In 1831 Dr James Raine excavated Bede’s tomb in Durham Cathedral, revealing a partial skeleton accompanied by a medieval ring. Three casts were made of the skull; the recent re-discovery of one of these casts provokes an examination of the authenticity of the remains and of antiquarian interests in craniology in the mid-nineteenth century.

This article looks at a fountain basin that is of outstanding art-historical interest as a surviving example of secular Romanesque sculpture. The fountain basin is signed by the Italian sculptor Drudus de Trivio and is dated c 1240. The article situates the fountain basin within Drudus’s oeuvre – most notably the ciborium in Ferentino and the choir-screens at Cività Castellana – and relates it to the recently completed cloister sculpture of the Lateran and San Paolo fuori le mura, of which Drudus had close knowledge. Possible sources are explored, and chronology, classical precedents and the innovative use of garlands are discussed. A new translation of the inscription, which has been rather neglected in previous studies, is offered. The translation places the inscription within the wider context of Italian fountain inscriptions and is used to suggest that the fountain was secular in purpose with the aim of querying the long-standing view that Drudus carried out only liturgical sculpture, thereby adding to our understanding of the work of the Cosmati.

This note discusses the enigmatic double-sided portrait of Sir Christopher Hatton now in Northampton Museum and Art Gallery. It seeks W illuminate the ways in which it could be read, how it might have been viewed, and suggests its possible functions. It also connects the picture with some central texts in Renaissance humanism, Erasmus's Adagia and Alciato's Emblematum Liber.

A comprehensive study is attempted of the pre-1600 monuments in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. Use is made for the first time of a key source, the set of plans of the chapel floors made by Henry Emlyn in 1789. These show the chapel once W have contained a large collection of monumental brasses. The plans are examined alongside the evidence of the extant indents in the chapel and cloister to reconstruct the original lay-out of the brasses. It is demonstrated that the great majority of the brasses commemorated the deans and canons who served the chapel. It is argued that the character of the chapel as a mausoleum changed after 1475, when Edward IV embarked on the building of the present fabric. From this time, the ranks of the commemorated expanded to include layfolk, particularly Knights of the Garter and men with royal connections, while, alongside the brasses, big sculpted monuments were commissioned in the side chapels of the building.

As you were pleased to intrust me with the whole direction of opening the tumuli in your manors of Corton, Boyton, and Sherrington, this week, I shall give you the particulars of the discoveries as they occurred to me.

I have lately perused with much attention what the very learned and ingenious Mr. Bryant hath insisted upon, with regard to an Apamean medaglion, the reverse of which is supposed to represent some circumstances of the Noachic deluge.

The publication of the Italian armour from the Castle of Chalcis recalls the existence of other antiquities of similar date and origin discovered in the same place, and now preserved in the British and Ashmolean Museums. While the objects described by Mr. ffoulkes are all military, those with which we are here concerned were made for civil uses. They are personal ornaments, and illustrate in a pleasing fashion the knightly civilization in Greece during the Venetian supremacy in Euboea.

All writers on the history of pottery have more or less alluded to the Bacini, or deep howl-shaped dishes of various sizes and colours, which are to be seen on the exterior of several churches in different parts of Italy. More particular allusion has been made to those found on the churches of Pisa, and various theories have been raised to account for their origin. It is particularly stated by Sismondi, in the “History of the Italian Republics” (i. 354), that the Pisans made great exertions to rid the Tyrrhenian Sea of the Moorish pirates, which had so often destroyed their vessels and ravaged their coasts. Their efforts were specially directed against a certain King Nazaredeck of Majorca, whose cruel acts of piracy had spread terror in the coast towns of Italy and Southern France.

A writer on the subject of the ancient Library of the cathedral priory of St. Mary, Worcester, is confronted by unusual difficulties, in the dearth of documents which throw light on it. No catalogue of the books is preserved of a date anterior to about 1650, and this is an incomplete and very roughly made one. The library has been moved more than once, and the architecture of some of the buildings which contain it has been altered or renewed at subsequent periods. If reliance therefore is placed on external evidence alone, the history of the library would be most meagre and uncertain. Fortunately a good portion of the library itself remains, and tells something of its own history. Moreover, from a close examination of the existing buildings, of the chisel marks and varieties of stone, the architectural history can be to some extent collected.

The first exploration of this cemetery in the autumn of 1893, of which I had the honour of laying an account before the Society was of so interesting a character that it was felt both by Mr. Edwin Henty and myself that it would be desirable to ascertain whether other graves did not exist within the limits of the ancient British camp. With this view the examination of the adjoining ground was made in the autumn of last year, and the results not only fully justified the examination, but resulted in discoveries of far greater interest than those previously made, and in one instance, at least, of a character hitherto unknown in England.

Malone may be said to have raised the deer-stealing incident in Shakespeare's early life to a degree of importance that it hardly deserved, considering the commonness of the offence about the period when our great dramatist is generally supposed to have left Stratford-upon-Avon for London. Malone's argument, which Gifford thought too long drawn out, was, that as Sir Thomas Lucy had no park, therefore he could have no deer; and consequently that Shakespeare could not have stolen deer which the old knight did not possess. It is evident that this reasoning is inconclusive, because, taking it even for a point established that Sir Thomas Lucy had no park, it is not thereby proved that he had no deer. To shew then that he had deer, or at all events to shew the probability that he had deer, I adduced the fact in my Life of Shakespeare, that when Lord Keeper Egerton entertained Queen Elizabeth shortly before her death, Sir Thomas Lucy made him a present of a buck as a contribution to the feast. Here again the evidence was clearly inconclusive, because Sir Thomas Lucy might have given the buck to Sir Thomas Egerton, without having any deer in his park, or even in his possession. Nevertheless, considering the manners of the time, it was not at all likely that he should have done so; and I believe that of late years it has been generally supposed that Sir Thomas Lucy, if he had not a park, had deer; and that it was possible, therefore, that Shakespeare should have been involved in some poaching affair, and might have quitted his native town for the metropolis to avoid proceedings against him.

There is scarcely a district in the world endowed with such singular beauty, and possessing such deep points of interest, as that extending about ten or twelve miles westward from Naples. A sky of such brilliancy as only Italy can shew; a sea of colours like the transparent hues of the sapphire and emerald; mountains on land and mountainous islands rising from the sea twice and thrice the height of those in Wales, and crowned with snow for a third of the year. The air of extraordinary clearness and purity, and redolent with the odours of the myrtle, orange, and citron. The earth covered with rich crops of maize, the vine hanging in a cordage of festoons from tree to tree, huge groves of figs and olives twisted in every fantastic form, and interspersed with the feathery palm, forests of pine, leccio, and cypress, all form a scene of beauty difficult to describe. But how is the interest heightened when we reflect on the history of the spot! We are in the scene so exquisitely described by Virgil in the Æneid. Here are the Isles of the Sirens and of Circe, the Tomb of Misenus, the Grotto of the Sibyl, the mysterious River Cocytus, the Lake Avernus, and the Elysian Fields. Here, too, the great poet is supposed to have been interred. The heights are crowned with the remains of sumptuous villas, where Caesar, Crassus, Pompey, Lucullus, and Augustus feasted, and where Cicero penned his best philosophical works.

In view of the very number—possibly more than three thousand—of English alabaster devotional (as distinct from those made as parts of monuments) carvings which have survived, it is somewhat astonishing how extraordinarily small a proportion of them have hitherto been datable otherwise than on intrinsic grounds. We have, indeed, many references to such carvings in dated or datable documents, but in extremely few cases have we been able to identify the particular objects with which those references are concerned. So far as I know, the only ones which have as yet been connected definitely with a dated document are the ones in the reredos, depicting events in the story of St. James, preserved intact in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Almost invariably an English alabaster carving is datable only within somewhat wide limits, the criteria most usually applied being those laid down ’provisionally’ (but now commonly accepted as practically correct) by Prof. Prior nearly thirty years ago, and in accordance with the inherent characters of the sculpture and the applied coloration. Any discovery of data relating to a particular alabaster carving is, consequently, of considerable moment to us, not merely in relation with the object with which the data are immediately concerned, but much more importantly as giving us means for dating other similar carvings more accurately than within Prior's provisional ‘Periods’ (even though modified by the general terms ‘early’ and ‘late’) of about forty years each. In the case of the Santiago retable there can be no doubt at all as to the direct connexion between it and the existing document relating to it; in the case of the present fragments there is, unfortunately, in the only records I have found associated with them, an element of uncertainty, although there appears to be a very strong presumption that the medieval record to which I shall refer relates to the altar whose retable those fragments adorned.

Whereas it seemed advisable for many reasons to resume the work at Atchana as soon as possible after the interval due to the war, uncertainty regarding the conditions under which the work would be carried on impelled one to plan for a short season with a strictly limited objective. That there should have been a rise in costs was inevitable; but only on our arrival did we learn that wages had increased ninefold and that the living-index had gone up by 1,000 per cent. In such circumstances the utmost economy had to be observed; 150 men were employed, but only six weeks’ actual digging could be done. In that very short time we did in fact fulfil our programme, but results would have been much better in proportion had we been able to continue the excavations for another three weeks.

The inscription reproduced in the accompanying plate is cut on the abacus of the northern pier of the chancel arch in the little church of St. James at Clapton, set on the hill-side above Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire. Attention wasfirstcalled to it by the late Mr. Ulric Daubeny, who assigned the building to the last quarter of the twelfth century. The lettering is of the Early Gothic (popularly called ‘Lombardic’) type, which prevailed from about 1200 to 1350, and therefore the inscription is probably not older than the thirteenth century. But the forms of the letters are sometimes peculiar, if not unique; and they seem to have been produced partly by the use of compasses. Some letters (e.g. E and 1) are not always formed in exactly the same way; while others, as we shall see, appear to be minuscule forms, such as are found in manuscripts of the period. The whole gives the impression of being the work of an amateur rather than of a professional carver.