Tablet weaving has been popular in the north from the early centuries A.D. It is present, for example, in the well-developed tablet braids and edgings of the Torsberg find from Schleswig, and therefore might be expected to occur in Anglo-Saxon remains. It is most appropriate, then, that the first examples of tablet weaving to be recognized in this country come from East Anglia, and in two cases these are fastened to wrist-clasps regarded by E. T. Leeds as distinctive of districts which were occupied by the Angles.

The bronze crowns and the ornament of chains and discs which are the subject of this paper, were found a few years ago at Cavenham Heath, Suffolk, lying close together at a depth of about 1½ ft. from the surface. Later they came into the possession of Mr. Ashley, landlord of the Crown Hotel, Mundford, from whom I purchased them.

Sir Harris Nicolas printed in the Testamenta Vetusta an Abstract of the Will of the Lady Alice West of Hinton Marcel, widow of Sir Thomas West, dated in 1395, and proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury.

Since I had the honour of reading these papers to the Society of Antiquaries, I have been tempted to conclude that they would hardly be deemed of sufficient importance to be received into their Archæologia, though, in the absence of more learned inquiries, I know of no good reason why the curious old diary of an elderly lady of an ancient house should be beneath the notice of an antiquary. Your official communication has however settled the question; and, as I find that the MS. has been selected for publication, I send it to you very little altered from the form in which it was read. Should it appear that the subject has been anywhere treated with less gravity than may become these pages, it may be pleaded that the feeling was in some measure forced upon me by the nature of the materials themselves, in moulding them into the form in which they now appear.

It is proposed in the following memoir to do two things : one, to give some account of that species of mosaic decoration which by the Romans was distinguished as “opus sectile,” particularly as applied on walls; the other, to describe the very remarkable building which has afforded by far the most important examples of work of that character of which we have any knowledge, viz., the church of San Andrea in Catabarbara, which was probably originally the great hall or basilica of the palace of the Bassi on the Esquiline hill in Rome.

The earliest mention of cards occurs in 1377, and their history during the next century is obscure. Card playing seems to have become a popular vice very soon, since it is said to have been prohibited by the Synod of Langres in 1404. In 1423 cards equally with dice were the object of a celebrated sermon by St. Bernardin of Sienna at Bologna. The saint attributes the invention of games of chance to the devil, and gives a list of games of chance, most of which were played with dice and a backgammon board.

In 1832 I had the honour of addressing you on the occasion of the first excavation made by Lord Maynard at the Bartlow Hills. These hills were represented by me to consist of a line of four greater barrows, and of a line of three smaller barrows in front of the others; and I acquainted you that we then opened the three latter, and that, in each, we found a variety of Roman sepulchral objects.

In the parish of Addington, near Town Malling, in Kent, about 500 paces to the north east of the church, in a rabbit warren, upon a little eminence, are the remains of several large stones, placed in an oval form. The inside of the area from east to west is 50 paces, the breadth in the middle from north to south 42 paces; at the east end is a flat stone, placed somewhat like that which they call the Altar at Stone Henge: Pl. vi. fig. 1. No. 1. This stone in the longest part is nine feet, in the broadest seven feet, and near two feet thick. Behind this, a little to the north, is another flat stone, No. 2. which seems to have stood upright, but is now, by some accident thrown down. This is fifteen feet long, seven feet wide, and two feet thick. The stone No. 3. next the altar on the north side, is seven feet high, seven feet wide, and two feet thick; the top of this hath been broken off.

I now proceed to submit to you some remarks on the presumed Saxon Fibula or Ouche, which I had the pleasure to exhibit last year to the Society. (Plate X.)

It is not without reason that singularities in the tenure of land have always excited considerable interest among antiquaries. For in that state of society which prevailed in Europe during the middle ages, the relation of the individual to the soil on which he lived determined his most important relations with his fellow men and his political and social condition. An accurate and minute acquaintance with the nature of tenures is therefore an object of no slight consequence with the student of medieval history.

The two Psalters which Mr. Bragge has been good enough to exhibit on this occasion, at my request, are good specimens of writing and of illumination, of the middle of the thirteenth century; but are particularly interesting from the curious entries in the calendars prefixed to them.

Some years have now elapsed since any paper has been read before this Society upon Silchester, which is without doubt the most interesting Roman city in this country. Comparatively speaking, very little has been done there since the death of the Rev. James Gerald Joyce, F.S.A., the rector of Stratfieldsaye, whose elaborate and valuable papers upon Silchester, amply illustrated with plans and drawings, published in vols. xl. and xlvi. of Archaeologia, are well known to you all. Had it not been for him we should probably have remained in ignorance of the existence of the city, as it was he who inspired the late Duke of Wellington with such a keen interest in the place that he authorised excavations to be undertaken.

During the fall of last year I visited the ancient city of Bath, and was astonished at the quality and extent of the sculptures and inscriptions now preserved in the Literary Institution. They are collected in a vestibule attached to that building, which has a portico of very pure Greek Doric architecture, and the sculptures are effectively arranged, with the advantage of a central light from above. All the sculptures in this vestibule have a particular local interest, as they were discovered within the precincts of the city, most of them about the year 1790, upon what appears to have been the site of an ancient temple, or, more probably, a group of buildings.

It too often happens, among biographers and genealogists, that erroneous dates and lineages, given by the first writer, are adopted without inquiry by those who follow him. Generations are thus not unfrequently omitted in pedigrees, and members of a family, bearing the same Christian name, become confounded with each other. Puzzling as every one engaged in such investigations must have found this practice in private descents, errors of this description are magnified in importance, when they have reference to persons of note and position; involving as they must do the difficulty of connecting the real parties with the facts that relate to them.

Since I submitted to you the paper which the Society of Antiquaries has done me the honour of printing in the thirty-third volume of the Archæologia, pp. 269-278, I have met with a valuation of another manor, Shifford, in the same parish, anno 1608, in which the “yeard of land” is said to contain “above thirty-five acres by estimation.”