Reginald and Savaric, bishops of Bath at the end of the twelfth century, were succeeded by Jocelin of Wells, 1206-1242.

I proceed to treat of his history, so far as it is contained in original records at Wells.

The chapter registers at Wells have lately been calendared and published in Report X. part iii. 1885, of the Historical MSS. Commission; but many of the charters there registered are undated, and they are arranged without regard to chronological sequence. It is a work requiring much patience and insight into the text to determine their place and to arrange them in their relative order.

The curious panel-picture representing four gentlemen in the costume of the time of queen Elizabeth, and evidently persons of distinction, playing at cards, which I have the pleasure of exhibiting this evening by permission of Messrs. P. and D. Colnaghi, is not altogether new to the Society.

It was described little short of one hundred and three years ago by the Hon. Daines Barrington, in the Archaeologia, vol. viii. under the date May 4th, 1785.

A staff of office is of great antiquity. It is believed to symbolize superiority, power, capacity, and function: the superiority, power, and authority of the person bestowing it, the presumed competence and capacity of the recipient, and the official function he endeavours to discharge. Sometimes such a staff is actually used as a support.

The game of Kottabos, to which the Greeks—more particularly the Athenians—were passionately attached during a period of at least a hundred years, and which is known to have been in vogue as early as the middle of the fifth century B.C., has been a puzzle to the learned, from the time of the ancient grammarians and scholiasts down to the present day.

Affixed to the panelling at the back of the stalls in the choir of St. George's chapel at Windsor are a great number of gilt plates of various sizes and shapes, but chiefly rectangular, resplendent with enamelled and painted armorial ensigns. These are the stall-plates of the Knights of the Garter; a series of memorials extending over a period of upwards of five hundred years, and forming such a storehouse of ancient and modern historical armory as exists nowhere else in Europe.

It is remarkable that in all the fifty volumes of Archaeologia, which contain the best essays on antiquarian subjects published during the last one hundred and forty years, I have been unable to discover any paper concerning organs, or their archaeological or musical characteristics, nor, indeed, any direct reference to the history of an instrument so intimately connected with the services of the Church.

Every visitor to the abbey church of St. Alban must be struck by the more than usual quantity of armorial display; and especially that of the transepts and monks' choir. During the restoration under the late Sir George Gilbert Scott it was discovered that the painting on the ceiling of the monks' choir, a very rough production of the seventeenth century, covered an older work, which was very skilfully disclosed by peeling off the more recent film, under the auspices of Mr. Chapple, Sir Gilbert Scott's clerk of the works. The work was then carefully restored by, as far as possible, following the lines indicated. On the whole, one must concede that the result is as successful as one could expect, though there may be some lapses.

I have the honour to lay before the Society an Archaeological Survey, in which will be found the principal and most of the minor archaeological discoveries which have been made in the county of Kent. A work of this kind must necessarily be incomplete, as many relics of the past are being continually brought to light, and pass away unrecorded into various public and private collections, or are destroyed by ignorant and thoughtless workmen. It is hoped, however, that no important discovery has been omitted, either from the map or text, and that the general arrangement will be found convenient for reference. In order to avoid repetition of the titles of the various publications, a Bibliographical List has been given, with a key to the abbreviations, which are framed upon a plan both simple and suggestive. The signs upon the map have been made as large as its size would allow, and are marked on or near the actual sites of discoveries; but in some instances the signs have had to be placed so as to avoid obliterating names of places. It may be well to mention that where spots of different colours, indicating interments, come together in one locality, it signifies (as a rule) that remains belonging to distinct periods occurred in the same burial-place. It was deemed unnecessary to mention every individual discovery of Palaeolithic implements, a line has therefore been drawn under the name of the town or village in whose district they abound in the river-drift gravels. Discoveries of Neolithic implements have not been noticed, as they occur upon the surface in vast numbers throughout the county. British coins being of rare occurrence, have been noted, likewise hoards or large quantities of Koman coins, but single or scattered specimens have, with few exceptions, been omitted.

Dear Mr. President,—Whilst endeavouring to collect and arrange the portraits of Mary queen of Scots on which reliance can be placed, my attention was drawn to an engraving taken from a picture representing her, during the period of her residence in France, at full length, standing by a chair, and wearing a long gown and small cap and feather.

Half-a-centuey ago, when the words “Bacchic” and “Mystic” played a very important part in the explanation of Grecian monuments, it was usual to consider the shield-devices seen on Greek vases as symbols specially appropriate to certain members of the Hellenic Pantheon. In those days Panofka never wearied of pointing out the opposition of the heavenly bodies to the Chthonian, or how the God of Light triumphed over the Lord of Darkness. His explanations, however, required a great deal of explaining, and the darkness eventually got the best of it, for these views are seldom mentioned now, save as illustrations of perverted ingenuity and misapplied erudition.

As you were kind enough to accept the paper which I communicated to the Society of Antiquaries, on “the harmonies contrived by Nicholas Ferrar at Little Gidding,” and as you have honoured me by giving it a place in the Archaeologia, I venture to submit for your consideration a short account of another of these interesting works, which has been only recently brought to my notice.

Even in the last three centuries so much that was of archaeological value among the ruins of Ancient Rome has been destroyed, that any record of the existing remains which dates back as far as the 16th century must be of interest to the modern student.

The great revival of classical architecture which took place in the sixteenth century induced all the chief architects of that time to study with special care even the smallest fragments of the former architectural glory of the ancient city. Among the many professional architects of that time who measured and copied both the general form and the details of the classical remains, none did so with greater zeal and more patient labour than Pirro Ligorio in the preparation of his copious work L'Antichità di Roma, which still exists as a MS. in thirty folio volumes among the royal archives at Turin.