Historians seldom trouble themselves much about the Great Seal of England; but that of James II forms an exception. Contemporary rumour seems to have associated it closely with the king's first flight from London, in disguise and by night, on 11 December 1688; and, from the contemporary Bishop Burnet and Rapin down to Miss Foxcroft in our own day, historians and memoir-writers of the period, with few exceptions of importance, have accepted this invitation to the picturesque. For the student of seals these excursions into his subject are flattering but rather embarrassing: Charles Bertie (in a letter to Danby), Burnet, Lord Campbell, and the second Earl of Clarendon (who quotes a letter of Barillon, the French Ambassador); Sir John Dalrymple and the Ellis correspondence; Miss Foxcroft; Halifax; King James himself; John Heneage Jesse and Bishop Kennett; Lingard, Sir Richard Lodge, and Narcissus Luttrell; Macaulay, Sir James Mackintosh (or his editor), and James Macpherson; Ranke, Rapin, Reresby, Smollett, Temperley—they are all in a tale. But not all, unfortunately, in the same tale. The king ‘took away’ the Great Seal; he was prepared l'emporter au besoin; he destroyed it; he told someone to throw it in the Thames; he flung it into the river himself; he gave it to the queen (who presumably took it to France with her); it was carried off by Jeffreys; it was delivered to the king by Jeffreys; the king took the seal and Jeffreys took the ‘purse’ —here truly is sufficient variety. The writers, in fact, agree in little save in telling a story of some kind about the Great Seal and giving no authority for it. James himself in a document of 1693 says merely (or his officials say for him) that he destroyed it. (The document is in fact an order for a (second) new seal, to be engraved apparently by one of the continental members of that Roettier family whom we are to mention below.) The story most generally accepted has been that the king threw it in the Thames during the first stage of his flight on 11 December, to which a certain number add sensational sequels: according to these it was recovered later in a fisherman's net and ‘restored to the Government.’

For the fourth time the Society's Anniversary Meeting takes place under the shadow of war, and once again our activities are confined and controlled by the imperious demands of our present case. Since our last Anniversary, however, the prospect has markedly lightened and we begin to see, although as in a glass, darkly, the term of our tribulation. Even in our darkest hour we have never ceased to anticipate a brighter future, though it became more and more apparent that our present was shadowed by perhaps the darkest menace that has ever threatened the human race. Now, however, that the binding of the Teutonic beast, and all who bear his mark, is more obviously in view, we may well be encouraged to look more confidently ahead and to make preparations to shoulder those responsibilities which will inevitably fall upon us in the future.

As a result of the destruction by the enemy of All Hallows, Barking, a portion of a Saxon church on the site was uncovered, and also some fragments of what must have been an imposing Saxon cross. A grant from the Society's William and Jane Morris Fund has enabled a protecting screen to be built in front of the main architectural feature exposed, a blocked archway, and, by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum, the principal fragments of the cross have been placed in a Museum repository. The Society has reason to be grateful to the vicar, the Rev. P. T. B. Clayton, for reporting the discoveries as soon as they came to his notice, and for the friendly and helpful way in which he and the staff of All Hallows collaborated with the Ministry of Works, the British Museum, and the Society in the task of quickly recording the finds and safeguarding them.

Excavations at Chalbury were begun in the summer of 1939, and a second season was planned for 1940. This was postponed owing to the outbreak of war, but the uncertainty which hangs over archaeology in the future makes immediate publication of an interim report desirable, although papers dealing with the skeletal material and kindred subjects must be postponed till after the close of hostilities. The work was a sequel to the excavation of Maiden Castle, and was undertaken as part of a scheme for making cuttings in selected Dorset hill-forts with a view to ascertaining their cultural relationships. Poundbury, Dorchester, was scheduled to be dug in the spring of 1939, and Chalbury, only three miles from Maiden Castle, was next upon the list.

The early years of the fourteenth century were memorable ones in the history of Exeter Cathedral, for work on the new presbytery, or novum opus as it is called in the Fabric Rolls, was in progress. When Bishop Bytton died, in 1307, building operations had reached an advanced stage, and the task of completing the work devolved upon his successor, Walter de Stapledon, a Devon man and at the time of his election precentor of the cathedral. At that date the presbytery vaulting was finished, with the exception of its colouring, and the windows were glazed. The transformed chancel of the Norman church was nearly ready to receive the stalls, but the Norman apse still separated the old and new parts of the building. In 1309–10 ‘John of Glastonbury’ was engaged in removing the stalls to the new quire, but we find no record of the date when the linking-up of the Norman building with the new work took place. The Fabric Roll of the following year records a visit of ‘Master William de Schoverwille’, master mason of Salisbury, to inspect the new work: from this we may infer that a stage had been reached when important decisions were pending—the furnishing of the chancel, the building of the altar-screen, and the addition of a triforium arcade and clerestory gallery to the newly built presbytery—and it may have been these undertakings which prompted the chapter to seek expert advice.

The following list contains five hundred and three items, as follows: (i) Three hundred and five structures which have been positively identified as brochs and are still in existence. For those printed in italics no dimensions or structural features are on record. (ii) Sixty-six sites of vanished structures which are known to have been brochs. These are listed as ‘broch sites’. In a few cases descriptions are on record. (iii) One hundred and thirty-two structures which probably are or possibly may be brochs, but which have not been positively identified as such. These are listed as ‘uncertain examples’.

Attention was drawn recently (Antiq. Journ. xxi, 1941, 158–61) to a sword of derivative Viking type depicted on an effigy in Furness Abbey, Lancs. The effigy is one of a group of related late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century monuments, of which the majority are recorded from Co. Durham. Another sword of this form has since come to notice in a similar context. The freestone effigy on which it appears is preserved in the Priory Church of Cartmel, which lies some ten miles to the east of Furness Abbey.

The T-shaped furnace or oven is already a familiar feature of Romano-British archaeology. Whether among the huts and pits of Woodcuts, the more substantial dwellings of Silchester and Caerwent, or the farmsteads of the rural areas, this type of oven occurs with such frequency that its place in Romano-British economic life must have been an important one.

It is not proposed to discuss here at length the function of these furnaces. This problem was resolved beyond any measure of doubt when the Romano-British villa was excavated at Hambleden, Bucks., in 1912, and Professor Gowland, in an Appendix to the excavators' report, stated that ‘In my opinion they are flues of drying floors which have been used for drying harvested grain.’ The evidence from sites elsewhere (as at Caerwent and at King's Worthy, Hants, at both of which sites charred wheat was recovered from the flues of the ovens) has provided strong corroboration of Professor Gowland's hypothesis, and it is only surprising to find that the unmistakable corn-drying ovens of Woodcuts village were still classed as ‘hypocausts’ in the 1931 edition of Professor Collingwood's Archaeology of Roman Britain.

The main interest of the Hambleden discoveries lies, however, in the great variety of types of ovens excavated, for in all no less than fourteen specimens were unearthed, ranging from the simple and basic T-shaped type to structures of considerable elaboration. Such a variety of types on one single site demands some explanation, and it is not inconceivable that the Hambleden villa was something in the nature of an experimental station.

Although English embroideries have become a very popular subject of study and careful research during recent years, there are still a great number of hitherto unknown pieces scattered in private and public collections all over the world. Especially the works of the later medieval centuries are not yet properly collected and published, and regarding this later period much further research remains to be done.

The site to be described was discovered by the writer in a newly cut ditch three miles south of Cambridge on the Hills Road (fig. I). It was revealed in section as a small pit, about 3 ft. across by 2 ft. deep, sunk into the chalk (fig. 2), and investigation showed that the major part of it had already been removed: when cleared the recess was found to extend in plan barely a foot from the face. The spot lies at about 60 ft. above O.D., and the ground rises very gently on three sides, but is level or slightly depressed towards the north-west. The sub-soil is the Lower Chalk, which at this point is overlain by about 8 in. of brown soil and the same depth of dark plough-soil.

The collection of material for the Dictionary of British Arms under the Croft Lyons bequest has been in progress since early in 1940. It is thought that Fellows may now wish to have some account of the progress made, the problems met with, and the solutions proposed. An article which appeared in this journal in October 1941 explained that the material was being gathered from primary heraldic sources in card-index form, asked for help with the work, and set out in some detail the forms of entry decided on. The summary of cards written which follows will show how generous and notable the answer to the appeal for help has been. The annual income from the bequest is now about £600. From this Council has authorized for the present an expenditure of £300 a year, the balance being saved against the much heavier expenditure which the later, editorial, stage of the work will call for. Even now the rapid progress made has only been possible because the bulk of the indexing has been done by Fellows and others without payment, while there is at this stage no need for a paid editor or editorial staff. The bulk of expenditure so far has been on sorting and other office work, on the indexing of certain special sources such as the College of Arms and Lyon and Ulster Office Records, and on journeys, transport, photography, and materials.