The provenance and purpose of the Barnabas Altarpiece, acquired in 1971 by the Kimbell Art Museum and exceptional for being a large early gothic retable on panel, has baffled art historians since 1950, when it became better known;it has since been dated to 1250-60. It was catalogued in 1972 on rather slender grounds as being English (a view that has become increasingly suspect) and it was proposed in 1965 that a bishop Barnabas (at that time not identified) was the donor. The panels are of willow, a wood occasionally used in medieval times for large panels in Mediterranean areas around the Gulf of Lyons, but never in northern Europe or Spain. A priest named Barnabas was made bishop of Osma by King Alphonso of Castile to whom he was physician. He held the see until his death in c. 1351 and founded a chaplaincy in the cathedral in 1350. However, neither that date nor the identification of the panels as willow is consistent with the hypothesis that he was the donor. It is here proposed that the panels were made in the south of France and that the inscription—Barnabas: Eps—applied to St. Barnabas, the apostle born in Cyprus and the first of a long line of archbishops; furthermore that this altarpiece was painted by a southern French artist for a church in Cyprus, probably that dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul in the royal complex at Nicosia which included the castle/palace and Dominican monastery. It had been the wish of St. Louis, while making preparations in Cyprus in 1248/9 for his crusade, that a new monastic church should form the royal mausoleum for the Lusignan dynasty.

St. Paul's is a post-Reformation cathedral, built on a pre-Reformation plan; designed for Anglicans, re-planned for Evangelicals, and then re-decorated for Anglo-Catholics. Hence the complexity of its architectural history. This article examines Wren's unfinished legacy, and discusses the many schemes to complete the cathedral's decoration, beginning with Sir James Thornhill and ending with Sir William Richmond. Central to its theme are the decorative proposals produced between 1870 and 1874 by William Burges (1827–81). Public outcry prevented the implementation of Burges's plans for a full-scale programme of marble and mosaic decoration. Nevertheless, his schemes formed the basis of the cathedral's eventual refurbishment during the 1890s.

The sanctuary at Mekka, in the time of Muhammad, merely consisted of a small roofless enclosure formed by four walls a little higher than a man, accordining to Ibn Hishām, or about 9 cubits (say 4·50 m.) according to Azraqī, built of rough stone laid dry. It was oblong in shape, the following being the measurements of its sides: NE. 32 cubits, NW. 22, SW. 31, SE. 20, proportions approximately 3:2. Within this enclosure was the sacred well of Zemzem.

So far as is known the earliest Norman Kings had only one seal with which to authenticate any written orders or communications which issued in their name: under his Great Seal the King would agree to a treaty or order payment for his wine, summon a sheriff to account or bestow an earldom, arrange his own marriage or the legal affairs of one of his subjects; and in the original documents under this seal which have survived to us from the twelfth century, even in those which we find in the enrolments of the early thirteenth, may be traced every important element which we find in executive administration by Government departments to-day; not to mention those which might be discerned in the private correspondence of the sovereign. But very early it was found that it was impossible for one seal to deal with the resulting mass of business or to cope with the situation which arose when the King (with the Chancellor in his company) was absent from the usual seat of Government: the Dialogus de Scaccario tells us that already in the twelfth century there was a second seal which was kept by the Chancellor in the Treasury per vicarium As executive business developed and increased in succeeding centuries other seal developments followed: notably the addition to the resources of royal administration of the Privy and Secret Seals and of the Signets, which are the direct ancestors of the seals that still symbolize the authority of a secretary of state. But meanwhile the principle of dividing the Great Seal itself was also extended and much used: and it is with these deputies or departmental versions of the Great Seal that the present article is to deal.

Perhaps there is no individual, in the whole course of English History, whose character and pretensions have been enveloped in greater mystery, or occasioned more discussion, than those of the person who in the reign of King Henry the Seventh assumed the title of Richard Duke of York, and who is better known under the name of Perkin Warbeck. On both sides of the question—his being really heir, to the Crown, or an artful impostor—have appeared many able writers, and the controversy may yet scarcely be deemed decided. On the former side are the respectable names of Buck, Carte, Walpole, Henry (?), Laing, and Bayley; whilst on the other we have the united voices of all the early historians, and in more recent times, the authorities of Hume, Lingard, Sharon Turner, and Nicolas. It would be very easy, as Dr. Henry justly remarks, for us to adopt either of the two opinions, and support it by plausible arguments, but not so easy to establish its truth in such a manner as to leave no doubt on the subject. The advocates for Perkin's claims have derived a great advantage from the absence hitherto of those contemporary documents which might substantiate or refute the statements of the Tudor chroniclers, and have continually questioned the authenticity of the narrative, on the ground of its being the invention of the writer, or adopted from motives of political expediency. Any papers therefore which may assist us in forming a clearer judgment of this “mysterious personage,” or throw even a feeble ray on the obscurity with which the transactions of that period are clouded, appear to me to behighly deserving of attention; and with this view it is that I take the liberty of laying before the Society copies of some original documents, part of which have recently been brought to light, and the remainder (probably from the difficulty of decyphering them, or from other causes) hitherto unnoticed by all our historians.

Among the ancient compotuses in the Exchequer which have been lately brought to light by the exertions of the Honourable Board of Commissioners on the Public Records, are several which relate to the measures taken by King Edward the Third to bring to justice Sir Thomas de Gournay, the principal actor, as was alleged, in the murder of his father in Berkeley Castle: and as they place the circumstances of his capture, and his ultimate fate, in a light entirely different from that in which they are placed by the old Chroniclers De la Moor and Walsingham, and by modern historians, who, in addition to the Chronicles, have had the benefit of the letters relating to this affair which are printed in the Fœdera, it has occurred to me, that it might be acceptable to the Society of Antiquaries if I were to lay a summary of the contents of these documents before it.

Since my last, I have received from an ingenious friend the following inscription, made use of in building the Benedictines church at Taloire (an inconsiderable village, half a league from Annecy, a town upon the lake of Annecy) which he observes not to be published with due exactness by Gruter.

From time to time during the past 150 years traces of Saxon burials have been discovered at Hawks Hill, Fetcham, Surrey, and in the year 1907 a Saxon cemetery was definitely located there. The hill stands at an elevation of 300 ft. above sea-level, and overlooks the valley of the Mole; and the conclusion arrived at in 1907 was that it was the burial-ground of a Saxon population, which probably had its settlement at the foot of the hill, in the valley of the Mole, during the fifth and sixth centuries A.D.

‘It remains the most baffling and incomprehensible carving in the country’, wrote Sir Thomas Kendrick of the Reculver cross: of, that is, the five severely battered but finely sculpted fragments of the stone cross that once stood in the church at Reculver, on the coast of Kent. There is no monument comparable to that carving, in England or abroad. The Reculver cross has long seemed to hold out a tantalizing promise—that it might dispel some of the mystery still shrouding the gap between the waning of late classical art and the vigorous burgeoning of Anglo-Saxon sculpture.

It is not attaching too high a degree of importance to the study of Celtic antiquities, to maintain, that, owing to the attention now paid to it in this country, a light begins to break in upon that part of ancient history, which, beyond every other, seemed to present a forlorn investigation. All that relates to the aboriginal inhabitants of the north of Europe, would be involved in darkness but for the enquiries now instituted respecting Celtic sepulchres. From the information already received, concerning these sepulchres, it may be assumed, as a fact almost capable of actual demonstration, that the mounds, or barrows, common to all Great Britain, and to the neighbouring continent, together with all the tumuli fabled by Grecian and by Roman historians as the tombs of Giants, are so many several vestiges of that mighty family of Titan-Celts who gradually possessed all the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, and who extended their colonies over all the countries where Cyclopéan structures may be recognized; whether in the walls of Crotona, or the temple at Stonehénge; in the Cromlechs of Wales, or the trilithal monuments of Cimbrica Chersonesus; in Greece, or in Asia-Minor; in Syria, or in Egypt. It is with respect to Egypt alone, that an exception might perhaps be required; but history, while it deduces the origin of the worship of Minerva, at Sais, from the Phrygians, also relates of this people, that they were the oldest of mankind. The Cyclopéan architecture of Egypt may therefore be referred originally to the same source; but, as in making the following Observations brevity must be a principal object, it will be necessary to divest them of every thing that may seem like a Dissertation; and confine the statement, here offered, to the simple narrative of those facts, which have led to its introduction.

In 1865 the great antiquarian connoisseur of medieval painted glass, Charles Winston, said of the Herkenrode glass at Lichfield: ‘I do not know of any works in glass which are so powerful, without in the least degree violating the essential conditions of art’. This study, which illustrates all the glass of known Herkenrode provenance for the first time, demonstrates clearly the vision and skill of the glaziers in translating highly sophisticated designs into glass of startling luminosity and in achieving the visual power and transcendence of the limitations of the medium recognized by Winston.

As a discovery which I have lately made in this parish within a few fields of my house, will, I trust, be interesting to you and all antiquaries, I have taken up my pen to send you some account of it.

A few days ago, as some men were ploughing in a field, in this parish, they perceived one of their horses feet to sink in the ground, which, upon examination, proved to be in the mouth of an urn; fortunately the horse did not break it, and the men dug it up; they examined its contents, and finding no coins, but that what it contained consisted only of some burnt bones and pieces of broken glass of a bluish colour and very thick, they threw them again into the hole and covered them up, bringing the urn home, which is now in my possession.

A three-leaf fragment of an unidentified London pewterer's business records, covering some three months of the year 1551, has been found among the archives of the Worshipful Company of Pewterers and is here transcribed together with a discussion of its contents. It provides an inventory of the pewterer's stock, describes the alloying and casting of over a ton of tin to produce a wide range of pewter flatware, and itemizes the sales and loans of pewterware to named customers. These include other pewterers and Alderman Richard Lambert. The manuscript provides a unique insight into a sixteenth century pewterer's workshop practices. Speculation into the identity of the pewterer has proved inconclusive.