1861.

ities to servants

CECIL BRENT.

CECIL BRENT.

JAMES SULLIVAN.

JAMES SULLIVAN.

7th April, 1862.

The thanks of the meeting were voted to the auditors for their report. It was then resolved that the Annual General Meeting be in future held on the second Wednesday in May instead of April as heretofore.

Thanks were voted to the president, vice-presidents, other officers, and council, the contributors of papers and antiquities for exhibition during the year.

A special vote of thanks was given by acclamation to the treasurer for his great attention to the affairs of the Association, and for his able editorship of the Journal and Collectanea Archæologica of the Association. A ballot was taken for officers and council for 1862-3, and the following elected :

The treasurer then read the notices of associates deceased during the past year; and thanks having been given to him for the same, and to George Vere Irving, Esq., V.P., for his attention to the business of the day, the members adjourned to St. James' Hall to dine together, and celebrate the nineteenth anniversary of the Association.

Obituary for 1861.

THE obituary for the past year presses heavily and painfully on the Association, inasmuch as it has taken from us some active members and zealous friends, and at a period of life in which the decease of some of them could not have been anticipated. The earliest death in the year was that of

GRANVILLE E. HARCOURT VERNON, on the 1st of February, at the age of forty-four, from an attack of rheumatic fever, when on a visit to our associate, the Marquis of Aylesbury, at Tottenham Park. Mr. Vernon was a grandson of the late Archbishop of York. His father is the eldest son of his Grace, and held the appointment of Chancellor of the Diocese of York. Our late associate was born November 23, 1816; educated at Westminster School, whence, by merit, he was sent student to Christ Church, Oxford, at the University of which he distinguished himself by taking a second class classics in 1839, and graduated as M.A. in 1840. Designed for public life, he became successively private secretary to the Earl of St. Germans, Chief Secretary for Ireland; and to the Duke of Newcastle, when Earl Lincoln, filling the same office. He continued in the same capacity when his Grace was Chief Commissioner of Woods and Forests. It was thus that Mr. Harcourt Vernon joined our Association, when the Duke of Newcastle presided over us at Newark, during the Nottinghamshire Congress, in 1852.

Mr. Vernon entered Parliament, as member for Newark, in that year; and in 1854 he married Lady Selina Catherine Meade, only daughter of the Earl of Clanwilliam. He took interest in our proceedings, served on our council, and had reduced for us an ancient map of Notts, still in our portfolio; but which will probably appear, at some future time, in our Collectanea, as an object of sufficient importance for publication.

RICHARD CORNWALLIS-NEVILLE, LORD BRAYBROOKE, hereditary visitor of Magdalen College, Cambridge; High Steward of Wokingham, Berks; and Vice-Lieutenant of the county of Essex, was well known to antiquaries. He was the fourth Baron Braybrooke, by Richard, third baron, and Jane, daughter of Charles second Marquis of Cornwallis; and

was born on March 17, 1820. In 1852 he married Lady Charlotte Sarah Graham Toler, sixth daughter of the second Earl of Norbury; by whom he has left two daughters. He died on the 19th of February, at the age His brother has succeeded to the barony.

of forty years.

Our associate received his education at Eton, and at an early period of life manifested a taste for literary and antiquarian pursuits, in which he was eminently fostered by his father, well known by his History of Audley End, and more especially as the editor of the Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys. Our late member entered the army in 1837, having obtained a commission in the Grenadier Guards, and served in Canada in 1838. Ill health, which indeed, to a certain degree, continued with him to the last, compelled him to retire from the army in 1841; from which time he may be said to have entirely devoted himself to the study of history and antiquities. Following in the footsteps of the late much lamented John Gage Rokewode, who, in his affectionate dedication to his mother of one of his publications, the Hon. Mr. Neville styles his "godfather in archæology," he soon became one of the most eminent of the practical archæologists of his day. In 1847 Mr. Neville entered our Association, and in the earlier volumes of our Journal will be found several contributions from his pen. I would direct your attention to his first exhibition of some processional weapons of the time of Henry VIII, which he had purchased at a sale of the effects at Debden Hall, Essex. A halbert from among them has been figured by us;' and it was suggested by Mr. Planché that it might have been used on occasion of the celebrated friendly interview between Henry and Francis of France on the "Field of the Cloth of Gold."

One of the earliest, but not least important, of Mr. Neville's investigations, has been fully reported in our Journal,' and is the examination of a portion of a field belonging to the Roman station at Iceanum, at Chesterford, Essex. Some of the objects discovered in this research have been engraved by us, and subsequently appeared in a more complete form (privately printed) under the title of Antiqua Explorata, embracing discoveries made during the winters of 1845 and 1846 and the spring of 1847, in the vicinity of Audley End. This little work appeared in 1847, was printed at Saffron Walden, and illustrated by some faithful representations drawn by Mr. J. Youngman, a local artist constantly engaged by Mr. Neville. The work was reviewed in our Journal by Mr. C. Roach Smith; and by the kindness of the author, his notice was enriched by the representations of the chief of the objects discovered. In 1847 Mr. Neville excavated for the foundations of a small Roman building in a field near Chesterford. The flooring and lower parts of the walls of a square room, including in the centre a small square apartment, were displayed, and found to be paved with red tesseræ surround1 Journal, iii, 128. " Ib., pp. 208-13.

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ing a geometrical design in smaller tesseræ of various colours. The particulars are described in our Journal. In the same year Mr. Neville made a discovery at Hayden, eight miles from Audley End. Tradition had reported the existence of a cave, and Mr. Neville resolved to dig into the mound. He found the soil deep and black; and at the depth of four feet the excavators struck upon three walls built with bricks of solid clunch chalk, so as to present a longitudinal cul de sac. The chamber was ten feet nine in length, and five in breadth. In the centre was an altar in solid clunch, attached to the end wall, and round the sides was a passage just of sufficient size to permit a person to squeeze himself round between the wall and the three sides. A good bronze bracelet, two or three iron instruments, a coin of Constantius II in brass, and bullocks' bones in plenty, were found. There was also pottery of different sorts in fragments, and portions of three colanders.

In Borough Ditch, Chesterford, Mr. Neville was also successful in his excavations; and in a field near this place he obtained a skeleton, by which was placed a small black cinerary urn of unusually fine workmanship, containing a second brass coin of Nerva Trajan, a fine Sabina Augusta Hadrianis, and others; also a bronze ladle perforated, suggested to have been for the purpose of sprinkling liquid frankincense. The ladle, when found, contained thirty large brass coins. Of these, in all, Mr. Neville obtained a hundred and ninety-four, being of Claudius, Vespasian, Domitia, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Aurelius, Sabina, the Faustinas, and Commodus. A list of them was drawn up and inserted in our Journal. In July 1848 Mr. Neville communicated to the Association a discovery of Roman pottery, in fine preservation, by some labourers digging close to the railway at Chesterford. A Samian cup and patera, with many fragments, were obtained. Subsequently eight funereal urns were found at Chesterford.

The success attending Mr. Neville's researches enabled him, in 1848, to put forth another small volume (also privately printed) which he entitled Sepulchra Exposita, in which he gave an account of the opening of some barrows, in addition to his remarks on miscellaneous antiquities found in the neighbourhood of Audley End. This work contains figures of many of the objects I have alluded to, accompanied with short and pertinent observations. A more pretending publication was put forth in 1852, under the title of Saxon Obsequies, illustrated by ornaments and weapons discovered in a cemetery near Little Wilbraham, Cambridgeshire, during the autumn of 1851. This is illustrated by forty plates, constituting a most interesting collection of Saxon relics, with appropriate descriptions. Not only to our body, of whose aid, and of the services more especially of some of our members, Mr. Neville availed himself, but also to other antiquarian and archæological societies, he 1 iii, 328. 2 iv, 59.