The following extracts have been made by me, by the kind permission of the Bishop of Lincoln, from certain fragments of visitation books and detached papers connected therewith in the possession of his lordship. They range from 1473 to 1627, and are, as will be seen, of very varying degrees of interest; some of them are perhaps so trivial that it may seem almost an intrusion to bring them under the notice of the Society of Antiquaries; but all have at least a local interest, and the originals from which they are copied are many of them in a state of such rapid decay that it is to be feared, if they be not now preserved by being printed, that all memory of them may be lost.

The Church of All Saints, Friskney (a village on the seacoast of Lincolnshire, four miles south of Wainfleet), is of early date, though the lower part of the tower is the only part of the original Norman church which has survived the many changes made in the fabric. The earliest historical record of it that I have been able to find is by Dugdale and by Tanner, who quote extracts from the Harleian Charters showing that in A.D. 1256, William de Kime made grant …. “cum omnibus terris in Friskenâ” (sometimes spelt Freschena), to endow the priory of Gilbertine monks at Bolynton (or Bullington), founded by Simon de Kime in Stephen's reign, and, together with the land, “omnes patronatus et advocationes ecclesiarum …. de Bolynton et” (here follows a list of villages spread widely over Lincolnshire) “in medietate ecclesiæ de Friskenâ.”

At the meeting of the Society on this day, the Earl of Ashburnham exhibited the MS. Account of the Keeper of the Royal Wardrobe for 28 Edward I. 1299–1300, for comparison with that of the Controller of the Royal Wardrobe for the same year, which has long been in the Society's library, and was printed by them in 1787. The volume exhibited is described in the Catalogue of the Ashburnham MSS. Appendix, 1861, No. cxv. In connection with this exhibition the Director made the following remarks:—

“At the above period of history there were always, as I shall presently show, two concurrent Accounts of the Royal Wardrobe, the Keeper's Account and the Controller's Account, but in no instance but this, so far as I know, have both for the same period survived to our time.

The Keeper's Account before us was acquired by the late Earl of Ashburnham, and, through the courtesy of the present Earl, Fellow of our Society, has been left here for several weeks for our perusal.

Bishop Tanner informs us that the Hospital of St. John the Baptist at Chepping Wycombe in Buckinghamshire was founded for a master, brethren, and sisters before 20 Hen. III. As the remains of the buildings belonging to it are threatened with demolition in the carrying out of a scheme for erecting a new Grammar School, sanctioned by the Charity Commissioners on the application of the Governors of the Wycombe Grammar School and Almshouse Foundation, it will be interesting, in the first place, to give some notion of the original situation of the Hospital and its surroundings. The present street, called Easton Street, a portion of the road from London to Oxford, cuts through what must have been a part of the Hospital grounds, and renders it difficult to realise the appearance of the place in the twelfth century, the street having been formed close to the buildings and leaving them in an irregular position.

In a Paper read before this Society, 15 May, 1879, printed in Archaeologia, vol. XLVII. pp. 157–160, on “The Fret or Key Ornamentation in Mexico and Peru,” I showed that this form or symbol was there without doubt emblematic of water, and probably adopted independently of Western or Old World influence; and at the conclusion of the Paper I threw out a hint that the fylfot or swastika was an old Aryan symbol, connected with the older sky or air-gods, as represented by Indra and Jupiter Tonans and Pluvius, and not found in the New World. Since then I have gone very fully into a further investigation as to the general history and meaning of that ancient and mystic symbol; and believe I have arrived at a satisfactory solution of a question which has long been a puzzle to mythologists and antiquaries; but one which—in spite of the later labours and discoveries of Dr. Schliemann, Bernouf, Max Müller, of Ludvig Müller of Copenhagen, and most recently of Mr. Edward Thomas, the eminent numismatist —I believe, with Eergusson (Tree and Serpent Worship), has not yet been fully solved.

This Burial Ground is five-and-a-half miles east-north-east of Banbury, a little more than a quarter of a mile north of Marston Hill farm, in the parish of Marston St. Lawrence, and 200 or 300 yards west of the Moreton road. The field was formerly called Bar-furlong, which name may be derived either from Barrow or from Barr, the summit of a hill, as Bardon Hill (Barrdun), the top of the hill, in Leicestershire.

The Church of All Saints, at Trull, near Taunton, in Somersetshire, consists of a chancel with chapels on either side, a nave with aisles, a south porch, and a tower at the west end of the nave; and the present building, although probably begun in the days of Henry VI., or even earlier, seems not to have been finished before 1560, which date occurs on some of the woodwork of the church. In consequence, if one excepts the tower, the whole building is, in style, Perpendicular. There is no chancel-arch, but a wooden rood-screen with a richly-vaulted overhanging canopy divides the chancel from the nave.

In directing your attention to the accompanying drawing I am not unmindful of the enthusiasm with which the late Mr. Charles Winston devoted himself to the study of ancient painted glass, nor the accuracy with which he transferred upon paper the beautiful colouring, character, and artistic merit of innumerable examples. I had the honour of being one of his correspondents, and he not only gave me whatever information I desired but often urged me to give attention to every example of ancient glass-painting I might come across, and to copy as much of it as was practicable. “Every little fragment of painted glass,” he was wont to say, “had its value in the eyes of the student, however insignificant in itself.”

The science of heraldry has faithfully preserved to modern times various phases of some of those remarkable legends, which, based upon an accurate study of natural phenomena, exhibit the process whereby the greater part of mythology has come into existence. There we find the lunar Unicorn, the wild, white, fierce, chaste moon, whose two horns, unlike those of mortal creatures, are indissolubly twisted into one, a most remarkable myth, which I have recently fully considered; and there, also, as in every department of ancient thought, the solar power is fully represented. I now propose to examine, briefly, the ancient and widely-spread heraldic myth of the Gryphon.

To the Alexandrian Claudius Ptolemy, who flourished about the middle of the second century after Christ, belongs the honour of having achieved the final systematisation of the results of ancient research in the two sciences of astronomy and geography. His treatise on Geography continued to be the standard text-book on its own subject, as his Almagest was the standard text-book on astronomy, until the brilliant discoveries of the fifteenth century called the attention of Europe to their defects.

The site of El-Fustât, or Old Cairo, lies about a mile and a half from the modern city, on the plain between the Nile and the Mokattam hills.

With the exception of the Coptic churches and monasteries little of it now remains, and its site is covered by great heaps of rubbish full of fragments of pottery of various dates.

The Coptic churches are grouped together in “dayrs,” or inclosures surrounded by high walls, into which there is only one small entrance; these walls were to protect the Copts from the attacks of the Moslem population.

In the following pages it is not my intention to describe Egyptian obelisks, respecting which I can say nothing new and striking. My desire is to give some interesting particulars relating to a few rude monoliths of Western Europe, which may not be so well known, and, by comparing them with the monoliths of Egypt, to show that they are worthy the attention of antiquaries, and that a fair conclusion as to their uses may be arrived at.

The Lordship of Wentllwch, sometimes called the Lordship of Newport, is of considerable extent. It lies on the shore of the Bristol Channel, by which it is bounded on the south. On the west it is bounded by the river Rumney, which separates it from Glamorganshire, and on the east by the river Usk.

The Ceremony of the Consecration of a Church as it was practised shortly before the Norman Conquest is well described in a paper communicated in 1833 by Mr. John Gage, then Director, and printed in Archaeologia, vol. xxv. p. 235. He also gives in full the Consecration Service from an English MS. Pontifical of the eleventh century in the Rouen library.