The English Medieval Gold Rosary which forms the subject of the communications to be laid before the Society by my colleague Mr. Oman and myself was brought to the Victoria and Albert Museum about eighteen months ago. So far as I am aware hardly any one knew of its existence previously. It had been the property of the Langdales of Houghton Hall, Sancton, an old Yorkshire Roman Catholic family, and had apparently been found some considerable time ago in a chest with a number of other objects connected with religion. It had not until quite recently been regarded as of any special importance or interest, and nothing apparently can be traced as to its history.

The roof bosses of Lincoln Cathedral are of particular interest, for they show the evolution of this form of ornament from the stiff conventional foliage of the end of the twelfth century in St. Hugh's Quire, through the freer foliage of the first half of the thirteenth century in the nave, to the climax of the art in the second half of the thirteenth century in the Angel Quire. These later bosses are unsurpassed anywhere, whether in the trefoil and natural foliage, or in the figure bosses, all too few, in the aisles.

Before describing this excavation a few introductory remarks must be made on the circumstances which brought it about.

As early as 1924 Mr. O. G. S. Crawford was convinced from a study of the 6-inch maps that long barrows existed on the Lincolnshire Wolds, but the matter was not tested in the field until the writer began a general revision of the archaeological information on the Lincolnshire sheets in 1929. After a careful examination of the Wold area it became apparent that Mr. Crawford's belief was amply justified, and that an important group of long barrows existed between the Humber and the Wash. An account was given of these in the Archaeological Journal for 1932, and details of further discoveries were given in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. Altogether eleven certain examples are known, two more have been destroyed, and there are two doubtful cases (fig. 1)

The number of instances in which it is possible in this country to assign, even tentatively, particular groups of medieval works of art to particular craftsmen is not so great that the addition of another such group can be without interest, or even without importance. Certain evidence exists which may justify the addition, to the list of recognized craft-centres, of a group of woodcarvers working originally at Ripon and dwelling there, but executing work widely distributed, and also imitated, over Northern England. That evidence must first be examined in order to establish the use of such a title as ‘The Ripon School’.

The Dartmouth Castle of to-day, the structure which is maintained by the Commissioners of H.M. Works as an historic building, comprises one tower of irregular shape and two adjacent platforms. Until shortly before the Great War it remained in use by the War Department, but in 1910 it was handed over to the Office of Works, since only one battery, a short distance farther south, was any longer of military value. Work of general preservation was then carried out.

Until within the last few years there lay about on the floor of the north transept of Winchester Cathedral, along with other relics of a miscellaneous character, a considerable number of fragments of medieval sculpture. They had presumably been collected gradually, but no doubt comparatively recently, from various parts of the Cathedral Close. Soon after his installation, however, the present Dean took steps to have these fragments cared for, and he entrusted me with the task of arranging and cataloguing them. They are now, with one or two exceptions, housed in that interesting south triforium of the south transept. It is with this collection of fragments that I deal in this paper, to the exclusion of other sculpture, such as monumental effigies. I am able to illustrate my notes by photographs of several individual pieces kindly taken for me by our friends and your Fellows Mr. C. J. P. Cave and Mr. Arthur Gardner, and by four general views (pls. XLV, XLVI) by my fellow citizen Mr. Salmon, showing the collection as at present arranged. I have been much helped by discussion with friends.

On the 31st January 1907 the late Sir William St. John Hope read a paper before the Society ‘On the Funeral Effigies of the Kings and Queens ofEngland,with special reference to those in the Abbey Church of Westminster’, and to this paper our Fellow the late Dr. Armitage Robinson, then dean of Westminster, appended ‘A Note on the Westminster Tradition of Identification’. In this paper the origin and history of the earlier effigies—‘the Ragged Regiment’— were dealt with in detail, but the later effigies, familiarly known as the ‘Waxworks’, were outside its scope, and their history was only lightly sketched in a few sentences by the dean of Westminster.

Of the many objects of the Bronze Age which have defied decay in these Islands, few can rank in interest and importance with a number of small coloured beads which have been found associated with barrow burials and in other contexts. So well known are they, that it seems almost needless to add that their importance lies in the possibility of using them as datum points in the Absolute Chronology of this period. The question of their origin is thus one of extreme importance and one which we propose here to examine.

The recent examination of the cairn known as Bryn yr Hen Bobl was begun in 1929 at the request of its owner, the marquess of Anglesey, who generously paid the cost of the labour employed throughout the six seasons work on the monument.

So far as is known the earliest Norman Kings had only one seal with which to authenticate any written orders or communications which issued in their name: under his Great Seal the King would agree to a treaty or order payment for his wine, summon a sheriff to account or bestow an earldom, arrange his own marriage or the legal affairs of one of his subjects; and in the original documents under this seal which have survived to us from the twelfth century, even in those which we find in the enrolments of the early thirteenth, may be traced every important element which we find in executive administration by Government departments to-day; not to mention those which might be discerned in the private correspondence of the sovereign. But very early it was found that it was impossible for one seal to deal with the resulting mass of business or to cope with the situation which arose when the King (with the Chancellor in his company) was absent from the usual seat of Government: the Dialogus de Scaccario tells us that already in the twelfth century there was a second seal which was kept by the Chancellor in the Treasury per vicarium As executive business developed and increased in succeeding centuries other seal developments followed: notably the addition to the resources of royal administration of the Privy and Secret Seals and of the Signets, which are the direct ancestors of the seals that still symbolize the authority of a secretary of state. But meanwhile the principle of dividing the Great Seal itself was also extended and much used: and it is with these deputies or departmental versions of the Great Seal that the present article is to deal.