When in conversation I offered some ideas on the Origin of Gothic Architecture, you were pleased to express a wish that they should be committed to writing. I am sorry that various circumstances should so long have prevented me from presenting the following observations, which, after all the attention other avocations would allow, I am still afraid are not so clear as could be desired. Many of the technical terms in common use, relating to this subject, not being well defined in the English language, I must solicit your indulgence in regard to the notes of explanation which I have occasionally been induced to add: and I beg it to be understood, that the appellation of Gothic is here restricted to that kind of building, in which the covering of a void space is composed of two similar curves meeting together, and forming an angle at the top, usually termed a Pointed Arch.

In a tour, which I made last autumn through part of the west of Ireland, I met with certain articles of antiquity, in the possession of a friend of mine at Limerick, which, I am of opinion, the Society will think curious. I shall therefore proceed here to give an account of them. They consist of the most important part of the ancient Pontificalia of the See of Limerick; namely, of the best or precious Mitre, and of what, no doubt, was the best crosier belonging to it; being each of them exquisitely rich and beautiful; as likewise, of the Episcopal Register, from the middle of the twelfth, down to the middle of the fifteenth, century. All these articles are in high preservation.

An inquiry into the different forms of Vaults, and a comparison of their respective merits, by rendering them more familiar to the Architect, may lead to the substitution of them for wooden floors and roofs in many cases, where, in respect of their superior security and durability, and, it may be added, beauty, they would be peculiarly desirable. The changes, which have taken place at certain periods in the forms of Vaults, will in some measure account for the alterations in the styles of architecture, which have characterised different ages; and their genesis will exhibit, perhaps, the most comprehensive and curious examples of the application of geometry.

Our learned and worthy member, the Abbé de la Rue, Professor of History in the Academy of Caen, having transmitted to me an interesting Memoir on the celebrated Tapestry of Bayeux, which represents the Conquest of England by the Normans, I have sent you a Translation of it to lay before the Society; and have taken the liberty of adding a few Notes, which I hope will be found appropriate.

As Mr. Hume, in his Observations upon the Conduct of King Charles the First and the Duke of Buckingham, seems to imply a doubt of the truth of the assertion, that was made at the time, namely, that Charles ordered the officer, who commanded the naval force employed against Rochelle, in 1625, to surrender the ships to the French Monarch, I take the liberty, first of inserting the passage, extracted from Mr. Hume's History, and, in the next place, of sending you a true copy of the original Warrant of King Charles the First, which warrant is in my possession.

I exhibit to your Lordship, and the Society, an antique Bacchanalian Cup, with figures in relief on it, which I will endeavour to explain.

The figures on this circular Cup of glazed pottery (Pl. X.) represent the constant flux and reflux of animated beings, arriving and departing, advancing and retiring, originating from water, and refreshed by wine.

I have the honour of exhibiting a piece of antiquity lately found at Selborne in Hampshire (Pl. XI. fig. 1), on the estate of Mr. John White, late of Fleet Street, and which I possess by the favour of its worthy and respectable owner.

Your expressing a wish that I should put on paper a few observations which I made upon the Inscription, which I copied in 1801, and published in the Statistical Survey of the County of Kilkenny, is sufficient inducement to me to offer you the ideas that have occurred to me on the subject, though professing no knowledge as an antiquary, and having scarce any book to refer to: but, however otherwise incompetent, 1 have at least no theory or system to support.

I have the honour of presenting the Society with some account of a custom formerly observed at the Marriage Ceremony both in France and England, and which I do not remember to have seen noticed by any writer of our own country.

The Church of Ripon partakes of the common origin of most others in this kingdom, being founded at the re-establishment of Christianity after the conversion of the pagan Saxons. And we find that Alfred, King of Northumberland, first established a monastery or college of monks at Ripon, from Lindisfarne and Melros, in the year 661.

The following list of ancient Words, commonly used by the inhabitants of a northern district of England, is offered to the Society as an object not devoid of interest. In presenting it, I may hope other Members will be excited to form collections of terms employed among the peasantry in different counties. Such a plan, it must be evident, would greatly contribute to elucidate both History and Philology. Those who make a research in other parts of the island will probably find a rich harvest, when compared with my gleanings near the rugged hills of Westmoreland, and in the adjoining border of Yorkshire.

I send you a sketch and letter, which I lately received from a young but intelligent and zealous antiquary; you will be pleased to communicate them to the Society, if you think them worthy of their attention.

If the inedited fragment of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, which accompanies this letter, appear to you worthy of being submitted to the Society of Antiquaries it is entirely at your disposal.

It occurs towards the conclusion of a Manuscript Volume of Homilies contained in the Bodleian Library, and supposed by Wanley (who notices it in his catalogue affixed to Hicke's Thesaurus, page 15.) to have been written about the time of King Henry the second.

In digging up the foundations of the Prætorian camp at Richborough, was found a small Bronze Figure of a Roman Soldier playing on a pair of Bagpipes, which Mr. King, in his Munimenta Antiqua, Vol. II. p. 22, Pl. XX. tells us was presented to him by Mr. Boys, and that he has given three views of it, as an instrument of music borrowed by the Scots from the Romans, in the manner they did the plaid, and the mode of wearing it, from the toga.

Among the inedited Saxon Manuscripts at this day existing in the collections either of individuals or public bodies, there are probably few superior in interest to the volume of Miscellaneous Poetry given by Leofric, the first Bishop of Exeter, to the Cathedral Church of that diocese, and still preserved in its capitular library.

The Anglo-Saxon Poem of which I enclose a Specimen is contained, together with various others, in the Volume preserved in the Library of Exeter Cathedral, an extract from which I had, in November last, the honour of submitting to the Society. Its subject, the Reproach of a Spirit in misery to the body which it formerly inhabited, will doubtless be recognized by those who are conversant with our early Poetry as one upon which the genius of our Minstrels, or rather perhaps of our monastic Versifiers, was not unfrequently exercised. The Exordium of this ancient composition will be found (if I have rightly translated the passage in question, which is somewhat obscure,) to contain a singular instance of popular superstition relative to the time during which the soul was permitted to revisit the Earth after its separation from the body.

One of the Anglo-Saxon poems contained in the Exeter MS. is remarkable as being a translation or rather Paraphrase of a Latin Original still in existence; the “Phœnix” (attributed by some to Lactantius, and printed at the end of the Variorum Edition of Claudian) commencing

Est locus in primo felix Oriente remotus.

Among the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum is a thin folio volume written upon vellum, marked No 4292, and containing the Register of Persons who sought Sanctuary for different crimes at St. John of Beverley in Yorkshire, in the reigns of King Edward the Fourth, King Henry the Seventh, and King Henry the Eighth. The book-binder by whom it appears to have been rebound of later years, seems to have mixed some of the leaves, or, at least, to have put the entries of King Edward the Fourth's time after some of those of King Henry the Seventh's.

In a volume of Miscellaneous Papers among the Cotton Manuscripts in the British Museum, is a short but curious Memoir on the state of Norham Castle in the time of Henry the Eighth.

A very short extract from that part which relates to provisions for the garrison was copied by Mr. Pinkerton in his History of Scotland: but I think the whole Memoir affords an important detail, not only of the œconomy, but of the general expense attending the keeping up of an ancient fortress.

I have herewith sent a brief Memoir on the Office of Cuneator, in the hope that, if you should think it worthy to be laid before the Society, some of our Members, whose researches may have been more successful than mine, will, by their communication, enable me to form a more decided opinion upon the nature of that office.