The parish of Wing, from the accounts of which I purpose to make some extracts, is situated on an elevated ridge overlooking the Vale of Aylesbury; distant some three miles from Leighton Buzzard, nine from Aylesbury, and about the same distance from Tring.

The year 1325 is memorable in the history both of England and Prance as a time when very difficult negotiations were going on, and when the Queen-Consort of England undertook the office of mediator between her husband, the King of England, and the King of France, her brother.

Du 20 Avril au 16 Mai 1855, j'ai exploré une partie du cimetière abandonné de l'ancienne paroisse de Bouteilles, supprimée en 1791, et dont l'église a été démolie en 1806. Le motif de cette recherche était le désir de recueillir et d'étudier des cercueils de pierre et des croix de plomb avec formule d'absolution, genre d'antiquites que l'on avait rencontrées en 1842, lors de la confection du chemin de grande communication No. 1, de Dieppe à Neufchatel. J'ai été assez heureux pour y trouver les objets que je cherchais.

I have the pleasure of laying before the Society an Original Deed which makes a trifling addition to the little which is known of Sir Thomas Swinford, the son of Catherine Swinford, whose connection with John of Gaunt, and subsequent marriage to him, make her and her son historical personages of the fifteenth century. It has been found amongst the Evidences of Mr. Wentworth, of Wolley, in Yorkshire.

Among the many interesting remains of heathendom, which, to the great benefit of comparative Archaeology, you have recorded in your work on Saxon Pagandom, none have struck me more than certain vessels and utensils found at Eye in Suffolk, and described by you in Part xi. plate xxii. compared with Part ii. plate iv. As works of art they have not indeed much to recommend them; nor are they valuable for the sake of the material of which they are formed. And yet they are more than commonly remarkable. They are so, not only on account of their comparative rarity in this country, which renders them attractive merely as curiosities; but of their intimate connection with objects identical in form, which have been discovered in various parts of North Germany. You are, no doubt, aware that thousands of urns have been exhumed in that part of the continent within the last two hundred years; but, of them all, none approach more nearly in form to the English than those excavated last year at Stade-on-the-Elbe. A comparison of them with those which you have engraved, and those which we find in the “Saxon Obsequies,” and other English works of archaeological interest, will, I trust, not be without value for you. It will serve to shew how complete, even in this matter of detail, was the resemblance between the Saxons in England, and those who remained behind in their old seats upon the Elbe.

I have again the pleasure of sending you a transcript of some of the numerous documents of antiquarian interest preserved in the Muniment Room of Loseley House, near Guildford. for access to which, as on a previous occasion, I am indebted to the kindness of their proprietor, James More Molyneux, Esq. of Loseley, a Fellow of this Society.

In my last letter I gave some account of the celebrated Cloister of Moissac; after which I visited Toulouse, which I consider to have been the head quarters of a very remarkable school of sculpture in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; but which did not form part of the English province of Aquitaine, and therefore is not included in this series of letters. The next place that I visited was the town of Cahors, which is finely situated amongst the hills, and was strongly fortified, as it was a border town between the dominions of the Kings of England as Lords of Guienne, and the Counts of Toulouse.

The antiquities which I wish to submit to the consideration of the Society have been brought under their notice on a former occasion; still, as a hundred and twenty years have since elapsed, it will scarcely be necessary for me to apologise for reverting to them again.

Among the Sloane Manuscripts in the British Museum there is one, entitled “The Story of the Ship's Boat which gave Peter the Great the first Thought of building the Russian Fleet.”

I am not aware that it has been in print; nor have I found it known to persons whose literary means, and whose knowledge of all which has been published in this or any other country relating to Russia, has enabled them to call such a Tract to recollection. It must have been written more than a century ago, since it is found in Sir Hans Sloane's Collection of Manuscripts, which was transferred to the Trustees of the British Museum in, or soon after, 1753.

A manuscript volume in my possession, which formerly belonged to Sir Christopher Hatton, as testified by his own handwriting upon it, supplies some additional information respecting Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper and father of Lord Chancellor Bacon, a notice of which seems not unsuited to the purposes of this Society. Sir Nicholas was a very unpretending man, as regards authorship: he published little or nothing in his lifetime; and perhaps the difficulties in which he was involved by, at least, assisting Hales, in his treatise on the title of the Scottish Queen, served as a warning to him how he again gave adversaries an advantage over him by printing a book. That book was the means of excluding him from the Privy Council, after he had been several years in possession of the Great Seal; and, owing to the animosity of the Earl of Leicester, he did not for some time re-establish himself in the favour of the Queen.

I am anxious to direct attention to certain very remarkable figures and combinations of figures, the most of which have been found in interments, in various parts of Europe, in the hope that notice of them may induce some member of the Society of Antiquaries to pursue their history further than I can do. It lies somewhat beyond the strict limits which I am compelled to put to my studies, and deserves a more exclusive treatment than I have time to bestow upon it: but it seems a subject likely to repay a careful investigation.

Antiquaries who have visited the Cathedral of Gloucester, or studied the elaborate work on that building published by our Society with the assistance of Mr. Carter, are aware of the existence of a very curious Picture deposited in the south triforium of the choir, representing the Last Judgment. (Plate XXVIII.)

The Ring has for many ages formed part of the insignia of a Bishop; there does not, however, appear to be any evidence either as to the period or the special reason of its first adoption. It seems from very early times to have had a twofold purpose and signification, the one practical and useful, the other mystical and symbolic.

It is remarkable that Stowe makes no mention of the Abbot of Waltham's House at St. Mary-at-Hill, although the industrious London historian lived hard by, in the parish of St. Andrew Undershaft; and the only printed notice of it that I am aware of is in Malcolm's Londinium Redivivum, vol. iv. pp. 417, 420, where it is stated that the parish purchased the abbot of Waltham's kitchen, and erected the south aisle of the parish church on the site thereof in the year 1501.

In the course of last season I informed the Society of Antiquaries that it was my intention to make, on the part of the Caerleon Archaeological Association, an examination of some of the remains of the ancient Roman buildings at Caerwent; and I promised to lay before them the result. In redemption of that promise, I have now the pleasure to communicate to the Society the particulars of the excavations which were made in the course of last summer, under the direction and superintendence of our excellent and able Secretary, J. Y. Akerman, Esq.; and I gladly take this opportunity of publicly tendering to him, on the part of the members of the Caerleon Association, and myself, our thanks for the very careful attention and unremitting assiduity with which he directed the operations. I must also tender my acknowledgments to Thomas Wakeman, Esq. who has made deep researches and large collections relative to the history of Monmouthshire; and who, at the Annual Meeting of the Caerleon Archaeological Association, in August last, read a paper on the history of Caerwent, of which he has kindly allowed me to embody a large portion in this communication.

I beg to call attention to a very interesting monument still preserved at Coventry. It consists of a large piece of Tapestry, 30 feet long by 10 feet high, wrought at the close of the fifteenth or beginning of the sixteenth century, and affording a singularly perfect example of the arts of design and weaving at that period. I am not aware that we possess many examples of tapestry before the sixteenth century; but specimens after the establishment of a manufactory at Mortlake, under Sir Francis Crane, seem to have become very numerous, chiefly, however, of Scripture-historical and allegorical compositions. The greater part of these are of the French school; although, in accordance with the wish of King Charles I., several sets of tapestries from Raphael's Cartoons, which are now at Hampton Court, were executed at that manufactory.

I had the honour of exhibiting, at a Meeting in May last, a collection of remarkable antiquities which had been shortly before found in Suffolk.

A farmer at Westhall (a small village about three miles north-east of Halesworth) was engaged in draining a field, called the “Millpost Field,” carrying the trenches to a depth of between two and three feet from the surface, in a stiff clayey soil, and in the direction of a small watercourse which ran along the east side of the field. A space of about two acres in extent, in the lowest part of the field adjoining the watercourse, presented, when ploughed up, a much darker soil than the other parts of it; and in making his drains through this part of the field much burnt earth and fragments of pottery were thrown out of the trenches. Near the centre of the space, and about two feet from the surface, he met with a quantity of bronze rings and other fragments, which he gave to a Mr. Hylton, a Norfolk farmer, who communicated the discovery to me, and enabled me to exhibit them to the Society: and in order that every possible information might be obtained, I joined them, on the 2nd of May, and carefully went over the ground with the spade. All the bronze fragments had been gathered together, and my search added nothing to the collection.