The Society may, I think, congratulate itself that, after the occurrences of a week ago, it is possible to hold its Anniversary Meeting in its own apartments in Burlington House, and this not only from a private point of view, but as some indication of the entire failure of an eight-month long attempt to render our City uninhabitable. Apart from much broken glass and an incendiary bomb, some time ago, which so damaged a cistern on the roof as to render itself innocuous, the actual structure of our apartments is, as yet, unscarred.

On 21st April 1940 Willcocks McKenzie, lorry-driver of Thame, while walking along the left bank of the river Thame, about one mile north of the town and a short distance upstream from a pool known as Jemmett's Hole, had his eye attracted by the gleam of metal. This, on investigation, proved to come from the parcel of rings and coins which are the subject of this account.

It is generally prudent to regard foreign coats in any rolls of arms with circumspection: they not infrequently depart widely from the versions accepted at home. Yet it sometimes happens that records of arms are found earlier in foreign than in native documents. Thus the first occurrence so far known anywhere of the arms of a Count of Chalon is in our Fitzwilliam and Camden Rolls. So, too, the lion and battle-axe of the King of Norway in the same two rolls, and also in the Segar Roll, give earlier news of the colours, it is said, than have ever yet been found in that country. And there are other examples of the kind. This is not surprising, seeing that we have more copious resources surviving from earlier times than other countries. The coats now to be spoken of are the more unexpected that they show the converse case: points of heraldry appertaining to these isles have been recorded in several continental rolls, but do not appear in our rolls at all.

In A.D. 1483 Abu Abdullah [Abdilla] Muhamad, better known to us under his Spanish name of ‘Boabdil’, who, as the head of a faction, shortly before had proclaimed himself king of Granada, attempted an attack on Medina Lucena. His attempt, ill conceived and badly conducted, failed; he was taken and, conforming to the usage of his time, yielded his arms to his Christian captors. Amongst those arms was a sword, still preserved, whose golden mounts are of rare beauty, those of both hilt and scabbard being adorned with little plaques of delicate cloisonné enamel, individually framed in stout metal, set in fields formed of tiny pellets of gold (see pl. XLII, a, reproducing a part, magnified, a little above the blade, of the hilt; similar work is on the scabbard and its accessories). A number of other swords, similarly ornamented with work of the same kind, but of less value and importance, have survived, as well as some isolated specimens of such work no longer in place on the sword (or swords) for which they were made. The hilt of Boabdil's sword is of gold, enriched with enamels of blue, white, and red; but the mounts of at least some of the other similarly ornamented swords are of gilded copper studded with little panels of delicate silver-cloisonné enamel. Besides the swords mentioned above there is, in the British Museum, a splendid head-stall, of gilded copper, composed of small framed panels of cloisonné enamel alternating with similar panels of granulated work (one corner of this is reproduced in pl. XLII, b), which has been described by O. M. Dalton, and a pair of stirrups in the Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan, at Madrid.