced, from my natural inclination towards subjects of this kind, to visit the ruins; and I expected, from the mention of semicircular arches in the above article, to find a valuable specimen of our Saxon style of architecture, in some remnant of the College of St. Martin, recorded to have been founded there before the Norman conquest; and that the writer was mistaken in assigning the reign of Henry IIId, as the period of their erection. Upon visiting the spot, however, I found that the arches to the eastern parts were in the pointed style, and not semicircular. And as upon inspection of the western parts, I noticed sundry indications of these parts having probably been built at a much earlier period than the time of Edward the Vlth, (the date of them mentioned by the aforesaid writer,) I repeated my visits, for the purpose of taking drawings of these remains, and of examining the principles of their construction, so as to render myself better informed respecting them. The result of my labours will be explained to you by the following remarks; in the progress of which I shall introduce such extracts from the History of London, by Maitland and others (published in 1756), as may appear to me to be necessary to the historical detail. I have also prepared two explanatory drawings; See Pl. XV. and if these papers should, in any degree, meet with the approbation of your learned Society, I shall feel that the time I have, necessarily, withdrawn from the more practical employment of my profession has been advantageously expended.

Mr. Camden, in his History of Queen Elizabeth, says that on the 7th Sept. 1571, the Duke of Norfolk was sent to the Tower (from whence he had been released a year before) on account of some practices with the Queen of Scots; and says, “Afterwards Banister who was the Duke's Counsellor of Law, the Earls of Arundell and Southampton, the Lord Lumley, the Lord Cobham and Thomas his brother, Henry Percy, Lowder, Powell, Goodyer, and others, were committed to prison, who every one of them, in hopes of pardon, confessed what they knew.”

It is much to be regretted that the Surveys of the Religious Houses dissolved in the reign of King Henry the Eighth, preserved in the Augmentation Office and Chapter-House at Westminster, do not, in general, describe the state of the edifices themselves at that period with any degree of exactness. I have, however, found in the latter Repository, a survey of the Priory of Bridlington, in the East Riding of the County of York, which is not liable to this objection, and which, on that account, you may perhaps think deserving of being read to the Society of Antiquaries; for this purpose I beg leave to enclose a Transcript of it. The Survey is without date, but from its having the signature of Richard Pollard, who was one of the King's General Surveyors, the time of its being written may be fixed at about the thirty-second year of Henry VIIIth, immediately after the Dissolution. I will merely add, that the Priory of Bridlington was a Priory of Black Canons, of the Order of St. Austin, and that it was founded by Waiter de Gant, early in the reign of King Henry the First.

The Lotus of the ancients has given rise to many interesting inquiries among the learned; but, like the Pale Violet of Horace and of Virgil, and the Hyacinth of the Greek and Latin poets, we are still without any certain or accurate knowledge upon the subject. In this short Essay, which I presume to lay before the Society to which I have the honour to belong, I propose to shew from ancient authors, that plants of very different characters were known to the Greeks by the name of Lotus: but the particular object which I have in this dissertation, is to shew that the Indian plant known to the Greeks by the name of Κύαμος and Αἰγύπτις κύαμος, and to us by Nelumbium speciosum, or Cyamus nelumbo, was never called Lotus by the ancient Greeks or Egyptians; and I have been the more desirous to establish this fact, as Mons. Savigny, de l'lnstitut d'Egypte, in his learned paper in the Annales du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, has considered it to be a Lotus of the ancients; and in all modern works which have fallen in my way, I have observed a repetition of the same error.

I send you, for the inspection of the Society of Antiquaries, two MS. volumes, entitled, “The Booke of the howshold charges and “other payments laid out by the L. North and his comandement, “beginning the first day of January, 1575, and the 18 yere of our most “gratius Soverain's (i. e. Queen Elizabeth's) raigne.” These volumes I purchased about two years ago. Though they are in general in a fair and legible state, I have thought it desirable to select and transcribe such passages as have appeared to me to be more particularly deserving of notice; including the expenses incurred during the Queen's visit to Kirtlinge in 1577

Our learned Director, Mr. Combe, in his “Account of some Saxon Pennies found at Dorking,” has communicated to the Society his belief that the coins which have been hitherto attributed to Aethelheard king of the West Saxons, belong in reality to some unknown king, named Aethelweard, who reigned over the East Angles. This opinion, which has since been quoted by our late member, Mr. Ruding, in the second edition of his valuable “Annals of the Coinage of Britain;” certainly derives much weight from the close resemblance of the coins in question to those of Edmund the Martyr, the last of the East Anglian Princes. The resemblance indeed is so exact, as to extend (as Mr. Combe observes,) even to the formation of the letters, and the names of the moneyers. It would therefore warrant a conjecture that Aethelweard, if not the immediate predecessor of Edmund, was not long anterior to him. The history of the East Anglian branch of the Heptarchy, is in fact very imperfectly related by our earlier chroniclers, particularly during about sixty-three years which preceded the reign of Edmund; that is, from 792 to 855; and as no light has been thrown on that period of its annals by our later historians, I have ventured to think, that, with reference to Mr. Combe's observations, it might not be wholly unacceptable to the Society, to be furnished with the result of a collation which I have made of the few original authorities of that age which are now remaining to us.

In the year 1814 the justices of the county of Devon resolved, at their quarter sessions, to rebuild the bridge over the river Teign (commonly called Teign-bridge), situated on the turnpike-road leading through Newton Abbot and Totness, to Plymouth.

Of all the important changes produced by the Norman conquest upon the people of England, perhaps none is more remarkable than that which took place with respect to their language. The dialect which at that time prevailed was the Danish Saxon, of which several specimens in verse and prose have been preserved in our manuscript libraries. There is indeed evidence to shew, that even previously to the descent of William, there was among the English considerable affectation of the Norman customs and language; and this circumstance may have facilitated the designs of the invader. Be this however as it may, one of the first efforts of his policy, was to obliterate as much as possible the language of the country. The court became of course wholly French, and so continued for more than two succeeding centuries. A great part of the ancient metrical romances existing in that language, were composed, not for the court of Paris, but for that of London, during this period: and the exploits of the British Princes, Arthur and “Richarde Cœur de Lion,” were sung originally in the verses of French minstrelsy. The laws were ordered to be administered in the same tongue, which was even introduced into schools, to the exclusion of the native language. A barbarous and irregular dialect was in consequence formed, which, as might be expected, does not present a single example of elegant composition either in verse or prose. During this remarkable period, the English language found in Scotland that protection which was denied to it in the southern division of Britain.

Having asserted that the ingenious and elegant manufacture of interlaced chain-mail was not known in Europe before the middle of the reign of Henry III. of England, I think it due to the Society that I should attempt some explanation of the Lorica catena of the Romans.

In my observations on Gothic Architecture, published in the Sixteenth Volume of the Archaeologia, I ventured to express my belief that the rules and principles of it might be recovered by a patient examination of the numerous buildings in that style still remaining. And I also remarked, that the Mysterious Figure, which seems to have been called Vesica Piscis, had a great influence upon the forms of all sorts of things, which were intended for sacred uses; after the establishment of Christianity.

Among the wrecks and fragments of ancient art and magnificence, which have resisted the waste of time, or escaped the more destructive ravages of barbarism and bigotry, none are so universally allowed to approach so near to abstract perfection, both in design and execution; or so far to surpass all subsequent efforts of imitation, as those large silver coins of Syracuse with a head of Ceres or Proserpine on the one side, and a chariot with four horses abreast, driven by a Victory, on the other, commonly called Syracusian Medaglions.

The Runic Inscription on the Font at Bridekirk, in Cumberland, has long attracted the attention of our Antiquaries, though not very successfully; owing in some degree, no doubt, to the unfamiliar aspect of its characters. “What they mean, and to what nation they belong, let the learned determine, for it is all mystery to me,” exclaims Camden, A.D. 1607.