The Wilton Diptych (pls. I, 11) is in quality the most outstanding painting known from the English middle ages. Its unique interest has produced a massive literature, much of it concerned with stylistic problems and with purely theoretical interpretations. Little can be added to the meticulous description of Sir George Scharf, while only one major contribution has been made to the historical analysis of the painting's heraldic data, by the late Miss Maud Clarke. This heraldic analysis offered abundant evidence of approximate date, yet the subsequent literature has failed to take adequate account of the limits set, and a fundamental reassessment of the facts is overdue.

In 1915 Professor Baldwin Brown drew attention to a class of metalwork, found in Anglo-Saxon graves in the south of England, and decorated with examples of a distinctive animal style, more naturalistic than Anglo-Saxon style I. This style he considered to be a direct descendant of late Roman art forms, although produced, not in the years immediately following the Anglo-Saxon settlement, but after a considerable time lapse, towards the middle of the sixth century. A similar view was expressed in 1923 by Reginald Smith. Nils Åberg, writing in 1926, was noncommittal about dates, but saw the inspiration for the style in a blend of late Roman and Eastern Mediterranean tradition. It was not until 1936, however, that a more detailed critical estimate of the objects was published, this time by E. T. Leeds in his Early Anglo-Saxon Art and Archaeology. Leeds compared their decoration with that of examples of Gallo-Roman art in the late fourth and early fifth centuries and concluded that they came from the same style milieu. He wrote:

All the pieces here noticed clearly belong to a cultural phase, presenting indeed many affinities to the Germanic style of the settlement period; but, in reality, they represent a continental style antecedent to that development in southern England. … There is every reason to believe that they are objects ante-dating the invasion, and, if it is desired to know what native women were wearing before or at the time of Hengist’s landing, this group supplies the information.

The hoard, one of the most important finds of metal work and coins of the Christian Saxon period, was discovered in 1774 by tin-workers in a streamwork, 17 feet under the surface of the ground, at Trewhiddle, St. Austell, Cornwall. It was hidden in a heap of loose stones which Philip Rashleigh in his original publication ascribes to an old mine working. The collection of the hoard was haphazard and it seems likely that a certain number of coins, and possibly some other articles, were lost before Rashleigh could collect them together at Menabilly. It is possible, for instance, that the chalice was intact when found and, if this is so, many fragments have disappeared subsequently. When they were found it is recorded that certain objects were covered with copper from a vein in the neighbourhood.

The sword was found in September 1948 in the course of deep excavations for the foundations of a new underground boiler-house for the Houses of Parliament, in Victoria Tower Gardens on the south side of the House of Lords. As the site lies within the precincts of the medieval Palace of Westminster, the sword has been given this title to distinguish it from other ancient swords found in the region. The sword is Crown property, and after cleaning and preservative treatment in the laboratory of the Ancient Monuments Inspectorate, it has been placed on exhibition in the Jewel Tower at Westminster by kind permission of the Lord Great Chamberlain.

The well-known paper on the Funeral Effigies of The Kings and Queens of England by Sir William St. John Hope (Archaeologia, lx, 1907) is a splendid documentary and factual source of information about the effigies themselves. Comparatively little, however, is known about their homes throughout the ages, though it is on record that after the funeral of Elizabeth of York in 1503 her ‘pikture’ was ‘had to a secret place by St. Edward's shrine’. Henry Keepe, writing in 1682, shows that they were then in the upper part of the Islip Chapel, and this is corroborated by J. T. Smith's amusing account of a conversation between Nollekens the sculptor and an abbey verger named Catling in 1786.