who was beheaded after the battle of Hexham. The three Norwich soldiers, in 1634, mention the monument of "a Duke that was slaine in a battell against the Scotts."

Above the original plan of Prior Lechman's shrine is suspended a helmet, traditionally that of Sir John Fenwick, who was slain at the battle of Marston Moor. There is the mark of a blow with a sword, and the scull, broken in the same place, is, or was, kept at the manor-office. Mr. Way considers it a salade of the sort worn from 1420 to 1480. Only a fragment of the visor remains.

Several gravestones, lately in the north transept, are now outside. One is edged with a zigzagged line.18 One has a plain cross patee. Two others bear crosses flory. Others have inscriptions in Lombardics. Four are much alike. They are of the 13th century, and are of homely execution. The legends are these, ROBERTO. DE. KIRKEBRIDE X — X HENRICVS DE WALTONE 19 ROBERTO DE GISEBURNE XX ROBERTUS.DE. BEDELINT' X. Another stone is of rather better workmanship. It reads:HIC. IACET. RADO. DE TALKAN. CANO'IC. Malerbe's tombstone is well known, insicrbed IOH'S. MALERBE. IACET. HIC. We also have IOHES. DE. DALTONA, and on the top of a ridged stone, bearing a cross and sword on the chamfered sides, is ..VE IVRDAN. Lastly, a gravestone, remarkable for its curious R's, has the usual feminine symbol, the shears, and the words HIC. IACET. MATILD .

UXOR. HILIPPI. MERCERARII.

The Priory Gateway was visited, under which it is said that the last prior was hanged. Tyburn, however, claims the dishonour. His name was Augustine Webster, probably the immediate successor of Jay. (See vol. iii, 72.) On the modern Priory are the arms of Sir R. Carnaby, the grantee from the Crown, dated 1539.

Such is a plain account of what we saw at Hexham. We chronicle changes, but are unable to avert them.

Dr. Charlton said that he had understood that the Saxon cross, now at the Spital, near Hexham, was found in making a grave at Warden, and that its head is in the garden at the latter place. The part at the Spital has wheat and grapes on one side, and the crucifixion on the other. Of the Spital (St. Giles's Hospital) itself, the greater part disappeared at a recent period, but some walls and a wooden image of St. Giles still remain. He himself remembered the departure of the old mulberry-tree.

18"On the day we visited the church they were forming a large warm-air drain, 6 feet wide and 6 feet deep, and 120 feet long, through the length of the north transept; and to form a cover for this drain the contractors were using up fragments of Norman coffin-lids with zigzag ornaments, and entire gravestones of more modern date, because the sexton thought the churchyard too full of them and wanted them put out of his way." (Builder.)

19 The V's of the W are not interlaced, but are one within the other.

MONTHLY MEETING OF THE SOCIETY.
October 3, 1862.

John Hodgson Hinde, Esq., V.P., in the Chair.

DEATH OF SIR JOHN SWINBURNE.-The Chairman, before entertaining other business, would call upon the members of the Society to unite with him in an expression and record of their regret at the decease of their honoured and venerable president, Sir John Edward Swinburne. Although any greatly prolonged term of life had been improbable, yet his departure at this time had on the whole been unexpected and sudden, and his friends had previously had well founded hopes that he would have survived his century of years. In this they had been disappointed. But they would remember, with satisfaction, his noble character, example as he was of an intellectual and highly cultivated gentleman, always ready to bear part in the support of every public institution, charitable or literary. He would move that the Society record in its minutes an expression of regret on the occasion.Dr. Charlton seconded the motion, and it was unanimously adopted.

DONATION OF BOOKS.-From the Kilkenny Archæological Society. Its Proceedings, March, 1860, Vol. iii., No. 26.

IMPLEMENTS OF THE SAXON PERIOD, FOUND NEAR LANCHESTER.-Dr. Charlton exhibited a singular assemblage of objects, military and peaceful, the nature and discovery of which are best detailed in his paper given below :—

The articles that we exhibit this evening, through the kindness of Mr. Balleny of Little Greencroft, near Lanchester, on whose property they were recently found, are of a miscellaneous character. They were discovered in the bank of a small rivulet that flows past Greencroft, by a man who was fishing in the stream. Their position was about four feet, we believe, below the present soil; and his attention was called to them by observing one of the axes sticking out of the bank. All the articles now exhibited are apparently of iron, unless the broad and perfect doubleedged sword be of bronze. The articles are eighteen in number, and comprise two swords - one, a broad-edged sword, and with the hilt perfect; the other, much corroded, single-edged, and ornamented down the blade. Of axes, there are four three of one form, but different sizes, and the fourth of another shape. There are four scythes; a doubleheaded pick, like the miner's pick of the present day, but much smaller;

a single-headed mattock; and two other instruments of iron. We have likewise a pike-head, a ring of iron like that of a bridle bit, and the remains of a buckle. We believe that all the articles discovered are here, except one axe head. We will now examine these articles in detail. The large sword, which has not suffered, or at least, only in a slight degree, from corrosion, and is of a metal more resembling bronze than iron, is 34 inches in total length. The hilt, from the cross-piece to the top of the knob, is five inches. The blade, which tapers gradually to a point, is 2 inches at its broadest part near the hilt. Two distinct ribs or elevations run down the blade at about half an inch from either edge. The cross-piece is crescent-shaped, its end projecting about half an inch from the blade, and tending forward about three-quarters of an inch. The knob-piece is likewise crescent-shaped; but the hollow of the reversed crescent is filled up by the knob itself of elongated form. The second sword is of iron, without the hilt, and greatly corroded. Its length is about 30 inches, of which the blade measures in inches about 26. It is single-edged, and along the blade, in two lines, there runs an inlaid ornament, apparently composed of alternate inlaying of copper and gold, and about one-eighth of an inch in breadth. From some indications in some parts of the blade, we are inclined to think that on the upper side of the blade this line was double. One of the axes is what is called the taper-axe in Anglo-Saxon documents—or at least it bears a resemblance to the axes found in Anglo-Saxon graves, though it is straight, not curved, as in Anglo-Saxon specimens. The other three axes, one large, and two smaller, have a long blade extended parallel to the direction of the shaft upwards and downwards. The blade of the largest one is exactly 12 inches in the cutting-edge. The mattock and pick require no particular description, except that both are exceedingly small. The other two iron instruments are formed of bars of iron about half an inch in diameter, square, and terminating in the one instance in a spear point at one end, and a gouge-shaped, or rather spoon-shaped formation at the other. The other, which is about 18 inches long, is pointed-shaped at one end, and more obtuse at the other. The four scythes are almost exactly alike. The blade is straight, or nearly so, with a right-angled crook to attach it to the shaft. Each blade is about 16 inches long, by half an inch in breadth. The large iron ring and buckle may possibly have formed a portion of horse-furniture. In endeavouring to assign a date and a period for these articles, the peculiar form of the swords and axes will be of material assistance. Though found in the immediate vicinity of the Roman camp at Lanchester, they do not resemble the arms of that great people. The Anglo-Saxon swords were long and broad, like the one before us, but they had hardly any cross-piece; and in no instance that we are aware of has a hilt been discovered of the peculiar shape before us. The bronze swords preserved in the Royal Museum of Copenhagen, and considered there as of the Heathen period, and belonging to the so-called Bronze Age, are exactly of this pattern. Among the many beautiful examples figured in the Atlas of Northern Archæology, which we have brought here with us to-night, there are many with the crescentshaped cross piece, and some, too, with the reverted crescent towards the knob. It may be urged, however, that most of the swords are of

bronze, while this one before us is possibly of iron. Granting this, we may observe that the iron swords found in the tombs of the Vikings in Norway, along with gold bracelets and coins of the later Roman and Byzantine emperors, are of exactly similar pattern. The iron axes, too, and especially the taper axe, already spoken of, closely resemble those of Norway. The scythes are the same pattern as those used in Norway at the present day. There are numbers of these scythes in the Christiania museum. In Norway, it may be observed, iron seems to take the place of bronze, the latter metal being of rare occurence. The straight, one-edged sword with the inlaid pattern aloug the blade is not so easily assigned. We read of some such weapons having been found in France, and along the Rhine, but they are rare in the Anglo-Saxon graves of the South of England. As to the other implements, they present no very characteristic features. We have little doubt of the larger and more perfect sword being of Scandinavian origin; and that the iron axes and scythes may possibly be from the same locality. On the other hand, the sword may have been wrested in battle from the hands of some sturdy Norse Viking, and have been preserved as an heirloom in some Saxon churl's family to a period long subsequent to the amalgamation of the Danish and Norse with the Anglo-Saxon population. In a sudden alarm or incursion these weapons may have been hidden in the bank of the stream, and the premature death of their owner may have caused their place of concealment to be forgotten. It is probable that we have here a real relic of that turbulent period when the Norseman rode triumphant on the waves along our eastern coast, landing to spoil the inhabitants, and burn the churches and monasteries, and when the very names of the Danes created terror through the length and breadth of the land.

Mr. White noticed that two of the axes indicated the direction of the handle, and which part was uppermost. Some of the implements were probably agricultural; and one at least seemed, from the bearing of the handle, to have been a hoe, and not an axe.

THE CARR MS.-Dr. Howard, through Mr. Longstaffe, desired to place on the Society's records the last appearance of this famous book. It occurs in the catalogue of a sale of books by Messrs. Sotheby and Wilkinson, on the 29th of August last. The following is the entry of it :

NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE.-A Catheloge of all the Maiores and Sherifs of His Maiestye Towne and Countye of Newcastell-upon-Tyne, with theyre Cotes of Armes, and the Reignes of the several Kinges and Queenes of this Lande with sarton brefes of Chronicles that hapned in theyr several Reignes sence Anno Dom. 1432, MS. the arms in their proper colours, binding broken; circa 16... A HIGHLY INTERESTING MS. of all the Mayors and Sheriffs of Newcastle, from 1432 to 1633, excepting the years 1528-9-30, and 1624-5-6, for which leaves are inserted. The Catalogue of Names is continued from 1633 to 1802 in more recent

handwritings. The volume appears to have been executed by W. Robinson, Deputy Herald, under Norroy King at Arms, and was in the possession of Robert Carre, Esq., of St. Helen Auckland, 1730, whose name is impressed on the sides. It is VERY PROBABLY THE ORIGINAL MS. alluded to in Bourne's History of Newcastle, p. 121, which was in the Town's Chamber, when Trollop built the Town Court, and which he never restored.

It was arranged that Mr. Longstaffe should endeavour to ascertain the present custody of the volume. [Messrs. S. and W. sold it to Mr. Kerslake of Bristol. It had previously been knocked down at a small price at Mr. Alexander George Gray's (of Gateshead Park House) sale, and subsequently belonged to Mr. Shepherd of Newcastle.]

BOOK COVERS.-Dr. J.J. Howard, through Mr. Longstaffe, exhibited some rubbings from early stamped bookbindings. No. 1, of the 16th century from the library of Winchester Cathedral, presented a female figure gazing up to the cross among the clouds, "Meritum Christi," the words Spes, Charitas, Fides, a tradesman's initials, I. P., and mark, and quotations from the 70th and 90th Psalms. No. 2, from the library of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, was stamped with the fleur-de-lis of France, and castle of Castile, with a tradesman's mark and initials, N. S. Mr. Longstaffe stated that a much larger book of the same character, and with more badges, pointing to the time of Henry and Catherine, was purchased from Dr. Raine's library for the Rev. E. J. Midgley. No. 3 presented a bold tradesman's device of G. W. It was from the library of Salisbury Cathedral. No. 4, from the library of Exeter Cathedral, gave a tradesman's mark, and the fleur-de-lis of France, the rose of England, the portcullis of Tudor, the castle of Castile, the pomegranate of Arragon, and the quartered arms of France and England, in bold tooling. Dr. Howard referred to the curious examples in the libraries of Lincoln Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, and several rare specimens of the 15th century in the British Museum and Bodleian Library, and lamented that in many libraries the books have been rebound, and the old bindings, of course, destroyed.

TUMULUS NEAR MIDDLETON - ONE-ROW.-Mr. Trueman, through Mr. Longstaffe, exhibited a drawing made by the late Mr. Matthew Thompson of Durham, in 1844, of the mound near to the Dinsdale Hotel, in the property of C. W. Harland, Esq. of Sutton Park, Yorkshire.

BEACONS IN 1804.-Mr. Trueman also communicated Mr. Thompson's drawing of the beacon on Pittington Hill, 1804, with his remarks