Amongst the various ceremonies and entertainments which distinguished the reign of King James I. there were none perhaps celebrated with greater solemnity or more costly magnificence than those preparatory to and consequent upon the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth with Frederic the Elector Palatine, which took place on the 14th of February, 1612-13. The joyous exultation and feeling exhibited by the people tended in some degree, we are told, to dissipate the grief which was generally felt at the death of Henry, the young Prince of Wales, which happened in the preceding November, and had diffused a gloom over the kingdom.

Malone may be said to have raised the deer-stealing incident in Shakespeare's early life to a degree of importance that it hardly deserved, considering the commonness of the offence about the period when our great dramatist is generally supposed to have left Stratford-upon-Avon for London. Malone's argument, which Gifford thought too long drawn out, was, that as Sir Thomas Lucy had no park, therefore he could have no deer; and consequently that Shakespeare could not have stolen deer which the old knight did not possess. It is evident that this reasoning is inconclusive, because, taking it even for a point established that Sir Thomas Lucy had no park, it is not thereby proved that he had no deer. To shew then that he had deer, or at all events to shew the probability that he had deer, I adduced the fact in my Life of Shakespeare, that when Lord Keeper Egerton entertained Queen Elizabeth shortly before her death, Sir Thomas Lucy made him a present of a buck as a contribution to the feast. Here again the evidence was clearly inconclusive, because Sir Thomas Lucy might have given the buck to Sir Thomas Egerton, without having any deer in his park, or even in his possession. Nevertheless, considering the manners of the time, it was not at all likely that he should have done so; and I believe that of late years it has been generally supposed that Sir Thomas Lucy, if he had not a park, had deer; and that it was possible, therefore, that Shakespeare should have been involved in some poaching affair, and might have quitted his native town for the metropolis to avoid proceedings against him.

I beg to thank you for your kind letter of the 26th Nov., and feel much pleasure in sending you, as you desire, the few notices of any interest I have been able to collect of the fall and present state of the three beautiful Pillars of the Erecthéum, and of the Pillar of the Temple of Jupiter Olympius, which has shared in the same fate.

It cannot have escaped the observation of every person interested in the life of Sir Thomas More, that his biographers, though one of them married his daughter, and another was his great-grandson, are almost entirely silent as to the family from which he sprung. In their statements upon this subject, they ascend no higher than Sir Thomas's father, Sir John More; he being no less a person than one of the superior judges; holding that dignity, too, for a space of at least twelve years, and not dying till after his son had been elevated to the highest legal position in the kingdom.

In my last letter I endeavoured to give some account of the principal buildings in the ancient county of Poitou. The next place of any importance that I stopped at was Angoulême, which is on the direct road to Bordeaux; but, as I afterwards deviated from the direct route, and the church of Angoulême belongs to a very peculiar class, of which the type is the church of S. Front at Perigueux, I think it will be more convenient for me to begin with that church.

I told you I had found the angon, and you will be able to judge of the correctness of my statement from the accompanying notes and drawings, which you can lay before the Society.

As a sequel of your paper, and bearing also on an historical fact, the subject may interest those of our Fellows who do not usually give their attention to this branch of antiquities.

In a former communication read before the Society of Antiquaries in December, 1851 (Archæol. Vol. XXXIV. p. 394–398), attention was called to the existence of two Roman Villas, one in the immediate neighbourhood of Boxmoor Station, on the London and North-Western line of railway, and the other at a distance of about a quarter of a mile from it. On the present occasion an account will be given of the result of subsequent excavations carried on at both these spots, and at one of them, as you are aware from personal observation, with some very interesting results.

Mr. Hepworth Dixon's very able and interesting biography of the great Quaker philanthropist, William Penn, contains the best account which has yet been published of the circumstances under which he was imprisoned in the Tower of London in the year 1668. That imprisonment was an event which exercised a most important influence upon the whole of Penn's after life. It attached him to the faith of Quakerism by the strong link of a public persecution suffered on its behalf, and the leisure which it afforded him sobered and matured his mind, and led to the production of a valuable addition to the library of practical Christianity. Up to the period of this imprisonment it seemed not impossible that under judicious treatment William Penn might have been won back to the church from which he had strayed. He had, indeed, openly avowed himself a Quaker, and had published his controversial pamphlets, entitled “Truth Exalted” and “The Guide Mistaken,” but nothing had rendered his adoption of the tenets of “The Friends” too decided to be retreated from with honour. To cut off this retreat was the effect of his imprisonment as a state criminal in the Tower. It pointed him out to the world as one of the heads and leaders of a sect then generally contemned. It nailed his colours to his mast, to borrow a metaphor from the profession of his father, and bound him either to discredit himself by a public recantation under the influence of persecution, or to fight out the battle which was thus openly thrust upon him. Nor was the effect upon his co-religionists more injudicious than that upon himself. The followers of George Fox, disgraced by the wild profanities of such persons as Solomon Eccles, were popularly regarded with scorn. To single out the first man of education and station in the world who had joined their ranks, and to send him to the Tower as a state prisoner, for publishing an ill-considered and abstruse controversial pamphlet, gave importance to what had been previously in the general estimation merely contemptible; and involved the government in a dispute, in which, if it failed to produce recantation, the attempt was sure to recoil with great advantage to the public reputation of both the prisoner and his sect. Viewing this imprisonment as a turning point, both in the personal history of William Penn and in the larger history of the religious community to which he attached himself, I lately received with much thankfulness from my friend and co-fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, Robert Lemon, Esq., of the State Paper Office, some valuable additional information respecting this imprisonment, and I trust it will not be displeasing to the Society of Antiquaries to listen to such an account of these new particulars as I am able to give.

In the spring of the past year I received information from my friend the Reverend J. Pemberton Bartlett of the discovery of what appeared to be the site of potteries during the Roman possession of Britain, in the western district of the New Forest. Mr. Bartlett, at the same time, forwarded a hamper of the shards which had been turned up, and also a number of vessels which he had succeeded in obtaining by excavations on the spot. These examples were exhibited to the Society, and excited much speculation among those members who had made the subject of Roman fictile ware their study. At a subsequent period I had the gratification of exploring the localities, and in the succeeding autumn I again paid a visit to the Forest in company with my friend, whose zeal for the acquisition of all possible intelligence regarding these remains I cannot too much commend. But I must give, in his own words, the particulars relating to the discovery, and his account of repeated visits to the spot, which were continued until the close of the past year.

I am aware of the interest taken by many of our Fellows in all that tends to elucidate Teutonic antiquities, and therefore venture to request you will submit to their consideration these notes on an obscure and difficult branch of the subject.

When in France, during the last summer, I endeavoured to profit by so favourable an opportunity for observing the sepulchral remains of the Frankish race, and comparing them with those of the Saxon. It had not occurred to me that there also I might meet with traces of the Saxons, “that celebrated name in which,” as Gibbon well writes, “we have a dear and domestic interest.” From long habit, Saxon antiquities are apt to appear the exclusive attribute of our own land; yet we possess abundant evidence of the presence of the Saxons in Gaul.

Among the archives of the municipality at Vevay are a few notices respecting General Ludlow. He was under constant apprehension of assassination, and by way of protection he was allowed, if necessary, to ring a large bell, suspended in an old tower, since pulled down, which stood on the edge of the lake, at the south-east corner of the market-place, and which was his first habitation at Vevay. His last abode was the house adjoining the eastern gate of the town, which is still in perfect preservation, and well known as Ludlow's residence. Until within the last few years the original inscription remained over the door; it was carved on wood in the form of a scroll, and was given by the present possessor of the mansion to an Englishman travelling through Vevay, who represented himself as a descendant of Ludlow. Permission was accorded him by the government at Berne to erect a small guardhouse in front of the house, in the lake, to watch any boat coming from Savoy; one attempt was made upon his person, as he was coming out of the church in which his ashes now repose, but was frustrated by the authorities of the town surrounding and protecting him. The permissions to ring the bell and to build the guard-house are recorded in the archives. There is also some memorandum relating to “Madame la Genérale Ludlow,” after his decease. On the 6th of June, 1832, having obtained the obliging permission of the syndic to search the records, I proceeded to their examination. One of the conseil d'etat, and the secretary, whose name was Demontel, attended me; unfortunately there was no index, and the person belonging to the establishment, said to be the only man capable of laying his hand upon anything required, happened to be absent at Orbe. So I was left to hunt along the margin for the name of Ludlow,—a tedious and somewhat unprofitable task, for I could not find all I wanted. I have a friend here, at Lausanne, who has engaged to furnish me with some particulars respecting the investigations that followed the assassination of Lisle, in the Place St. François. It would be satisfactory to discover some remnant of the papers and correspondence of the regicides, but none are known to exist, and Ludlow's widow no doubt carried off all his literary remains when she left his mortal remains in the church of St. Martin. The epitaph she put up to him is well known: so are those of Broughton and Love. Interment in the church is no longer permitted, so the old Parliamentarians are likely to have it all to themselves, and to lie there undisturbed until the “crack of Doom,” for we can hardly calculate upon churches being pulled down, and the dead pulled up, in this tranquil, neutralised, unchanging country.

The appearance of the magnificent work of the Chevalier Lepsius, containing such vast materials for the history of Egypt, a copy of which has been presented by the King of Prussia to the Society of Antiquaries, compels me to resume my labours upon the annals of the Egyptian monarch Thothmes III. I had formerly given some account of this reign, perhaps the most glorious for Egypt, in translating the so-called statistical inscription of Karnak; but the publication of four other inscriptions, all having relation to the same subject, renders it necessary to give a translation of the entire five, and to show their corresponding relation to each other. Unfortunately, the mutilation of this monument, either by the incursions of time, by fanatical heretics of the oldest period of Egypt itself, or by other barbarian hands, renders the text considerably interrupted and mutilated. Yet the careful reader can still follow the thread of the narrative, and study this fragment of the old colossal history of Central Asia and civilized Africa. Not, however, to dilate here too much on the historical portion, but merely warning the inquirer that the apparent incoherence is caused not so much by our ignorance of the hieroglyphical writing as by the great lacunae in .the text, and also observing that the philological observations are thrown into the notes, in order not to encumber the general remarks, I will proceed to the interpretation of these five inscriptions in their historical order. They occur on the wall of the great temple of the god Amen Ra, at Karnak, one of the quarters of Thebes, close to the granite sanctuary at Thebes, which was built by Thothmes III. and restored by the monarch Har-em-hebi, or Horus, of the eighteenth dynasty. About one half of the text is wanting.

The name of Shakspere appears to be so inseparably connected with the Seven Ages of Man in the minds of most persons, that few have thought of inquiring how much of this charming creation is really his own. Not that the division of human life into periods or stages is so deeply philosophical that the idea might not occur to many of even ordinary capacity, but the form in which our great poet has presented to us man's course from the cradle to the grave is so beautiful and graphic, so completely his own, that it is hardly matter for surprise that the subject should have been allowed to rest almost entirely unexplored. It certainly would have remained untouched by myself, had it not happened that the Museum has acquired an extremely curious wood-engraving of the Seven Ages of Man, executed about the middle of the fifteenth century. Believing this print to be of sufficient interest and importance to be communicated to the Society of Antiquaries, I have been led to make some inquiries into the subject of it. My researches have carried me further back than I had anticipated.

With the exception of Figs. 1, 2, 3, the Gold Ornaments engraved in Plate VIII. have no reference whatever to each other. The first three were obtained by Viscount Strangford, Director of the Society, from a Greek priest at Milo, in the year 1820. Figs. 1 and 3 appear to have formed the ends of a light chain, and the other (fig. 2) to have been pendent by a small loop on the top of the head. The figure has unfortunately lost the feet and the left hand, but the other parts are perfect. The right hand is raised in an admonitory attitude. The forehead appears as if encircled with a wreath, while the body is crossed by what would seem to be intended for the tendril of a vine. The necklace was formerly in the collection of the late Mr. H. P. Borrell, of Smyrna, but I am informed by his brother, Mr. Maximilian Borrell, who now possesses it, that no record exists of its discovery, and that he cannot learn the name of the individual from whom it was purchased. It was well known that Mr. H. P. Borrell was in the habit of purchasing ancient coins, which were sent to him from all parts of Greece and Asia-Minor, and that many rare and unique specimens fell into his hands, of which he contributed descriptions in various volumes of the Numismatic Chronicle. The necklace may, therefore, have been included in one of these numerous consignments, and we can scarcely indulge the hope that the place of its discovery will ever be made known. As an example of ancient art, it may vie with the most elaborate and beautiful specimens of goldsmiths' work of any age or period. The details are wonderfully minute and delicate, even the backs of the button-like objects at the ends of the pendent cords being elaborately finished.

The interest which attaches to the growth of our vast metropolis, with all the concomitant improvements in building and in the comforts and conveniences of our dwellings, renders any evidence upon that subject worthy of general attention; I therefore take advantage of the permission of Sir Harry Verney, to exhibit to the Society of Antiquaries a lease granted in 1634 to Sir Edmund Verney, Knight Marshal to King Charles I., of two of the new houses then just erected as part of the Piazza in Covent Garden.

I beg to lay before our Society transcripts of three Documents illustrative of the Earl of Sussex's negotiation, in 1567, for the marriage of Queen Elizabeth with the Archduke Charles.

The first is the Diary of the Journey, kept by Sir Gilbert Dethick, who, as Garter King of Arms, attended the cortege, to invest the Emperor with the Order of St. George. It is mutilated in a few passages, being one of the numerous fragments of the Cottonian Library, which, with many fine and important volumes, were destroyed, or spoiled for all useful purposes, in the well-known fire of 1731.

The second is a Letter from the Earl of Sussex to the Queen herself (preserved in the Cottonian MS. Galba, B. xi . fol. 300), dated 27th August, 1567, detailing the substance of his several audiences of the Emperor up to the Emperor's acceptance of the Order of the Garter. It begins rather abruptly. It was probably preceded by some previous Letter to the Queen, descriptive of the journey: and not improbably by another Letter, or perhaps Letters, stating the further discussions with the Emperor and the Archduke, and the causes of failure of the Negociation.

The whole affording an ample view of the Negociation, and of the fruitless expenditure which it entailed.

With the permission of your Lordship I am about to address to you a short and concluding continuation of some Papers which were read in the season of 1850-1, containing hitherto unnoticed materials for a Memoir of Sir Walter Raleigh. Those materials were derived from various sources, public and private, and brought the history of one of the founders of our Society—a man of great learning, multifarious talents, and energetic and enterprising spirit—down to the year 1598; when I showed, I believe for the first time, that he was employed against the rebels in Ireland, and had offered a price for the head of Tyrone.