The initial and most congenial task in this, my first anniversary address, is to record, more formally than I could do in taking over from him last year, thanks to my predecessor, Simon Jervis, for his distinguished service to the Society. He guided the Fellowship for six years with great panache, as well as wisdom, and for this we are deeply indebted. I am sure we all miss his benign and learned asides and the wealth of the anecdotes which enlivened his Anniversary Addresses and his comments at the Thursday lectures. Luckily, past Presidents do not immediately disappear, leaving only a smile behind, but they are transmuted into Honorary Vice-Presidents, and, if they are Simon Jervis, they also continue to provide help and comment – for example, during this year as the editor of The Antiquary, which he has revived with considerable success.

This article reassesses the design of the nave of St Davids Cathedral in the light of modern scholarship, arguing that the cathedral has been a victim of an overly historicist approach to architectural writing. New documentary evidence is presented, including information about the existence of two churches on the site. Anomalies in the west bay are defined and some of the explanations offered by Lovegrove (1922, 1926) are rejected. Following an analysis of the design, the background of the scheme is firmly located in an English west-country environment and suggestions of French influence are dismissed. Although a vault may have been envisaged when the nave was first begun, it is unlikely that a stone vault was ever erected. Nonetheless, the design of the nave emerges as a more significant and creative piece of architecture than is generally realized.

The study of British personal seals, particularly those that are non-armorial, is oneof the n neglected areas of sigillographie research; these seals, however, provide the widest range of desi and the largest number of extant examples in the entire field. This paper focuses upon one aspee such seals, the Christological designs and legends used on them, and integrates them into the broa area of the study of late medieval Christocentric devotion in order to demonstrate both the rich source of new material provided by personal seals, and the way in which they can add to understanding of more general issues of a historical period.

The present study arose from the need to provide the background for understanding theheraldry mentioned in the post-mortem inventories of Henry VIII, and while it seems unlikely that this commentary will appear in the foreseeable future it fills agap in the heraldic literature. The role of the ‘British History’ in English royal propaganda and state ceremonials antedated the accession of Henry VII as is evidenced by the material prepared in relation to Edward IV's supersession of Henry VI in 1461. The role of heralds and kings of arms in rationalizing the arms and beasts required for the pageants etc is examined with the ways in which it was organized for entries and other ceremonials. The period also witnessed the introduction of new decorations f ortournaments – ciphers and impresses. The appendices provide editions of some hitherto unpublished texts which were devised for these purposes.

The remarkable late sixteenth-century account of Long Melford Church written by former churchwarden Roger Martyn includes a description of the carved wooden altarpiece placed at the high altar from 1481 (when, according to an inscription on the exterior of the church, the altarpiece was made) until 1547–8. The author suggests that this altarpiece is likely to have been Netherlandish rather than English and relates its purchase to the links between cloth-producing Long Melford and the Low Countries. The painted altarpiece shutters are known to have survived into Mary' College Chapel, Cambridge, are three shutters from a Brussels-carved altarpiece dating from c 1480 and owned by the college at least since 1717. It is proposed that these could be the Long Melford shutters, perhaps donated to the college after the English Civil War by Master Anthony Sparrow, who as archdeacon of Sudbury had oversight of Long Melford.

Five illustrations of the feretory of St Dunstan at Glastonbury appear in the margins of Cambridge, Trinity College MS R 5 16, a copy of John of Glastonbury's chronicle of the abbey. They provide a unique visual record of a major monument of English Gothic metalwork previously known only through documentation. The feretory of St Dunstan stood at the centre of one of Glastonbury's most important cults. Its form was more wholeheartedly architectural than other known English examples, and may be compared with contemporary Continental feretories. The illustrations also inform current understanding of the controversy surrounding the true location of St Dunstan's relics. Palaeographical analysis of accompanying inscriptions places them in the context of Archbishop William Warham's well-known attempt to claim the relics definitively for Canterbury (1508). The illustrations may be understood as part of Glastonbury's reaction to this attempt.

A fascinating example of early sixteenth-century carving is preserved in the church of the Hospital of St Cross, near Winchester, in the form of three sections of wooden frieze. The frieze is carved with a profusion of Renaissance imagery that has until now received little attention. The carved imagery of the frieze will be examined here in detail for the first time, along with its association with Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester 1501–28. The relationship between the imagery of the frieze and the decorative detail in other works associated with Fox will be discussed and its similarities to French models. A traditional dating of the frieze to 1525 or thereabouts will be challenged in favour of an earlier date and its likely association with stallwork discussed.

This paper combines a study of the typological, technological and constructional attributes of a sample of fifteen dress-hooks and cap-hooks, reported between 1998 and 2000 under the terms of the Treasure Act (1996), with a survey of contemporary pictorial sources, probate inventories and associated wills along with a trawl of ‘small wares’ in the records of the Goldsmiths' Company in order to assess the role of these accessories in vernacular dress of sixteenth-century England.

Of particular interest are questions of manufacture and design, followed by the questions of how these objects functioned in relation to the closure and decoration of dress, their noteworthiness in contemporary accounts, their social status, their ranking in the output of contemporary goldsmiths and whether there was a gender bias in terms of their ownership. This cross-examination of excavated finds with contemporary iconographie and documentary sources represents an interdisciplinary case study in historical archaeology.

Sizergh– known as Sizergh Hall from the seventeenth century, and renamed Sizergh Castle in the mid-nineteenth century– has been the seat of the Strickland f amily for over seven hundred years. Although it has a medieval core, the house as it exists today is substantially the work of Walter Strickland (1516–69) who, in the mid- 1550s, initiated a comprehensive rebuilding programme, which more than trebled it in size. The enlarged house, built around three sides of a courtyard, reflected, in its rooms and their disposition, the concern for privacy and segregation that characterized the age. The fitting-out of the interior with high-quality panelling, ceilings and furnishings was incomplete on Walter's death, but was continued by his family over the next two or three generations. The house was altered and subdivided during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but much of the integrity of the mid-sixteenth-century building still survives.

Throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Vegetius was regarded as the most authoritative writer on Roman military institutions in particular and upon war in general. His appeal was both historical and practical; his anti-mercenary fervour impressed Italian humanists in the fifteenth century,- his aphoristic wisdom was incorporated by Machiavelli into his own work and was, in turn, further disseminated by the many military writers who fell wider Machiavelli's spell. Nevertheless, Vegetius's reputation was increasingly under threat. The accumulation and publication of materials relating to modern warfare and to technologies unknown to the ancients was developing apace, and even writers who believed that classical military institutions remained relevant to modern warfare now had at their disposal a range of ancient authors largely unknown in the Middle Ages. Scholars were becoming simultaneously more aware of Vegetius's shortcomings and more sophisticated in their handling of historical sources. Yet, despite this, Vegetius enjoyed hisgreatest (though short-lived) triumph early in the seventeenth century when he was translated, paraphrased and illustrated by Johann von Wallhausen as an indispensable source forall practical military men.1

As a result of the Act of Annexation of 1587, and the removal of bishops from the Scottish church in 1689, the Crown in Scotland incidentally acquired ownership of a large number of monastic and cathedral churches. By the late eighteenth century, as interest in medieval architecture grew, occasional grants were made towards their maintenance; but between 1827 and 1839, when a Scottish Office of Works was established under the architect Robert Reid, major efforts began to be made to stabilise considerable numbers of those buildings. The approaches to this work are of interest for what they tell us about emerging attitudes to architectural conservation.

The excavations of the Roman town of Silchester, Hampshire, undertaken under the auspices of the Society of Antiquaries between 1890 and 1909, are reconsidered in the light of renewed excavation on the site of insula IX, first explored in 1893. The excavation methodology of trial-trenching followed by area excavation of masonry buildings thus located is reviewed alongside the evidence of policy for the recovery and retention of finds. It is estimated that about 95 per cent of the archaeological resource survives for future research.

The British people formerly known to scholars as Coritani, but now commonly referred to as Corieltauvi, lived in the region of Leicester, Nottingham and Lincoln, with their capital at Ratae, or Leicester. Their name was recovered as follows. They appear in Ptolemy as Coritani (variant Contavi) and the Ravenna Cosmography as Rate Corion (taken as an abbreviated form). Coritani and Corion resisted every attempt to extract a meaning from them.

In volume 81 of the Antiquaries Journal, AH and Cunich presented new evidence in respect of the orientation of eleventh- and twelfth-century churches. The object of their research was to test whether the important churches of the early second millennium in England might have been aligned using a magnetic compass. Their data, meticulously collected, led them to conclude that only in a very small number of instances could the use of a magnetic compass have been possible and that solar observation was, in a significant number of instances, the determinant of orientation. More particularly, the rising of the sun above the horizon and possibly, though less frequently, the setting sun, provided the alignment. It was possible to show a close correlation with sunrise or sunset at patronal feast days, that is, the day on which the venerated saint was believed to have died, at Easter and on true east, determined by equinoctial sunrise.

A copper-alloy scabbard chape of Viking-period type and date was found by a metal-detector user at Chatburn, Lancashire, in 1993. It has been acquired, through the good offices of the finder, Mr Steve Owen, and the landowners, the Trustees of The Hon R C Assheton's Settlement, by Blackburn Museum, where its registration number is 1995.14. Assistance is acknowledged from the following bodies with the costs of acquisition and conservation: the MGC/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, the National Art Collections Fund and the North West Museums Service. Conservation has been carried out by the York Archaeological Trust.

Three surviving stone lecterns are described and analysed in terms of their petrography and sculptural style. The similarity between their petrography strongly suggests that they share a common origin, traceable to a quarry or quarries in the immediate vicinity of Much Wenlock, and that the similarity of sculptural style and dimensions points to them being a product of a single workshop. Furthermore, the authors suggest that the petrographie and stylistic characteristics show striking similarities to the Much Wenlock lavabo, thus adding support to the notion of a Much Wenlock workshop.

In 1985, excavations by the Department of Urban Archaeology in Kinghorn Street, adjacent to St Bartholomew the Great, resulted in the discovery of one of the most important pieces of medieval painting to have been found in the City of London (colour plate 1).

Discovered in two halves, the painted stone had been reused in a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century well construction immediately to the east of the church. The curved right edge of the stone probably derives from this secondary usage. When found, the two pieces were covered in lime mortar, to which, unfortunately, some of the paint layer transferred. The fragment is now in the Museum of London, where the two halves have been rejoined and other conservation work has been undertaken.

A payment to a mason sent to Richard II in Ireland in December 1394 provides evidence of a proposal to build a new or substantially new royal residence at Isleworth, Surrey. The mansion was presumably intended as a replacement for the palace of Sheen, shortly to be demolished on the king's orders. The mason carried with him a model prepared by Henry Yevele and Hugh Herland. This entry in the issue rolls of the Exchequer thus offers an interesting perspective on Richard's domestic plans following Queen Anne's death at Sheen, and rare documentation of the use of architectural models in late medieval England. Further, it offers some support for the view that Yevele was actively involved in design work in the 1390s, and that Richard took a close interest in royal building projects.

The Carmelite monastery of Hoogstraat, like many English communities on the Continent, acquired a considerable number of treasures over the centuries, many of which were somehow smuggled into England when the nuns fled the Revolution, remaining at Chichester until the community was finally dissolved in 1994. Although much was sold, the major Carmelite relics went to Rome and the remaining relics were given to the Oxford Oratory. Among those now in Oxford is an important medieval silver-gilt reliquary, which has been deposited at the Ashmolean Museum.