The baronial family of Cobham took its name from the pretty village in Kent, four miles from Gravesend on the one side, and about the same distance from Rochester on the other. As early as the twelfth century it was of importance, but from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century it was one of the most powerful in the south of England. There were several off-shoots from the main stem, distinguished by the following manorial titles, viz. Roundal, Beluncle, Blackburgh, Chafford, Gatewyke, and Sterborough. There were four baronies by writ, viz. Cobham of Cobham, Roundal, Chafford, and Sterborough. The most important offices in the county of Kent were constantly in their hands, including the Wardenship of the Cinque Ports and that of Constable of Rochester Castle. The first Baron de Cobham, named Henry, was summoned to Parliament in 1313: no other of the name appears in the main stem until he whose fate I am about to consider. Of the off-shoots the most considerable was that of Sterborough in Surrey: Sir Reginald, the first baron, being the most eminent of the Cobham family. A hero of Crecy and Poitiers, one of the few brilliant warriors enrolled among the early Knights of the Garter, we must refer to the pages of Froissart if we would acquaint ourselves with the details of his career in the field, and in the councils of Edward III.

In the early Church the kiss of peace, the simplest of all symbolisms, was a holy ceremony in public worship reverently kept up. Its use lingered on to the Middle Ages. In the twelfth century, when the separation of the sexes began to fall away, the custom came in of the priest kissing a carved ornament instead of his brother-minister, and this in its turn was saluted by the whole congregation. This substitute of any material, costly or simple, even of wood or glass, and generally small in size, after use was returned to the altar. In the West it bore many names—the Pax, Osculatorium, Deosculatorium Pacis, Osculare, Tabula Pacis, Asser ad Pacem, Paxillum, Paxilla, Porte-Paix, Porte-pax, Pax-brede, Pakys-bred, Pax-bord, and so on.

The church of Little Horkesley has long been sorely in need of thorough repair, and its sepulchral monuments give it a special claim to the attention of antiquaries. They are alike interesting for their antiquity and for the beauty of some of the uninjured brasses. Moreover, they serve to illustrate the history of the place during several centuries. They are the landmarks of local history, giving it accuracy and precision through the names and dates they supply; and they also display the styles of art which prevailed during successive ages. Prom all these points of view their preservation, and the due maintenance and restoration of the church which contains them, must be a matter of interest to all who desire to secure the safety of national monuments

Before I begin to read this paper I must apologise to the Society of Antiquaries for its mode of composition.

In the controversies respecting the origin of the Homeric poems, which have raised so much attention of late in connection with Dr. Schliemann's discoveries, there was a theory started amongst scholars that Homer was not the author of the Iliad and Odyssey, but, as the word might imply in the original, “the man who joined or weaved together” the various poems supplied to him by other persons, which, from this stitching or joining process, were called Rhapsodies. This theory has of late years in England—partly under the influence of a celebrated political personage—fallen into discredit. But the present paper is an exact example of the process in question. I am on this occasion but the “Homerus,” the compiler, who has woven together the fragments communicated to him.

In the month of November, 1877, in consequence of an alteration in the internal arrangements of the chancel of King's Langley church, it was determined to remove the altar-tomb of Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, from the position which it had held during the last three centuries in the chancel, to one in a new memorial chapel, constructed at the east end of the north aisle of the church.

On May 18, 1865, I had the pleasure of reading to this Society a paper upon certain excavations which have been carried on at Silchester by His Grace the Duke of Wellington. Since that date the area uncovered has been considerably extended, and the excavations have attracted a very general interest among those who are skilled in English archæology. In addressing you at present, I only resume the thread of a statement already commenced, and, in order to clear the ground for the information I propose now to bring under your notice, I shall go back to a few leading particulars which were then stated.

On two previous occasions, in the years 1865 and 1867, I have given some accounts of the excavations in the Roman city at Silchester. The work was then in its infancy; an interval of six years elapsed since my second Paper was read; and the period thus embraced will he found fruitful in discoveries of interest and importance.

The Ven. Edward Trollope, E.S.A., has lately communicated to the Society an impression in gutta-percha from the original matrix of an Admiralty Seal of Richard III. when Duke of Gloucester, which impression is exhibited this evening.

Another impression from this matrix, then in the possession of a gentleman of St. Columb in Cornwall, was exhibited and presented to the Society in 1781 by Dr. Milles, at that time President, and is still preserved.

Scotter is a parish in the Wapentake of Corringham, in the parts of Lindsey, and county of Lincoln. As early as A.D. 664 Scotter, and its hamlet of Scalthorpe, with church, mill, and other appurtenances, were a part of the vast possessions of the Abbey of Medeshamstede, afterwards called Peterborough. This we learn from a charter of Uulfhere, King of the Mercians, six transcripts of which are noticed by Kemble. It is somewhat difficult, however, to reconcile this with a charter of Edward the Confessor, from which it would seem that the abbey derived its rights, or at least its full rights, in Scotter from a certain Brand. If the clause relating to Scotter, in the earlier charter, be authentic, as I believe it to be, the probability is that Brand only restored to the abbey possessions which had been alienated.

While collecting materials for a new history of music I had occasion to examine many of the earliest Psalters and Books of Antiphons for the service of the English Church, and then noted three distinctive peculiarities, which seemed worthy of attention by the literary antiquary and by the historian. The first was, that parts of the service, such as the Gloria in excelsis and the Nicene Creed, had been sung occasionally in Greek, and that the Greek was written phonetically in English characters. The second, that the hymns and sequences differed from those which had been sung on the continent of Europe, and therefore few, if any, are included in the printed collections by Daniel, by Mone, or Morel; and, further, that many of them are remarkable for the intermixture of Greek and of Græco-Latin words. Not only did our ancestors substitute protus, deuterus, tritus, and tetardus for primus, secundus, tertius, and quartus, but also employed such addresses to the deity in their hymns and sequences as “Kyrie eleison, o theos agye” —“Pater, creator omnium, tu theos ymon”—“Pater ymas te exoramus;” half Greek and half Latin.

I fear I must begin my communication to you, on the subject of an early phase in the history of English municipal institutions, with an apology; and an apology withal that has reference rather to my mode of treating the subject than to the subject itself. It is in this wise. The facts to which I beg leave to draw your attention cannot so well be considered new to the antiquary, as can the view I have taken of their value and relationship to each other. The result is, therefore, that the following pages may be thought a little more argumentative than they should in strictness be for an antiquarian subject. But this defect, if defect it be, will, I trust, be compensated by the value of the general subject I have ventured to treat upon, and by the fresh light which I may perhaps have thrown upon a class of English institutions, not the least important of those which uphold our great national fabric.

Although many places from their extent may have possessed greater importance in early times, no British camp is perhaps better known to ourselves than Mount Caburn. Situated, not in the midst of a deserted heath as some of them are, but in the centre of a populous district, a very conspicuous feature from the town of Lewes, and close to the junction of the railways from Eastbourne and Newhaven, it has necessarily attracted the attention of all who pass that way. Various conjectures have been hazarded in local histories as to its origin and uses, and more numerous by far must have been the unrecorded speculations of the curious during the long period that Lewes has figured in history.