Permit me to lay before you the following observations on erect stone pillars, crosses, and crucifixes. The drawings herewith transmitted to your lordship were selected by me from two volumes of drawings of Antiquities collected by John Anstis the Elder, Esq. Garter King at Arms

If the subject which I take in hand appears little interesting at a time when the reigning spirit of several nations is far more disposed to destroy all the monuments of the piety of their ancestors, than to preserve any memory of them, and has already destroyed the greatest part of these I am going to mention; I hope it will appear in a different light to the learned Society of Antiquaries, whose chief care is to collect and preserve to futurity a faithful remembrance of whatever concerns former ages.

If a time should ever come when an exact account of this small part of the British nation shall be found interesting, the following lists of these establishments, collected with care and exactness, may not prove unwelcome, as they may lead to sources where a complete account of each of them may be found.

I shall make no farther apology for this essay than to beg it may be considered rather as a testimony of my profound respect for the learned Society to which I have the honour of presenting it, than for any intrinsic value which I attribute to it.

Sirs ye shall understand that I am wele remembred, how a pece of voide grounde lying in the parish of Saint Mary Magdalene in Milkstrete of London, on the west side of the same strete was com'nly named and called the Chirche-yard of Saint Mary Magdalene Chirche in Milkstrete aforesaide And that there stode a crosse in and uppon the same voide grounde of the height of a man or more And that the same crosse was worshipped by the parisshens there as crosses be com'only worshiipped in other Chircheyardes.

By the kindness of the Rev. Peter Rashleigh I have it in my power to convey to you drawings, of inscriptions and shields of arms placed in the walls of buildings that are appendages to Preston Hall in Aylesford; and they will afford me an opportunity of satisfying you that the date on one of them was without sufficient grounds advanced in the hypothetical controversy respecting the time of the introduction of Arabic Numerals into this country.

It was under the reign of Henry the Second of England that there flourished a celebrated Anglo-Norman poet named Wace, whose works, at that time the delight of the monarch and his court, are at present to be esteemed as one of the most ancient monuments of French literature; but inasmuch as France owes these precious relics to a king of Great Britain, and as their author was born in a country which has continually remained since the Conquest under the power of the English, you will, doubtless, my Lord, peruse with some degree of satisfaction a memoir upon the life and writings of this Poet. The discussion will probably be seemed interesting, both upon account of its novelty, and from the circumstance of this writer being altogether unknown to the English Biographers; besides, most of those learned men who have written upon his works have been entirely mistaken, either in the series of them which they have given, or in the opinions which they have adopted relating to them.

There having been published in Bibliotheca, Topographica Britannica [a] an engraving of the porch of Chalk church from the correct pencil of Mr. Tracy, Mr. Clarke declined sending a view of it, when he transmitted for the inspection of the Society his other drawings of different parts of that edifice [b]; but it was my desire that he would favour me with the delineation now exhibited, conceiving it to be a suitable accompaniment to them. And I had, as an additional motive for my request, the hope of obtaining a satisfactory elucidation of the subject represented from a person who, I knew, was very conversant in architectural embellishments. In this instance, however, I did not succeed, Mr. Clarke acknowledging in his answer, that he could not account for a sculptured relief so improperly placed.

Not long since, when Mr. Thomas Fisher had an opportunity of examining sundry letters and other papers deposited in a room over the Town Hall in Rochester, he was induced to sketch the paper, or water-marks, as they are sometimes called. His fac similes of this kind are sixty-four[a]; of which two are from writings dated in 1473, seven from those of the sixteenth century, and the residue from those of the seventeenth, with an exception of one of the year 1712. There is not one that has a star of eight points within a double circle, the device of John Tate, supposed to have been the first Paper-maker in England, and who is recorded to have had, if I mistake not in the reign of Henry VII, a mill at Hertford [b].

The female ornaments of dress which Mr. Douce has the honour of laying before the Society were presented to him by an old lady, in whose family they had always remained. They consist of a purse, a pin-cushion, and a pair of knives, the latter of which cannot be better illustrated than by the following extract: from a note on a passage in Romeo and Juliet, by our worthy member George Steevens, Esq.

Historians assert, that the Belgæ[a], or Attrebatii, a people of Gaul, were the first emigrants who settled in the Southern parts of this island long before the Roman eagle was advanced hither. Little can be learned relating to them or the ancient Britons before Cæsar's invasion, which was fifty three or fifty four years before Christ. About that time, we learn, that the kingdom of the Iceni, whose inhabitants were called Cenimagni, comprehended the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, and Huntingdon, and that they, with other kingdoms in this island, submitted by their ambassadors to Cæsar; and that afterwards, in order to keep the people in subjection, the proprætor Ostorius Scapula, who was sent hither about the year of Christ 47[b], established garrisons, and disarmed the suspected people in various parts of the island [c].

I Have ventured to send you a little account of some relics lately found in a barrow in the Peak of Derbyshire.

About the latter end of last winter, Mr. Robert Needham, jun. of Ashford, a very respectable farmer, who rents an estate of the duke of Devonshire, was induced to destroy a large barrow for the sake of procuring a great quantity of lime-stones, of which it was chiefly formed.

Hampton Court Garden is a large plat, environed with an iron palisade round about next the park, laid all in walks, grass plats, and borders. Next to the house, some flat and broad beds are set with narrow rows of dwarf box, in figures like lace-patterns. In one of the letter gardens is a large green house divided into several rooms, and all of them with stoves under them, and fire to keep a continual heat. In these there are no orange or lemon trees, or myrtles, or any greens, but such tender foreign ones that need continual warmth.

The Urn and stone Chest, of which the annexed drawing is a representation, were found on the 26th of October last at Ashby Puerorum in Lincolnshire, by a labourer employed in cutting a ditch, to separate the cultivated part of a ploughed field from a road which passes along one side of it. The top of the stone chest lay three feet below the surface of the ground, no elevation whatever was observable in the soil over it, and the road near which it lay is not an ancient highway, having been set out as such under the powers of an Enclosure Act a few years ago.

If we compare the expences of the Royal Household in former times with those of later dates, and observe the alteration of the value of money, and the progressive rise in the cost of provisions, the result will probably be, that the expence of His present Majesty's Household is not more than it was in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and is much less than it was in the time of her successor.

I Have to beg of you to communicate to the Society the memoir herewith sent upon the first vacant occasion. The original is to be exhibited with the copy, which, if worth keeping, I intreat you to deposit in the Society's collection.