The famous monastery of Debra Damo in Tigrai, known to be of great importance in Northern Ethiopia over a very long period of history, preserves in its church one of the few examples still extant of an ancient style of Ethiopian architecture.

The study of the Viking Age in this country has in the past remained largely the province of the historian, using the material afforded by the written sources and by the scientific investigation of place-names, and what systematic work has been done on the antiquities of the period, outside the fields of architecture and sculpture, illumination, and fine metalwork, is in considerable measure due to the labours of Scandinavian scholars. The contribution of archaeology to the problems of the period has until recently been quite inadequate and this state of affairs is all the more surprising in view of the important and controversial question of the origin of the English towns, the historical evidence for which, being both sketchy and ambiguous, has now been argued almost to the point of exhaustion. The publication in 1927 of the material remains of the Viking period from London in a manner appreciative of their equal value with the documentary and place-name evidence for the history of the site was exceptional, and in recent years the investigation by deliberate excavation of towns and settlement sites of the Viking Age, at Norwich, Oxford, Southampton, and Thetford, and far away in Shetland at Jarlshof, has gone some way towards compensating for earlier neglect. The systematic investigation of such sites, however, is only now beginning and so far no comparable work has been undertaken in the lands north of Humber, where from the time of Halfdan's settlement in 876 a thriving Viking province maintained with varying fortune its individuality until the Conquest and beyond. At York, the political centre of the Danelaw, the historical and place-name evidence indicates a thoroughly Scandinavian occupation, but the abundant archaeological material of the period, considering the importance of the site, has never received the attention in detail that it deserves. This material constitutes one of the largest groups of town finds of the Viking Age in the country and although for the most part recovered by chance in modern building operations and ill recorded in consequence has far too long been ignored.

Sir Willam Celcil bought the manor of Theobalds in 1564 and we are told that he did so in order to provide an estate for his younger son, Robert, who had been born probably in the previous year. There will have been other considerations and Cecil's choice of situation is interesting. Theobalds lies just off the main road from London to Ware, the road he would take on his journeys to and from his principal seat at Stamford. It lies, moreover, in a neighbourhood studded with royal houses–Enfield (3 m.), Hertford Castle (8 m.), Hatfield (9¼ m.), and Havering-at-Bower (10¾ m.). In addition, Cecil's old friend Sir Thomas Smith was established at Hill Hall, Theydon Mount (7½ m.), and his father-in-law, Anthony Cooke, at Gidea Hall (12 m.). Finally, at Gorhambury (15 m.), his brother-in-law Sir Nicholas Bacon had started building operations in March 1563. It may or may not have been chance that Sir Thomas Heneage obtained the reversion of Copthal 15(6 m.) and began building there in the same year that Cecil acquired Theobalds.

The scribe of these and the following lines, which lament the English disasters France about 1449, had the kindness to insert the names of the noblemen, thus denoted by their badges. The Root, he tells us, for example, is Bedforde, the swan Gloucetter, and the cresset Excetter. This swan badge of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, who died in 1447, is familiar, but he was by no means the only bearer of a swan in his time. It had been the badge of the great house of Bohun, earls of Hereford and Essex (pls. XXXVI, g; XXXVII, g; XL), and is assumed to have come to Humphrey through the marriage of his father the earl of Derby, later King Henry IV (pls. XXXVI, f; XXXVII, g; XL), with Mary de Bohun the younger daughter and coheir of Humphrey, earl of Hereford. But even among Mary's own descendants Duke Humphrey was not alone in using it, for Henry V (pls. XXXIV, a, b; XL), Henry VI, and the latter's son Edward did so too. Mary's elder sister Eleanor (pls. XXXVII, f; XL) used it also, as did her husband, Thomas of Woodstock (pls. XXXIV, c, d, e; XL), duke of Gloucester, and the Staffords, dukes of Buckingham (pls. XXXVI, a, c; XL), descended from their daughter Anne. Nor was this all, for in 1325 Margaret de Bohun (pls. XXXIX, b; XL), the daughter of an earlier Humphrey, earl of Hereford and Essex, had married Hugh de Courtenay, earl of Devon, and many of their descendants, Courtenays (pls. XXXIV, f, j; XXXVII, h; XL), Luttrells (pls. XXXVII, a, b, c, e, i, j; XL) and others (pl. XXXIX, a) used swans as badges, or as crests or supporters in their arms.

The greyhound, from its use as a royal beast by Henry VII and the other sovereigns of the House of Tudor, is familiar to every student of armory and to many who care nothing for the noble science. It was, moreover, brought prominently to our notice at the time of the queen's coronation by its inclusion among the ten Queen's Beasts which were then set up outside Westminster Abbey, and which were afterwards placed in the Great Hall at Hampton Court Palace.

Misericords are a humble form of sculpture which has not attracted much attention from the erudite, either in the middle ages or today. Except when the seats of the choir stalls were tipped up, so that the misericords should spare their occupants the fatigue of standing through long services, these carvings were hidden and it does not seem to have been considered necessary that their subjects should conform to a consistent scheme of iconography. Lack of imagination, or of skill, might lead to a whole set of misericords being carved from a single decorativepattern as at North Marston (Bucks.), but where figure subjects were used it is very rare to find a consistent theme. The outstanding exception occurs at Ripple (Worcs.), where the misericords represent a complete set of ‘Labours of the Months’ presumably copied from the calendar decorations of some fine psalter. On most choir stalls we find a random selection of subjects, few of which are directly religious. Scenes from medieval romances, or subjects from the Bestiary;illustrations of sermon exempla, genre subjects, and meaningless grotesques form the major part of these designs, while a few carvings apparently express aliterary or symbolical allusion which now evades interpretation. Too little attention has been paid to the problem of how these relatively uneducated craftsmen came to have such a wide range of subjects. Did they originate their own designs, or, if they did not, what models were given to them to copy? Unfortunately misericords are not often studied by those who have the wide knowledge of other fields of medieval art which is needed to identify some of the carvers' models, for the interchange of designs between artists working in different media was an accepted practice in the middle ages. It is the purpose of this paper to show that medieval woodcarvers did copy designs from other media and the identification of their models can sometimes yield evidence which is not available from other sources.

Lord Rothschild's family has possessed, since the middle of the nineteenth century, one of the most interesting and important extant Roman cut glasses–the famous glass cup with metal mounts, the glass portion of which bears in open-work relief-cutting an elaborate rendering of the scene of the death of Lycurgus, mythical king of the Edoni, at the hands of the Dionysiac rout (pis. LIXLXIV; figs. 1-2). It is not known exactly when the vase was acquired by the Rothschilds, but when it was first mentioned in print in 1845 it was in M. Dubois's hands in Paris and it is thought to have been purchased by the present owner's great-grandfather shortly afterwards (although Michaelis, writing in 1872, did not know its whereabouts). In 1862 it was lent to the South Kensington (now the Victoria and Albert) Museum for a special exhibition. When Kisa was writing his great book on ancient glass in the early years of the present century it was in its Rothschild home and, as Kisa says, was unfortunately not available to him for study. Few, if any, archaeologists can have seen it from that time onwards until the present Lord Rothschild brought it to light again in 1950 and consulted us about its history and affinities. By his kind suggestion we are now enabled to write the present account of the vase, its technique and its artistic import, based on much careful personal study of the piece, and on the excellent series of photographs (pls. LIX-LXIV) which were made for Lord Rothschild by Mr. Edward Leigh of Cambridge. It is indeed surprising that such a fine monument of antiquity has had to wait for more than a century since it was first mentioned in print before it has been possible to give it the full and detailed publication warranted by its importance both as a tour de force of ancient glass-working and as an example of artistic endeavour.

One of the best-known documents in the possession of our Society is perhaps our MS. No. 108, with its detailed valuation of the Crown Jewels in 1649, and its uncompromising footnote ‘The foremenciond Crownes since ye Inventorye was Taken are accordinge to ordr of Parlamt totallie Broken and defaced’. We have seen it cited, in whole or in part, in various works on history in general and the Crown Jewels in particular, we have taken for granted certain conclusions from it, and we have perhaps been less ready to accept certain other conclusions drawn from it by other people. We think, in short, that we know it pretty well, and have seen all it has to show us; yet after all, this list of pieces of jewellery, with weights and valuations, may yield something more to us when we compare its information with thatsupplied by earlier inventories.