The volume I exhibit to-night is a folio copy on vellum of the Statutes 1st Edward III. to 23rd Henry VI., the text written in single column of thirty-eight lines and preceded by an elaborate index covering fifty-two folios. The legislation of each regnal year opens with a large initial letter painted in ultramarine upon a floriated vermilion background of penwork, which extends, in the form of flourishes, far into the margin of the page. The initial letter of the king's name in the first Act of each reign is of still larger dimensions, usually from 2½ to 3 inches square. It is, in each instance, elaborately illuminated in gold and colours, and encloses a shield of arms relieved upon a background of lake covered with delicate scrollwork in white body-colour. From the initial letter proceeds illuminated foliage completely enclosing three sides of the text.

In the thirteenth century Wells was a place of some educational equipment in connection with the cathedral church of secular canons, an academic town of the times. There was a school for choristers, there was also a schola grammaticalis of a higher grade under the chancellor's authority. Since bishop Jocelin's time in 1240, the chancellor, by the terms of his office, was required to give lectures on theology at stated times. There were many boys and many vicars choral and younger canons more or less under some education of the time. There were books for worship and for use of the canons, which required safe keeping. Records, registers, etc. were kept of the acts and statutes of the chapter, and copies were made of the charters and important documents, the originals of which were kept in the treasury, all which required a scriptorium.

We have the honour of submitting on behalf of the Executive Committee a report of the operations carried out by the Silchester Excavation Fund in 1900.

The work was begun on the 4th May under the direction of Mr. Frederick Davis, whose death in July last has deprived the Committee of valuable services freely given and intelligently performed. The further conduct of the work was undertaken by Mr. Mill Stephenson and Mr. Hope, and the closing operations, which were prolonged until 4th December, were also directed by Mr. Stephenson.

Our Fellow and Local Secretary, Canon Greenwell, has recently devoted much time, thought, and labour to the piecing together of the broken portions of St. Cuthbert's coffin that were removed from the grave in 1827. Special attention having thus been directed to the matter, it was thought desirable that another examination of the grave should be made in order to recover, if possible, some of the missing fragments. For Dr. Raine expressly states that the new coffin provided in 1827 was “deposited in the bottom of the original grave, upon a mass of broken wood, iron rings, and iron bars, the remnants of the two outer coffins of the Saint, which had been thrown into the grave.” It was further considered that an examination of the human remains might throw some light upon the longdisputed question of the identity of the body that was placed in the grave in 1542 with that of St. Cuthbert, which had for nearly 840 years been enclosed in the coffin. After many delays, caused by the strong feeling in the minds of some whose objections rightly carried great weight, it was decided that the grave should be opened, the coffin of 1542 carefully raised, the other contents of the grave taken out, and the coffin returned to its place with its contents undisturbed.

In February, 1900, when Mr. George Payne gave us his excellent report from Kent as our local secretary there, he exhibited drawings (since reproduced in the Society's Proceedings) of a crypt or undercroft beneath the George Inn, Rochester, probably one of the most perfect specimens of the kind in England. I then mentioned that a somewhat similar crypt had existed on Laurence Poultney Hill, close to Cannon Street, until quite recently, that it had formed part of the mansion of Sir John de Pulteney, and that it was of great historic interest. Structures of this kind were common in English towns during the Middle Ages, not only beneath churches and chapels but under domestic buildings. They tended to make the upper portions dry, and merchants no doubt found them useful for the storage of goods, or as cellars only, according to circumstances. When art was not merely a thing to be discussed and criticised, but formed an essential part of every-day life, they were naturally also beautiful. These crypts, built of stone and only in part below ground, frequently had superstructures of wood, which in course of time have disappeared or been rebuilt. A good many of them still exist in provincial England, and in London several fine ones have been destroyed during the present century. I will begin by very briefly referring to a few of which I have found record.

The manuscript volume which, by the kind permission of Lord Hastings, I am enabled to exhibit this evening, is one of great value and interest. Those great antiquaries Sir F. Palgrave and Albert Way saw the volume, and while the former made a rough note of its contents, the latter contributed to the fourth volume of the Archæological Journal a valuable paper on one part. The notes of these two gentlemen have been compared with the original MS., and I have ventured, whilst giving transcripts of some portions of the volume, to add a few notes and descriptions. The manuscript, which is written on vellum, consists of fifteenth-century copies, with some illuminations, of various treatises dealing with chivalry, state, etc. These have been bound in one thick volume, which from external evidence we may suppose to have at one time belonged to that distinguished Prince, Henry, son of James I.

The defence of the liberties of Chester, which I am introducing to your notice to-night, is a defence by what we should call to-day constitutional methods. Herein it is exceptional for those times, which were used rather to the rough-and-ready defensive operations of the sword. For when William the Conqueror granted the earldom of Chester to his nephew Hugh Lupus, he granted it to him “to hold by the sword as freely as he held all England by the crown.” And if there is in this grant an allusion to the right of the Earl of Chester to carry the curtana (or sword of justice) at the Royal Coronation, there is most assuredly a further and fuller reference to the unceasing vigilance and activity which the earls had to exercise in the defence of their city against the depredations of the Welsh and the protection of the West of England from the incursions of those turbulent people.

The Winchester College manor of Meonstoke is an agglomeration of the principal manor of the parish, known at one time as Meonstoke Perrers, after the mistress of Edward III., with another manor in the same parish, formerly known as Meonstoke Ferraunt, and some freeholds, all of which were the gift of William of Wykeham to his college near the end of the fourteenth century. The tenure is copyhold of inheritance, and the descent is to the youngest, which was probably the prevailing custom of the Meon Valley at that time. There is, however, another little manor in the same parish, the manor of Meonstoke Parsonage, in which the tenure is copyhold for lives without power of renewal, and the tenements are chattels real passing to the legal personal representative. The consolidation was doubtless by the college steward for convenience of management. The statute Quia Emptores did not prevent it, and it was an easy thing to include the freeholds.

At a meeting of the Society on 16th February, 1899, Mr. A. T. Martin, in his Report as Local Secretary for Gloucestershire, gave an account of some recent “trial excavations ” at Caerwent, and formulated a scheme for the systematic exploration of the site. The suggestion having been approved and encouraged by the Society, it was shortly afterwards decided, at a meeting of local antiquaries held at Clifton, to appoint a Committee, and to start a Fund to be called the “Caerwent Exploration Fund.” At a meeting held at Caerwent on 11th September, 1899, Lord Tredegar was elected President, and other officers and a Committee were appointed. Also an Executive Committee, consisting of Messrs. Alfred E. Hudd, A. T. Martin, J. E. Pritchard, and John Ward, was elected (to which Mr. Thomas Ashby, jun., was added later), under whose superintendence the excavations have been made.

We have the honour of laying before the Society, on behalf of the Executive-Committee of the Excavation Fund, a report of the work carried out at Silchester in 1899, being the tenth year in succession of the systematic investigation of the site.

The importance of Silchester as a seat of industrial activity has been enhanced by the discovery in 1894 of some metallurgical remains, of a unique character, which indicate that near the spot where they were found there had once been a silver refinery. Unfortunately they were not found in situ. They had been cast away as rubbish.

The remains of walls found in October and November, 1900, during the process of laying down a wood block floor in the nave and crossing of Romsey Abbey, are shown on the accompanying plan (Plate XLL). Those on the south side of the nave may be dealt with first, as they have no bearing on the structural history of the church, and the record of them is chiefly of value because they are now buried beneath 6 inches of concrete and a wood block floor, and will probably not be seen again for many years. They are of two dates, the wall running east and west being the older. This is 19 inches thick, of flint and stone rubble, and was traced from the eastern angle of the first nave pier to within 2 feet of the fourth, where it ends without a return. It is plastered on the north or inner face with a coat of rough yellowish plaster, continuous with a floor of the same character, 16 inches below the present pavement level, which is at the original level of that of the existing Norman nave. This plaster floor rests, as to its western part, on a layer of flints on the undisturbed soil, and extends along the whole length of the wall from east to west, and northwards as far as the digging went, that is, nearly to the south edge of the paving of the central alley of the nave.

The village of Lacock is about three miles south of Chippenham, near the river Avon, and formed part of the extensive possessions of the first Norman Earl of Salisbury, whose heiress, Ela, was married to William Longespee, natural son of Henry II., who in her right became possessed of all the titles and possessions of her wealthy house.

I have the pleasure of showing you to-night a very interesting little picture (Plate XLIV.) which belongs to Miss Isabel Akers, who has kindly lent it for purposes of exhibition. And, in order that we may appreciate it the more, I will begin by recounting very briefly a few of the leading facts in the life of the man who painted it.

The dial exhibited is interesting, both as a good example of a combination of dials, which was in the first half of the sixteenth centary considered to be the perfection of the diallist art, and of which early examples are almost unknown, and also because it was made for Cardinal Wolsey. Nothing is known of its history, but it is said to have come from a village not far from Peterborough, and it was bought by me in London early in 1900.

The treasure described in the following notes was discovered a few years ago in a mound near the monastery of Acheripoetos (Aχειροποιητός), which is situated about six miles west of Kerynia, on the north coast of the island. It originally consisted of three larger objects and about thirty-six spoons, and the whole, with the exception of eleven or twelve spoons, has been acquired by the British Museum. The larger objects are a flat dish, possibly a paten; a basin; and a hexagonal vessel for suspension which was perhaps used as a lamp or censer.

Cardiff Castle can hardly be classed with the better-known English castles, nor has its history been a particularly stirring one. Nevertheless its position in Norman and Plantagenet times was one of considerable importance, for it was the seat of the chief lords of Glamorgan, or to use the ancient and more correct term, Morganwg. Its medieval history, however, scarcely concerns the present paper, which has to do with sundry remains of an earlier period; but should its perusal demand some reference to that phase of the subject, the concise history of this castle in the late Mr. George T. Clark's Mediæval Military Architecture in England may be consulted with advantage. It is, however, necessary to bear in mind that its definite history begins with the Norman Conquest of G-went and Morganwg in the eleventh century and the immediate circumstances which led to it. Prior to this event, the light of history gives place to shadowy tradition, and archaeology becomes our only safe guide.

On January 11th last (1899), while workmen under the directions of Commendatore Boni were removing the rough post-Imperial “selce,” or paving-stones, in front of the church of S. Adriano and some fifteen yards immediately east of the Arch of Severus, there came to light a pavement of black marble, rhomboidal-trapezoid in shape, and framed on three of its sides with blocks of travertine. These blocks were found to be grooved on the southern and eastern sides, and from the groove or “incassatura,” on the former of these sides, projected to the height of two feet, three contiguous slabs of white marble. They had been noticed two or three days before. It now became evident that they had been appropriated from some late imperial building and utilised in order to act as substitute for some older fence which had isolated and protected this remarkable black pavement.

In the latter half of the fifteenth century great changes took place in the fabric of the priory church at Great Malvern, and by the beginning of the sixteenth century it had been transformed from what was largely, if not entirely, a Norman church to one of Perpendicular character. With the exception of a doorway on the south side of the nave, the nave arcade, and the bases of the piers that support the central tower, there are no evidences of work prior to the alteration. To this rebuilding both Richard III. and Henry VII. are said to have contributed, the west window of the nave is said to have been the gift of the former and the north window of the transept that of the latter, besides a very long list of benefactors, members of well-known families of the day, local and otherwise; and it is therefore not surprising that even in its present comparatively mutilated state the decorative work in this church is among the finest in England of its date, and the glass and encaustic tiles practically unsurpassed for beauty and interest.

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.