I have once more to thank you for the renewal of your confidence and to express my intention of continuing to serve the interests of the Society with such ability as I possess. There never was a period when our work was more necessary, for the destruction brought by peace is even greater than the destruction wrought by war on the visible evidence of past history. The excavation of sites before they are built over or used for other purposes is a matter of constant urgency. The destruction of country houses no longer required for their original purpose must be controlled. But as our material becomes restricted, the increasing knowledge which we acquire through research throws ever more light on the past. The task of this Society, and it has never been pursued with greater zeal, is the dissemination and enlargement of our knowledge of the cultures of the past of all dates and in all lands.

The last act performed by King Charles I when he was standing on the scaffold beside his executioner was to hand the Lesser George of the Order of the Garter, which he was wearing suspended from a ribbon round his neck, to Bishop Juxon, uttering as he did so the word ‘Remember’. The George was taken from the bishop by the Parliamentarians, but was eventually recovered by Charles II.

It is only natural to suppose that so sacred and so portable a relic was taken away by James II. He is stated by Madame de Sévigné to have used a George which had belonged to his father when investing the due de Lauzun with the Garter in February 1689. This is not recorded to have been the Scaffold George, but it shows that he took his family's insignia of the Garter with him into exile. In the eighteenth century it was universally believed that Charles I's Scaffold George was in the possession of the exiled Stuarts. Sir R. Payne-Gallwey quotes a letter written from Rome in December 1785. This letter describes Prince Charles Edward as wearing the George ‘which is interesting as being the one King Charles had on when he was beheaded, and that he desired to be sent to his son’.

The object of this paper is to invite attention to some early treatises on English heraldry in the hope of stimulating interest in that somewhat neglected phase of this study. None of the manuscripts in question has been printed, but first it may not be amiss to recall briefly the half-dozen tractates which have been printed.

The work of the Price family, William known as ‘the elder’, Joshua, and William the younger, is of considerable interest in the history of glass-painting in England, not merely because they lived during a period in which, for lack of patronage, glass-painters were few, but from the degree of accomplishment, both artistic and technical, shown in their work.

In a previous article the writer described the technique used by the armourers of the past to make mail. Very little is known about the craftsmen who made it. It is not yet possible to date pieces of mail with the same degree of accuracy with which pieces of plate armour can be dated. There are several reasons for this lack of knowledge. In the first place mail is a structure which does not lend itself to the use of armourer's marks, and though pieces are marked in one way and another, experts are so far unable to trace them to their sources. Secondly, a mail garment is not necessarily restricted to one known wearer, but because of its stretching and contracting qualities will fit almost anyone reasonably well. Thirdly, at the time when mail-making was at its height the armourer's craft had not developed to the same extent and had not yet acquired the social and decorative importance which it was to have in later years. Thus the mail-maker was more obscure and his work had no characteristic sculptural quality by which it could be recognized. On the other hand, in the early days of armour, mail garments were few and very valuable with the result that they frequently changed hands, the stretching quality permitting their use by different owners. Lastly, mail suffers from rust because it exposes a vast surface of metal to the air. When it is worn the constant friction between one ring and another wears it out comparatively quickly even if it is never permitted to get rusted. For this reason the rings in mail shirts are often thinner round the hips than on shoulders, chest, or back. Most of the early mail has been destroyed by wear and time and only fragments remain. It is not possible to say with certainty to what type of garment these fragments once belonged.