in a bordure of eight martlets; legend, SIGILL IOHANNIS CHIDYOK, in black letter.

9. Same date. Duplicate of preceding deed, except that William de Boneuille, and Margar' his wife, are named before Humphry de Stafford and Elizabeth his wife. The same seal is attached, but it has been mutilated.

Mr. STRANGWAYS brought also for inspection several drawings of architectural subjects in the West of England ;-the George Inn, a picturesque structure of the XVth century, at Norton St. Philip, Somerset ; a view of a building at Compton Dundon, in the same county; and a representation of "the Abbey," at Chew Magna, supposed to have been connected with some monastic or ecclesiastical foundation.

By Mr. OCTAVIUS MORGAN, M.P.-A portable day and night dial, made by Humfrey Cole, 1575. It has the following motto

"As Time and houres pasith awaye

So doeth the life of Man decay :

As Time can be redeemed with no coste,
Bestow it well and let no hour be lost."

Mr. Morgan exhibited also a portable sun-dial and pedometer, made by Johan Melchior Landeck, of Nuremburg, some time in the XVIIth century. By Mr. W. J. BERNHARD SMITH.-Two Saxon rapier-blades, one of them engraved with figures of the Apostles; the other engraved and gilded, and bearing a coat of arms surmounted by a coronet. A cut-and-thrust two-edged blade, engraved with grotesque designs on each side, and a single fleur-de-lys, inlaid in copper. On one side near the tang, has been a coat of arms, of four quarterings, inlaid in silver; two of them only are now distinguishable-a chevron and a cross (in sinister chief, and sinister base). On the other side of the blade appear traces of a figure of St. Michael, XVIth cent.—A rapier of the time of James II., with hilt of russet steel inlaid with silver. An early example of the bayonet-shaped blade, which is engraved throughout its length with figures of the twelve Apostles, and on each side the profile of an emperor.—A bayonet-shaped rapier-blade, of the time of George II., bearing the forge-mark of Solingen, and inscribed

GOD BLES THE KING.

By the Rev. C. R. MANNING.-Impression from a privy-seal of silver, set with an antique intaglio, found in January last at Ashwicken, Norfolk, and now in the possession of the Rev. J. Freeman, Rector of that place. The loop, which had been affixed to the back of the seal, has been broken off; an elegantly formed ornament of foliage remains; the intaglio (chalcedony ?) represents a warrior resting on a kind of pedestal. The surface of the gem has been much injured.

By Mr. ALBERT WAY.-Impressions from a small brass seal, of circular form, found at Great Barford, Bedfordshire, in 1854. It bears a singular device, a tree, apparently a pear-tree charged with fruit, hanging over water, on the surface of which is a fish. The legend is, s' HENRICI DE SHORNNE. XIVth cent.

By Mr. READY.-Impressions in gutta-percha from a matrix of jet, preserved in the Fitzwilliam Museum, at Cambridge, with several ancient matrices of seals, of considerable interest. This seal, of pointed-oval form, bears a device on both its sides. Obv. a large fleur-de-lys. SIGILL' WILL' DE WALD. Rev. a hand holding a stem or branch erect, with the legend- SIGNVM PACIS PORTO. XIIIth cent.

May 2, 1856.

The Hon. RICHARD C. NEVILLE, F.S.A., Vice-President, in the Chair.

Mr. A. H. RHIND communicated a Memoir on the present condition of the Monuments of Egypt and Nubia. (Printed in this volume, p. 154.) Professor BUCKMAN communicated the following note of certain vestiges of early occupation in Gloucestershire, near Lidney :

"On the west side of the River Severn, not far from the village of Lidney, is a small estate known as the Warren, in the occupation of its present proprietor, R. Addison, Esq. It looks down upon the river at a distance of more than two miles, and occupies a semi-circular hollow on the east side of the Forest Hills. The whole estate is situate on the Conglomerate of the Old Red Sandstone, masses of which project through the heather and furze with which the broken ground is mostly occupied.

Much of the estate has been recently levelled and brought into cultivation, and it was while pursuing this work that Mr. Addison's attention was frequently arrested by some roughly hewn circular stones of the Conglomerate of the hill. Some of these flat disks, rudely fashioned, and in form very similar to a cheese, were shown to me by Mr. Addison, one of which measured 16 inches in diameter, and was 4 inches thick; another 14 inches by 4. Afterwards, in taking a walk on Mr. Bathurst's estate at Lidney, I saw by a hedge a stone disk similar to these both in form and size, and Mr. Addison informed me they are frequently found about the district. Now, as in my excavations in Corinium, amongst other millstones I have met with portions of molars of Old Red Conglomerate, it struck me as not improbable that the stones at Lidney may have been intended for molars, of which these were the rough outlines of the first process ss of manufacture. In that case, may we not suppose that the workman rudely fashioned these out of suitable stones upon the open common, perhaps taking them to a more convenient place for their final preparation: this indeed would be much like what I recently saw on the Cornish coast, between St. Just and St. Ives, where the granite which lies scattered over wide open commons, is rudely fashioned on the ground, in blocks for various purposes, before finding its way to the mason's workshop.

It should be remarked that an old British trackway runs through the estate down to the river, and this track was doubtless connected with the roads leading from the Cotteswold to the Forest of Dean, from whence, as the Corinium remains testify, were obtained molars of Old Red Conglomerate, and also of Millstone Grit; and it is more than probable that iron ore was brought from the forest to be smelted in the Cotteswold district, as close to Cirencester are found quantities of old slags, but there is no ore in the neighbourhood."

The objects noticed by Professor Buckman may possibly be vestiges of the Roman period, numerous remains of that age having occurred in that locality.

Mr. FRANKS communicated the following account of a Roman relique of rare occurrence discovered in the same district :

"A Roman oculist's stamp was discovered a few years since at Lidney in Gloucestershire, which has not I believe been hitherto engraved, although an account of the inscriptions have been given by Dr. Simpson in the Monthly Journal of Medical Science, (vol. xii. p. 338.)

VOL. XIII.

Q Q

This interesting object is in the possession of Mr. Bathurst, of Lidney Park, to whose kindness I am indebted for the impressions from which the accompanying woodcuts have been prepared.

"The stone is of the usual greenish grey colour, and is inscribed on three of its sides. The inscriptions mention three salves of the Roman oculist, Julius Jucundus, viz. his Collyrium Melinum, a salve that derives its name from its colour of honey, and which appears to have contained

Ceruse and Calamine; Collyrium Stactum, which was to be applied in drops, and Collyrium Penicillum, which was to be used with a soft sponge or penicillum. The names of these three drugs are well known; the first occurs on six stamps, the second on twelve, and the last on six stamps. I am indebted for these details to Dr. Simpson's valuable Memoir already quoted.

The chief peculiarity in the example found at Lidney is the introduction of the word collyrium, which appears to have been generally considered superfluous. It occurs on two stamps only of those hitherto recorded: one of them is preserved in the Bibliothèque Imperiale at Paris; the other is in the British Museum. In the latter example the word could not well be dispensed with, as the name of any particular salve is not mentioned.

Many interesting objects have been discovered at Lidney Park, some of which are engraved in Lysons' Reliquiæ Britannico-Romanæ.' From a curious inscription on silver discovered there it would appear that there was a temple on that spot dedicated to the healing god Nodeus, no doubt a local form of the Roman Esculapius."

Notices of various stamps used by Roman oculists or empirics have been communicated on several occasions at the meetings of the Institute. In the course of the year 1855, a remarkable discovery has been made at Rheims, connected with these vestiges of the Roman empirics. Amongst some remains of buildings were found a bronze ewer with the basin belonging to it, a pair of scales and a stilyard, seventeen instruments used by oculists, pincers, scalpels, cauterising instruments, spatulæ, &c., the whole of bronze and of fine workmanship. With these were brought to light remains which appeared by careful examination and analysis to have been dry collyria in small cakes, and an iron vial which contained a similar compound to that of which the cakes or tablets were formed. An oculist's stamp was found with these reliques, and bronze bowls, in one of which were two first brass coins of Antoninus. These curious objects in connection with the history of medicine amongst the Romans are in the possession of M. Duquenelle, who has formed an extensive collection of local antiquities at Rheims."

1 Revue Archéologique, Oct. 1855, tome xii. p. 435.

The Rev. GREVILLE J. CHESTER, Local Secretary in Yorkshire, sent the following account of a recent discovery at York.

At the end of February last some workmen engaged in making a sewer in Walmgate, York, threw out a quantity of soil into the middle of the street during the night. Next morning this soil was found to be full of small silver coins, which were picked up by children and others, to the number, as nearly as I can learn, of about a hundred. All the coins thus discovered which I have seen, with five exceptions only, bear the name of St. Peter, and were struck at York, as it is probable, about the year 950. All the fifteen pennies in my own possession and all the others which I have seen, with one exception, resemble type No. 4, described in Hawkins's Silver Coins of England, but they exhibit numerous small differences. In fact, very few seem to be struck from the same die. The differences consist in variations in the shape of the cross on the reverse, and in the spelling of the names of the saint and the city. The exceptional penny alluded to above, seems to be of a new and unpublished type: it belongs to Mr. W. Procter, of York. The five other coins found with those of St. Peter are all in my own collection. They comprise two pennies of St. Edmund, a halfpenny of St. Edmund, and two halfpennies of St. Peter. This discovery of coins bearing the name of St. Edmund with those of St. Peter confirms the opinion expressed in Mr. Hawkins's work, that they should be consigned to the same period. The halfpence of St. Peter were previously to this find altogether unknown. One of them which is in excellent preservation reads, Obv:-scIII TRIII, (Sancti Petri) a small cross above and below and two dots between the lines: Rev:

EPORACECI round a cross resembling that on the pence. [See woodcut.] The other halfpenny is far more imperfect, but though struck from a different die, it also, I believe, may be assigned to St. Peter. Compare Ruding, pl. 12.

This interesting hoard of coins was probably in the first instance deposited in a wooden box, now decayed. I gather this from the statement of one of the labourers, who informed me that some of the coins were found stuck together one on the other-like heaps of change on a counter.' The coins were found at the depth of between three and four feet from the surface, in a deposit of black earth many of them were much corroded and fell to pieces on attempts being made to clean them, but others are in a fine state of preservation.

A large stone bead, or spindle-stone for the distaff, flat below and round above, with three annular grooves upon the upper surface, was thrown out of the same excavation.'

Mr. SALVIN reported the satisfactory progress of the restorations at Lindisfarne, which have been carried out under his directions. At a former meeting the attention of the Society had been called by Mr. Way to the neglected condition of the Abbey Church, and the rapid progress of decay, urgently demanding some conservative precautions. The matter having been subsequently brought under the consideration of Her Majesty's Commissioners of Public Works, the sum of 5007. had been appropriated to that desirable object, and the work had been entrusted to the able direction of Mr. Salvin. The site of the abbey, with great part of Holy Island, form part of the possessions of the Crown.

'A liberal grant of money (Mr. Salvin observed) having been made by

the Crown for the preservation of the ruins of Lindisfarne Abbey, on Holy Island, the repairs were commenced in the latter part of 1855, and happily all those portions in the greatest danger were made secure before the winter. Visitors to Holy Island will remember the remarkable arcade over the west door; this with a considerable portion of that end fell for want of timely precaution, in the winter of 1851 or '52. The stones have all been collected and replaced, and the west end has now the same appearance it has had for at least the present century. In searching for stone the rubbish has been cleared from the walls, and the base discovered in a very perfect condition all round the building. The arches have been made secure. The loose stones on the top of the walls are fixed, and holes and broken portions of piers filled up to prevent the action of the winds, which crumble and hollow out cavities in a singular manner. It is also intended to cover the walls with asphalt to prevent the rain from penetrating and increasing the injurious effects frost has on ruins. Many curious fragments which had been carried away have been rescued from walls and fences in the island, and a check has, it is hoped, been at length effectually put to the wanton injuries and decay which have of late years been viewed with so much regret by visitors to Lindisfarne. This most interesting fabric will now be preserved for many years from further dilapidation.

Mr. Ŵ. S. WALFORD gave an account of a small silver casket preserved at Goodrich Court. (Printed in this volume, p. 134.)

Mr. J. POLLARD communicated the following statement relating to the discovery of early interments, at Lincoln, in which the corpses had been wrapped in hair-cloth garments.

"In the year 1840 a stone coffin was found on the outside of Lincoln cathedral, not many inches below the surface of the ground, near to the south-east angle of the south arm of the upper transept. It was covered with a lid of the same material in one piece. The bones of the corpse, which had been deposited in the coffin, were when first discovered in a perfect state, but shortly fell to dust after exposure to the air. What excited much curiosity was the circumstance of the body having been enveloped in a dress composed of the hair of some animal, which appeared to have been woven to the proper shape for the purpose.

In 1842, in lowering the ground near the same spot, four other stone coffins were discovered, some of them still nearer to the surface than that before referred to. In one of these, evidently containing the remains of an ecclesiastic, was found a small latten or pewter cup; the bones were perfect, and enveloped in a similar habit to that before described, wove to fit the body, thighs, legs, and feet. Three other similar coffins were soon after laid bare; the remains of two of these were covered with similar hair shirts or shrouds. A piece of the tissue is sent for examination.

The opinion entertained is, that these bodies were interred in the XIIIth century. The coffin discovered in 1840, and one of those in 1842, were taken up and removed into the cloisters, as they could not well be lowered so as to be below the surface of the ground so altered."

The use of the cilicium, or under garment of hair-cloth, appears to have been frequently adopted, as by Becket, for penance or mortification of the flesh.-See Fosbroke's Monachism, p. 31. Even hedge-hog skins (pelles hericii) were worn for this purpose; the practice is forbidden in the "Ancren Riwle," p. 419; see also p. 383. The remains of such tissue of hair have occasionally been noticed in medieval interments.