OPENING ADDRESS OF THE ANTIQUARIAN SECTION

AT THE GLOUCESTER MEETING.1

By E. FRESHFIELD, LL.D., F.S.A.

I shall, in the few words in which I am about to address you, confine myself to those topics which have come within my personal observation during the past year, taking each of them as a sort of starting point, for I think that my address should, in part at all events, be a sort of resumé of the past year.

It might be thought that in such a well worked field as that of England it was not possible to find any new or startling thing, but any one who heard a paper which was read by Mr. A. J. Evans, the distinguished son of a distinguished father, at the Society of Antiquaries, in March last, must have at once had any such feeling dispelled. Mr. Evans, who has been pursuing certain excavations at Aylesford, in North Kent, came across a series of groups of interments containing urns of a class which had hitherto been called by the name of late Celtic. The description of the interments and the ornamentation of the urns led him to the conclusion that these interments were entitled to a separate and distinct denomination. I cannot do more than in the most general way describe what he shadowed out in his paper, which will be printed in Archæologia. It was to the effect that this species of interments could be identified as that of a separate and distinct race, which he believed to be Belgic. It was, of course, no new thing to be told that there was an incursion of Belgæ into England. The novelty of Mr. Evans's discovery was to be able to identify the interments of this race. He connects this class of interment in various ways-partly by the manner in which the urns grouped, partly by the forms of the urns, and partly

are

1 Read at the Annual Meeting of the Institute, at Gloucester, August 12th, 1890.

by their contents with similar interments on the other side of the Channel. Coupling this with the peculiar forms of the vases in which the interments were made, he traces the race through the north of France to the upper part of the Adriatic, following pretty much in the same route as a person travelling from London to Venice by the Saint Gothard route would now travel. Mr. Evans is not a person to leave so interesting a subject without having thoroughly investigated it, and we may look forward to a distinct addition to our knowledge of the inhabitants of this country at a time shortly preceeding the first Roman Invasion, to a knowledge also of the history of the people who went to compose the English race who resisted Julius Cæsar on his landing.

I believe it is not likely that traces of the Belge will be found so far westward as this. We, in the east of England, are, of course, more directly interested in them. Some authors have attributed to them the construction of the great wall which turned the northern half of Romney Marsh into the fertile plain which it now is.

Upon this plain many Roman remains have been found, so that it is quite certain that the wall existed in their time, but it is, of course, possible that it may be their work and not that of the Belgæ; however, as I have said before, Mr. Evans is not the man to leave any subject. which he has made his own incomplete, and we may look upon this discovery as only the opening page of the history of the Belge in England. Here I find I am trespassing on the historical ground of my dear friend the Dean of Gloucester.

I will only add that for my part I am looking forward to something of this sort. When I was a boy I was taught that the ancient Britons who resisted Julius Caesar wore flowing white robes, and were dressed in the skins of animals. I expect every day to be told that the flowing white robes were smock frocks, and the skins of animals were leather gaiters. I have seen some ancient Britons still in this uniform in the eastern part of England.

Speaking of digging I am led to mention a project which has been set on foot by the Society of Antiquaries and is now in active work, and to which I, for my part, intend to give my cordial assistance-I mean the excava

tion of Silchester. This is no place to discuss whether Silchester is Calleva or some other town; I shall refrain from expressing any opinion for fear it should lead to a discussion. Of one thing there is no doubt, that in the fields under the surface there are the remains of a large Roman town, divided, like all Roman towns, into squares. It is at all events worth while to uncover this space to see what the foundations will teach us. For my part I do not expect to find anything startling. I shall be surprised if the result is not to disclose the fact that a Roman town must have looked very much like, say, such a town as Cordova does now-that the shops were gathered together in bazaars like the remaining Imperial Bazaar at Constantinople, and that the houses themselves were not unlike in their shape and arrangements to the houses of a French provincial town, only the modern houses have no bath and are much less comfortable and not so well warmed.

The excavation is in good hands, but I may be permitted to express a hope that as the sites are uncovered perfect plans and drawings will be taken of everything, and an accurate description of what is found made, and that each site will then be covered up again before the frost gets to the masonry and destroys it. I do not know a more pitiful sight than the Roman mosaic at Bignor presents. Most probably we shall settle for once and all what Silchester was and what its name was.

I have said that arrangements have been made not only for commencing the excavation at once, but for proceeding with them in the summer. I am sure the Committee which has been formed for the purpose will welcome the assistance of any Members of this Institute and of the two Societies who may wish to take part in this. They will at all events learn something to aid them in the excavations they may hereafter make nearer at home.

I will now turn to a very different subject, though it, too, in a sense, is in the same connection. Most of us here present will have heard, and some of us will have seen the most extraordinary collection of archiepiscopal vestments which were found in a tomb at Canterbury, which I now think is sufficiently identified as that of Archbishop Hubert Walter. On opening what was believed to be a cenotaph the authorities discovered the remains of an

Archbishop in full dress and undisturbed.

One of two

courses remained, either to close the tomb at once, or to do what the authorities did, to reverently remove the vestments for preservation. I think in a learned society like this we can have no hesitation in saying that in the circumstances the authorities adopted the right course.

The Archbishop was dressed with a mitre on his head with a crozier by his side, portions of the chasuble, amice and stole were found. The fastenings of his pall were there, and sufficient of the pall to prove its existence. He had long stockings or buskins of silk, and slippers of the same material. He had a ring on his finger and a paten and chalice by his side. The only regret I feel is that he was not photographed immediately on discovery.

The whole of these interesting antiquities have been lent by the authorities to the Society of Antiquaries of London, and it is the intention of the society to illustrate the whole of these vestments in a part of the Vetusta Monumenta, and I hope to compare them with similar vestments which are in existence.

Hubert Walter was Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of King Richard I. and King John, and died in 1205, nearly at the time when King John lost his Norman possessions. He had been a personal friend of and companion of King Richard to the Holy Land, and had negotiated his ransom. During his reign he occupied a position in England, during the King's absence in Normandy, similar to that now occupied by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He was, therefore, in addition to his high ecclesiastical rank, a person of very high position, and at all events he possessed this merit, that none of the turmoils which marked the archiepiscopates of his predecessor and successors took place in his time. He was succeeded as Justiciar by Geoffrey FitzPeter, and the extent to which the two restrained King John may be gathered from the King's remark on the death of the latter "When he arrives in hell," said the King," he may go and salute Hubert Walter, for, by the feet of God, now for the first time am I King and Lord of England.". Stubbs's Const. Hist., vol. i, p. 591. But here again I am touching on historical ground.

One thing that interested me much was the extent to

which, even in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, we drew upon other countries for our supplies. As I have said, the whole of the dress of the Archbishop was of silk with some portions of cloth of gold. The silk, of course, is a foreign product, and the ornamentation of some of it seemed to me to be of foreign, probably Byzantine, workmanship. The slippers of embroidered silk were ornamented with carbuncles and amethysts, neither of them English products. The pall was, I suppose, made of Italian wool. The crozier staff of cedar wood.

Upon the Archbishop's finger was a ring, the stone of which, a hard green stone, is engraved with a gnostic emblem, a serpent with a fiery head with the word "Knuphis" written under it, most probably brought by himself from the Levant. Other engraved stones were upon the top of his crozier. The border of the chasuble is of cloth of gold, beautifully embroidered with a design which seems to me to be Byzantine, but at all events not of English manufacture. I do not know that I ought to have been, but I was surprised to find the whole of the Archbishop's dress of silk.

This brings me to another class of Antiquities from Canterbury which was exhibited at the same time at the Society of Antiquaries, namely, a large collection of pieces of silk which had been the envelopes of royal letters. It appears that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was the habit for the kings, in sending letters to the monastery, to enclose their epistles in pieces of silk. These pieces are all of them oriental, and one of them has a most unmistakable Chinese head upon it. It would seem from this that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries silk was imported from China to Europe and found its way to England. It seemed to me that the silk in which the Archbishop was dressed was either Indian or Chinese, it looks very much like the silk which comes from India to England and is called Tussa silk. This is still the practice with the Sultans of Turkey. The firman, for the Turkish loans came to London in a bag of Crimson silk, probably a relic of a Byzantine custom. It is to be hoped that now the subject is under discussion it will be thoroughly exhausted.

With regard to the Archbishop's monument there is