After the lapse of some few years, I resume the subject of discoveries of Roman remains in London. Since the spring of 1836 (when I first had the honour of submitting the result of my exertions to the notice of the Society) there has been little or no intermission to excavations carried on throughout the City for what is termed “City Improvements,” and for sewerage, all of which have been more or less productive in furnishing means for throwing light on the state of London and its inhabitants in a remote and interesting period of their history.

Thus the monstrous Gerioneo, intent on bringing matters to a swift conclusion, sets about Prince Arthur in the Faerie Queene (V. xi. v). However, despite enjoying the advantage of having three bodies—and, therefore, three pairs of arms which enable him to shift his axe from side to side with bewildering rapidity— Gerioneo is outfought. One by one his arms are pruned away, ‘like fruitlesse braunches’ until, at last, his bodies are hacked quite through so that they fall ‘all three one senselesse lumpe’. Yet, although Prince Arthur's technique is clearly superior to the brute force of his adversary, Spenser's account is hopelessly vague, and we can form no idea as to how the hero achieves success.

From an attentive perusal of a paper relating to the earthen ware abovementioned, and which was published in the last volume of the Archaeologla [a], it appears to have been the idea of the gentleman who delivered in that paper to our Society, that there had been a Roman pottery established near about the spot where so many earthen vessels, and fragments of vessels, are now from time to time dragged up by the fishermen of Whitstable, on a place which they have, in consequence of their discoveries, called the Pudding-Pan Sand, or Rock, situate, as I have always understood, between two and three miles from the shore.

The city of Albi is built on the steep banks of the Tarn, which drains the high table-land sloping gradually from the Cevennes to the vast plain of Languedoc. From whichever side the city be approached the lofty and massive structure of the cathedral church is seen dominating the surrounding buildings. The church, with the adjoining episcopal fortress, crowns the cliff on the left bank of the river. Adjacent to the west end of the church, and occupying the extreme point of the cliff, is the site of Castel-viel, now represented by a group of humble dwellings. Here was once a Gaulish oppidum, and later a Roman fort was erected to protect the ferry over the Tarn, which divided the territory of the Ruteni. This bourg was defended by an important fort belonging to the viscounts of Albi, who held it from their over-lords, the counts of Toulouse, and it was isolated on three sides by the ravines through which the Tarn and its tributary stream the Verdusse run, and on the east side by a moat dividing it from Albi.

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.”

The difficulty of accurately dating the vessels known as ‘mortaria’ has often been felt by excavators, and Mr. J. P. Bushe-Fox has done a great service in his classification of mortaria rims, admirably illustrated in his First Report of the Wroxeter excavations in 1912 (Soc.Ant. Lond. 1913, figs. 19 and 20); but he himself stated (p. 76) that ‘one of the chief difficulties has been the lack of any publication in which a sufficient number of specimens has been brought together showing clearly the different types and their variations’. Even his series did not begin earlier than Vespasian; at Margidunum, however, I found examples from the Claudian occupation (A.D. 48) down to the end of the fourth century, and this site therefore has furnished a continuous series of a large number of examples from datable layers, many of them stamped with potters' names, illustrating the changes in development of this vessel during a period of 350 years.

The past year has witnessed a profound change in the fortunes and prospects of the national cause; growing hope has been exchanged for the certainty of victory and ‘how long?’ is the only question yet unanswered. To some of us who have passed an appreciable portion of our lives in the Victorian age, the shattering of the old security, the reversal of the old standards, and the casting of the old society into the melting-pot, may seem too catastrophic a series of changes to have been suitably experienced in one lifetime. Yet to those with a lively historic sense it must afford a certain bitter satisfaction, to have lived in and outlived the most momentous age in the history of mankind and to have been spectators of, or participators in, the grimmest drama of human history. It should furthermore be a stimulus to further effort that we may before long have an opportunity of assisting in the restoration of all that was best in the old life and in the creation of the new social order which will we hope, in time, soften or efface the memories of five purgatorial years.

May I take this my first opportunity to thank the Fellowship for their kindness and confidence in electing me President of this ancient and eminent Society, a Society which, after at least two centuries of existence, remains fully involved and influential in all the different disciplines and endeavours that are our concern? I had the privilege of taking office from Dr. A. J. Taylor, a scholar of high repute, particularly in the field of medieval strongholds, to whom all antiquaries, and many others, remain indebted for his achievements in difficult times while Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments. He watched over the affairs of our Society with awareness and devotion, to the end that he left a sodality in good heart, unburdened by anxieties. For this, naturally I am grateful to him, and in such context it is a pleasure to me to record that during Arnold's Presidency, an eminent and respected historian, whom we all know but shall be nameless, remarked that he believed the reputation of this Society never stood higher than it does in this present decade. Let us not be coy about accepting credit given, and I think due! Looking at the Treasurer, I suggest it bears interest!

Much attention has been paid in recent years to the careers and conditions of service of some of the foremost English royal masons of the later medieval period. The craftsmen in wood, however, are on the whole less well known, partly, perhaps, because their medium is less durable than the mason's and therefore relatively fewer outstanding examples of their work have survived to witness to their skill. Carpenters of the capacity of Hugh Herland and timber work of the scale and quality of Westminster Hall roof are exceptions that prove the rule. There is, however, no lack of documentary evidence, the great bulk of it still unpublished, for the activities of many royal carpenters in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But the details are scattered in works accounts and wardrobe books, Liberate and Memoranda rolls, and until these prolific sources are searched systematically for the almost limitless information they contain, the foundation for any authoritative general work on medieval English building craftsmen will scarcely have been laid. Such a search has yet to be undertaken. Meanwhile, the purpose of the present note is to illustrate the general problem and the nature of some of the available sources by collating facts about a single craftsman that have come to light more or less accidentally in the course of research directed to another objective.

In reflecting on the works of several writers on our British antiquities who have gone before us, the public must allow great merit to the laudable zeal and painful industry shewn in their researches. It is, however, to be lamented, that, though a great deal of useful knowledge and curious information is to be derived from them, yet an injudicious mixture of matter in some, an imperfect collection in others, and an ill arrangement in most, have left much to be reformed, and much to be supplied, by the care and exactness of other writers.

In 1958 a rescue excavation was carried out by Miss Mary Rennie, on behalf of the Ministry of Works, in the southern half of Parsonage Field, off the Watermoor Road, on ground now covered by the County Health Centre. Here the remains of a Roman building of some size were partly examined and an interesting mosaic pavement of geometric design and late date was uncovered. In that same year the Cirencester Roman Excavation Committee was set up.

At the close of the year 1834, my attention was drawn to the excavations then in progress for sewers, and foundations of houses, in the extensive City improvements, from conviction, founded on former observations, but which opportunity did not then admit my taking advantage of, that the projected line of work at depths varying from twenty to fifty feet, could not fail to afford the means for obtaining some additional and corroborating information illustrative of the ancient occupation of the soil; and, finding that investigation was likley to be attended with some little success, I persevered in examining with all possible diligence the several excavations, and now submit to your notice, though necessarily in an abridged shape, an account of the result of my labours. I shall venture no further on your patience than will be consistent with recording the principal features in the City discoveries, without theorising or wandering from a statement of facts.

You are aware that I have, at intervals, employed myself a good deal in the manuscript room of the British Museum, during the last four years, in researches among the Illuminated MSS. of the fifteenth century, on the subject of Costume; for the purpose of helping me to form a right judgment of the ages and country of certain books of wood-engravings, which are known by bibliographers under the name of Block-Books; and are commonly supposed to have given rise to the invention of Typography: for the controversy concerning this subject has long occupied my attention; and, although so many books have been written upon it during the last two centuries, I have become more and more persuaded, that the evidence on both sides must be subjected to a nicer examination, and sifting, than it has yet had, before we can hope to come to a right decision concerning it.