The signal favour I received, in January 1793, from the learned Society of Antiquaries (over which your Lordship so worthily presides), of being admitted an honorary member of that illustrious body, has constantly made me wish to meet with an occasion that might enable me to express my gratitude by some communication worthy of its notice.

Very few persons have lived to see such great revolutions in their family as Cecily duchess of York. Her father, from a baron, became a great and puissant earl; and no less than nine of his sons were, by descent, marriage, or creation, peers of the realm, his daughters matched suitably with the first nobility or gentry.

Herewith I send you a drawing, which exhibits a gold medal struck by king Charles I. upon the birth of the prince his son, afterwards king Charles II. Upon the obverse it gives the bull of king Charles I. representing that monarch crowned, with a ruff, and a military scarf over his armour. It is inscribed Carolvs D. G. Mag. Brit. Fra. Et Hib. Rex. The reverse shews the royal infant in a superb chair, with Mars and Mercury holding a wreath over him. The motto is Reddat Avos. In the Exergue the date of his birth Maii 29, 1630.

Permit me through your hands to lay before the Society of Antiquaries a drawing of a gold coin of king Charles I. with some account of it, because I flatter myself it is a very curious and select piece of money, and which, I believe, no writer has ever noticed.

A complete List of the Royal Navy of England in the year 1599, together with the number of Brass and Cast-Iron Ordnance, of the different species then in use, viz. Cannon, Demi-Cannon, Culverins, Demi-Culverins, Sakers, Mynions, Falcons, Falconetts, Portpecehalls, Portpece-Chambers, Fowler-Halls, Fowler-Chambers, and Curtalls, on board of each, or, as it is expressed in the title-page, “At the Shippes or Navy Royall lying in harborowe as well in the Roade by Chatham in the Ryver of Medwey-waters, as also upon present occasyons by Gravesend in the Ryver of Thames. And lastly, at her Highenes Shippes then serving abroade on the Seas.” Taken by the Queen's Commission, dated at Westminster 3d of March, in the 37th Year of her Reign, and directed to William Lord Burleigh, Lord High Treasurer of England, Charles Lord Howard, Lord High Admiral of England, Henry Lord of Hunsdon, &c. &c. and subsequent Orders of the above Commissioners, the last whereof is dated April 6, 1599.

I have the honour of communicating to the Society a translation of a letter addressed to me by the Abbé La Rue, upon a very important branch of English literature.

The attention with which it has already honoured the labours of this ingenious and learned writer, will not, I trust, be diminished upon the present occasion.

There is a room in Beauchamp's Tower, in the Tower of London, antiently the place of confinement for state prisoners, and which has lately been converted into a mess-room for the officers of the garrison there [a]. On this alteration being made a great number of inscriptions was discovered on the walls of the room, which probably have, for the most part, been made with nails, and are all of them, it should seem, the undoubted autographs, at different periods, of the several illustrious and unfortunate tenants of this once dreary mansion. For the discovery, as well as the preservation, of these most curious memorials, the Society stand indebted to the unremitted zeal and attention of their respectable member, Colonel Smith, F. R. S. major of the Tower of London.

The subsequent extract from Strype's Annals, A. D. 1586, contains the history of this event.

“The queen this year had enemies on all hands of her, and continual apprehensions of invasion, especially from Spain, now that the queen had taken the people of the Low Countries under her protection. And to secure herself by sea sir Francis Drake was sent out with forty gallies, for defence and offence, and did notable execution, which our historians mention: and of this sir George Carew, governor of the Isle of Wight, gave intelligence from thence unto the earl of Sussex, lord lieutenant of the county of Southampton, upon occasion of the strong report that came to court, that they were all up in that Isle of Wight, which, as things then stood abroad, inclined men to believe.

Having lately had more leisure to make remarks on the alteration produced in the aspect of Stonehenge, by the fall of some of the stones in January last, than when I first visited the spot for this purpose, I am anxious to lay before the Antiquarian Society a more full and correct account of it than that which you did me the honour to transmit to them before.

By the kindness of the Rev. Peter Rashleigh I have it in my power to convey to you drawings, of inscriptions and shields of arms placed in the walls of buildings that are appendages to Preston Hall in Aylesford; and they will afford me an opportunity of satisfying you that the date on one of them was without sufficient grounds advanced in the hypothetical controversy respecting the time of the introduction of Arabic Numerals into this country.

It was observed by the late Dr. Johnson, that “of an art universally practised the first teacher is forgotten;” and strictly applicable to this general position is the declaration of Mr. North, that, “though next to the art of printing there is no invention of more extensive use than that of the numeral figures or cyphers, yet, when, where, and by whom they were invented, are questions never perhaps to be clearly answered. Despairing, therefore, of success in such an investigation, the inquiries I proposed were limited to periods when the vulgar figures of arithmetick were certainly known in England, and my humble attempt was, and is, to mark the very slow progress made for centuries in the use of these rudiments of a science, an ignorance in which is now deemed disreputable in those who have acquired other branches of a liberal education.

In my researches amongst the MSS. in the British Museum I met with the two following, which under the present circumstances I am induced to think will be acceptable communications to our Society, and for that purpose have transcribed them. They are both written by Mr. William Waad, of whom Dr. Birch, in his Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, (Vol. I. p. 45,) gives the following account. “Mr.William Waad was son of Armigel Waad, Esq. a gentleman born in Yorkshire, and educated at St. Magdalen College in Oxford, who was clerk of the council to king Henry VIII. and Edward VI. and employed in several campaigns abroad, and died at Belsie or Belsise House, in the parish of Hampstead, near London, on the 20th of June 1568. His son William succeeded him in the place of Clerk of the Council, and was afterwards knighted by king James I. at Greenwich, May 30, 1603, and made Lieutenant of the Tower. The occasion of his journey into Spain in the beginning of the year 1583−4, was upon the discovery of the Spanish ambassador Mendoza being concerned in the plot of Francis Throgmorton, and other English catholics, in favour of the queen of Scots, and being ordered to depart England immediately, of which he loudly complained, as a violation of the law of nations.

Queen Elizabeth, in her great want of money in the wars of Ireland to pay the army, did, by the advice of as prudent a council as any prince in christendom ever had, cause some brass money to be coyned and made current for her present occasions, upon her royal promise to give those which should receive it good money of gold or silver, some years after which king James, her successor, did justly cause to be performed. [MS. of an account given by Robert Cecill, earl of Salisbury, lord treasurer of England to the parliament in the raigne of king James.]

The matrix of an antient seal, the property of Mr. George Spence, of Old Bond Street, which your Lordship did me the honour to put into my hands for the purpose of exhibiting to the Society of Antiquaries, being unaccompanied with any explanation, I have therefore ventured to give one, which I submit with great deference to the correction of your Lordship and the Society.

Sirs ye shall understand that I am wele remembred, how a pece of voide grounde lying in the parish of Saint Mary Magdalene in Milkstrete of London, on the west side of the same strete was com'nly named and called the Chirche-yard of Saint Mary Magdalene Chirche in Milkstrete aforesaide And that there stode a crosse in and uppon the same voide grounde of the height of a man or more And that the same crosse was worshipped by the parisshens there as crosses be com'only worshiipped in other Chircheyardes.

In Dei nomine amen. Per hoc presens publicum instrumentum cunclis appareat evidenter quod anno ab incarnacione dominica millmo ccccmo nonagesimo nono indictione tercia pontificatus vero sanctissimi patris et Domini nostri Domini Alexandri divina providentia pape sexti anno octavo mensis vero Novembris die vicesima quinta in quodam mesuagio five taberna vocat' le Egle situat in Westchepa civitatis London in mei que notarii publici subscripti et testium infrâ script' presentia personaliter constitutus honorabilis et providus vir magister Robertus Sheffeld clericus filius ut asseruit Edmundi Sheffeld quondam de parochia omnium sanctorum in Honylane dicte civitatis London comorantis apud le hole Bulle ibidem sponte et ex fuo mero motu atque certa scientia ac libera et spontanea fua voluntate nullo errore duclius nulloque vi metu dolo feu fraude coaclus non deceptus non feduclus nee aliqua alia finistra machinatione ut asseruit circumvent'—fed ex animo deliberat' ac in rei veritatis testimon' deposuit confessatus fuit dixit et publice fatebatur certa verba Anglicana fequencia feu alia eis consimilia scilicet:

Queen Elizabeth, in the year 1563, appointed Ambrose Dudley, earl of Warwick, (to whom this letter is addressed) “her lieutenant and captain-general of her subjects that should in any wife pass over into Normandy.” And in the month of October he landed at Newhaven (Havre de Grace) with a body of three thousand English troops. He employed every means for putting it in a posture of defence, and was successful in several skirmislies with the enemy near the town, but was not able to retain the possession of it longer than the 28th of July following, when it was delivered up to the French, to whom it became a much eafier acquisition than was expected, in consequenee of the plague which broke out among the English soldiers, and which was afterwards brought by them to England. See Holinshed's Chron. Vol. III. p. 1195 to 1204, edit. 1587. Hume's Hist. Vol. V. p. 79, 8vo.

I take the liberty to request you to lay before the Society some flints found in the parish of Hoxne, in the county of Suffolk, which, if not particularly objects of curiosity in themselves, must, I think, be considered in that light, from the situation in which they were found. See PL XIV, XV.

Presuming your situation in a most respectable and learned Society will warrant the intrusion, I have taken the liberty of addressing you on a subject peculiarly within your province; and it will give me the highest pleasure if it is not altogether unworthy of their notice and your attention.

Permit me to lay before you the following observations on erect stone pillars, crosses, and crucifixes. The drawings herewith transmitted to your lordship were selected by me from two volumes of drawings of Antiquities collected by John Anstis the Elder, Esq. Garter King at Arms