The Priory of St. Andrew, at Hamble, near Southampton, was a cell to the Benedictine abbey of Tyrone (Tirun or Turun), in La Beauce, a district southwest of Chartres, included in the old province of Orléannois. In the Monasticon and Tanner's Notitia it is called a Cistercian abbey, but this is a mistake, and so is the statement in the Notitia that the priory was annexed to New College, Oxford. The priory stood on a “rise” or point of land.—“Hamele-en-le-rys” or “Hamblerice” is its old name—at the confluence of the Hamble river with southampton Water, opposite Calshot castle. Hamble gets its name from Hamele, a thane of the Saxon Meonwaris. Leland calls the place “Hamel Hooke.” The priory church of St. Andrew is now the parish church. It was rebuilt by winchester college in the early part of the fifteenth century, and consists of channel and nave, to which a south aisle was added five or six years ago, and a tower with three bells. There are scarcely any traces above ground of the priory buildings. Like those of the Benedictine convent of St. Swithun, at Winchester, they stood on the south and south-west of the church, so that the graveyard, as at Winchester, is on the north side of the church.

Some years have now elapsed since any paper has been read before this Society upon Silchester, which is without doubt the most interesting Roman city in this country. Comparatively speaking, very little has been done there since the death of the Rev. James Gerald Joyce, F.S.A., the rector of Stratfieldsaye, whose elaborate and valuable papers upon Silchester, amply illustrated with plans and drawings, published in vols. xl. and xlvi. of Archaeologia, are well known to you all. Had it not been for him we should probably have remained in ignorance of the existence of the city, as it was he who inspired the late Duke of Wellington with such a keen interest in the place that he authorised excavations to be undertaken.

The accompanying plates are copies of two fresh subjects in the series of mural paintings lately discovered on the clerestory-walls of All Saints church, Friskney. Four of this series have been already described in the Archaeologia, viz., the Assumption, the Stable at Bethlehem, the Last Supper, and the Gathering of the Manna; the copies before us of the newly-found pictures represent (I) the Ascension, and (II) the Resurrection.

I beg to invite the attention of the Society of Antiquaries to the occurrence of human figures sculptured on stones at Checkley and Ilam, in Staffordshire, the bodies being represented as formed entirely of interlacing bands, and producing the effect of wickerwork images. As far as I know, attention has not hitherto been called to this remarkable and suggestive feature, which seems to throw us far back into the past, and reminds us of the earliest descriptions of the land of Britain.

I venture to think that bishop Reginald Fitzjocelin deserves a place of higher honour in the history of the diocese, and of the fabric of the church of Wells, than has hitherto been accorded to him.

His memory has been obscured by the traditionary fame of bishop Robert as the “author,” and of bishop Jocelin as the “finisher,” of the church of Wells; and the importance of his episcopate as a connecting link in the work of these two master-builders has been comparatively overlooked.

In the month of April, 1886, during the excavation of a pit at the Brigg gas-works, a most interesting boat, of a very primitive type, was found. The upper edges of the sides were first bared; and, as these differed from the “car wood” or buried trees which are so often found in the neighbourhood, the workmen fortunately made a further examination, instead of chopping up the timber to remove it piecemeal. It was then seen to be a boat, in a very fair state of preservation.

Bottesford is a small village in the parts of Lindsey and wapentake of Manley, in the county of Lincoln. The parish before recent alterations consisted of the townships of Bottesford, Ashby, Burringham, Holme, and Yaddlethorpe, and of about half of East Butterwick. The manor of Bottesford extends over the greater part of Bottesford and Yaddlethorpe, and over the whole of that part of East Butterwick that is in Bottesford parish. Except in the case of East Butterwick the boundaries of the townships and the manor are not quite the same. There is a farm in Bottesford and another in Yaddlethorpe that are members of the great manor of Kirton in Lindsey, and on the other hand there were outlying portions of the manor of Bottesford in Brumby, Ashby, Messingham, and other places.

In the latter part of November in the past year I heard that in the course of operations consequent upon the widening of a portion of the Grantham, Sleaford, and Boston Railway, there had been several discoveries of human remains, accompanied by beads, fibulae, pottery, and spears. I was therefore led to ask permission to make a systematic exploration of the locality. Through the kind favour of the Marquis of Bristol, the owner of the property, of his kinsman and representative, R. H. Hervey, Esq., and by the courtesy of the tenant, J. H. Marston, Esq., I was enabled to carry out what I believe to be an exhaustive examination.

I never consider my holiday well spent if I am not able to bring back from it something of interest to tell the Society.

I am afraid what I have to tell upon this occasion is very poor, but I hope at a future time to improve upon it.

I had so often passed Bari and the towns on the eastern coast of Italy that I was glad of the opportunity (being obliged to leave England late) of visiting this district.

In the north-west of Wilts is a district which contains some remarkable reminiscences of the two dominant races who have influenced the history of this country. In tracing out the history of this district, as it has come down to us by the traditions and records of early chronicle writers, we arrive at an important epoch when for the first time is brought into strongly marked prominence the outline of the community which had settled there. This community, known to us later under the local name of Malmesbury, is one of the most perfect types of the primitive village which has survived in England, and to the elucidation of its chief characteristics it is proposed to devote some little attention. Keeping before us the outline made known from early records we shall see how this is gradually filled in from facts, which though gleaned from later and modern records, are nevertheless stamped as belonging to the earliest stages of history. And when this local mosaic is completely pieced in we shall be able, I think, to satisfy ourselves that what has so persistently clung to locality in later days originally belonged to a social group, types of which are still to be found in Eastern Europe and India, where society is in a state of arrested progress and has not advanced along the lines which mark its development in Western Europe.

Very manifold and multiform are the materials from which ecclesiastical history is compiled. Sometimes from the great chronicle of an ancient abbey, in whose annals the zealous scribe has set down the minutest details, from the erection and endowment of the sumptuous church itself to the smallest payment at the celebration of an obit; sometimes from a dry catalogue of names without a single incident to vary the monotony; sometimes from the life of some great prelate, of heroic virtue and of saintly grace, towering above his fellows as Saul amongst the men of Israel; and sometimes from some petty quarrel about precedence between two officers so unimportant that the utter abolition of the offices which they held would seem the best and simplest settlement of the dispute; sometimes from manorial records, dreary and repellent at first sight, but full of precious information as to the history of property, the relative position of tenant and of lord, the value of labour and of money; and sometimes from a mere inventory or catalogue of goods, a list of plate, ornaments, jewels, vestments, a bare document full of wearisome iteration, a collection of the driest of dry bones.