On 9th March 1718 five citizens of the island of Sark, William Tanquerel, Henry de Carteret, Pirre de Carteret, Philipe Guille, and Nicholas Guille appeared before the Seneschal. They had been summoned by the Procurator Substitute, Philipe Slowley, on behalf of the Very Honourable Seigneur, Jean, Lord Carteret, Baron of Hawnes, Seigneur of St. Ouen, Sark, etc. Philipe Guille had been punished earlier in the day for having allowed his dog to run loose against the regulations. As a result of the proceedings the Seneschal ordered the five to deliver into the hands of the Procurator intact a treasure which they had found in the ground in making a ditch in a farm, commonly called La Voroque, which belonged to William Tanquerel, and this was duly done. The event is recorded in the Ledger for 1718, preserved in the Greffe Office in Sark.

More than twenty years ago this Society published a paper of mine entitled The Christian Antiquities of Northern Ethiopia. My present paper takes up the same theme again, describes much new material which has since come to light, and draws some new and better-founded conclusions.

The restoration in 1967–8 of the tomb of Archbishop Walter de Gray in the south transept of York Minster was undertaken during the general programme of restoration of the Minster as a whole. The dismantling of the tomb afforded an opportunity to open the underlying coffin and examine its contents. Both coffin and contents proved to be of outstanding interest and the results were communicated to the Society on 7th November 1968 by some of the authors responsible for this paper. The second tomb, identified as that of Archbishop Godfrey de Ludham, was opened in February 1969 and the contents, though less spectacular, afford so many useful comparisons with those from the de Gray burial that it was thought useful to present the findings in a combined paper. I must emphasize that my own contributions, on the pastoral staves, are brief factual statements inserted in the interests of speedy publication; they are not intended to replace the full discussion of them which had originally been hoped for from Mr. Michael Taylor before he relinquished his post at the British Museum. The Society is deeply indebted to the Dean, the Very Reverend Alan Richardson, M.A., D.D., and Chapter of York Minster for permitting the original communication and for encouraging the subsequent study and publication of the notable material from both these tombs. Grateful thanks are also due to the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England) and the Trustees of the British Museum for the provision of the excellent photographs which illustrate this paper (pls. XXXVI–LXV) and for their permission to publish them.

The original buildings of Winchester College were erected between 1387 and 1394, and among the most important of their fittings was the stained glass of the chapel windows. The general scheme of glazing must have been decided when the college was first designed, and the close iconographical relationship between the Winchester glass and that made for New College, Oxford, carries back the date of the design in outline to about 1380. At Oxford the chapel stood to the west of the hall, with a stone reredos covering the whole of the eastern wall, and a great west window; at Winchester this arrangement was reversed, the blank wall was at the west, while the great window of the chapel was placed in its eastern wall. Both windows consist of seven lights divided into two ranges by a horizontal transom; but the arrangements of mullions and tracery differ. In both cases the main subject of the glazing was a Tree of Jesse: the symbolic Vine springing from Jesse's loins and bearing in its branches a selection, more or less arbitrary, from the Kings of David's Line flanked by Prophets. The chief glass-painter responsible for the production of the glazing at both colleges was Thomas of Oxford, the head of one of the outstanding firms of glaziers working in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century. Master Thomas was already in high standing by 1386 and died about 1427. It is not certain that he was the designer of the glass, and it is evident from the portions of the original glass still extant that he employed a number of painters. This is confirmed by documentary references to his assistants, and for the production of such a large amount of fully painted glass a big firm must be assumed, rather than the small shop of an artist mainly concerned with design.

The first intention of this paper is to correct various long-standing misconceptions about the original layout (c. 1480) of the choir of Eton College Chapel. This will probably be of interest to those concerned with the college and its history. It is to be hoped, however, that the study will recommend itself on three grounds of a more general character. First, it deals with the college at a peculiarly precarious stage in its history. It will be remembered that, with the downfall of the Lancastrian government, the very future of the college, a recent Lancastrian foundation, was called in question (it was, indeed, officially dissolved as an independent body by papal bull in 1463). Although it survived as an institution, its endowments were severely impaired and there was virtually no money available to complete the buildings. Such building activity as there was appears to have been payed for bythebishop of Winchester, William Waynflete. The modifications about to be described are directly the result of these parlous circumstances; and they have a place in that generally interesting history of ambitious foundations which, unexpectedly reduced to straitened circumstances, are forced to adapt themselves accordingly.

Charles II's hiding in the Royal Oak of Boscobel has taken its place among those picturesque memorabilia—such as Alfred and the cakes, Canute and the waves, Bruce and the spider, Drake and his bowls, and Raleigh and his cloak—which have enlivened our history books both before and after 1066-and-all-that. And of all these episodes it is perhaps the story of the Royal Oak which rings the truest: two versions of it, England's Triumph by an anonymous author, and Thomas Blount's Boscobel, were both published in the year of the Restoration, 1660; and the chief actor himself was always ready to give his own account of the adventure, and on two occasions, on 3rd and 5th October 1680, entertained Samuel Pepys with it.