Which were all admitted into the freedome of our Society, and tooke the oath accordingly.

Massey's principal service had been his able and protracted defence of Gloucester, when besieged by the King in person, in the year 1643: the importance of which may be estimated from the opinion given by Lord Clarendon, that its duration enabled the Parliament to recover their broken spirits and forces, and thus opened the way to "that greatness to which they afterwards aspired." Mr. Ormerod, in his second volume, p. 400, has given a memoir of Major-Gen. Massey, chiefly derived from Clarendon; and in vol. III. p. 448, is appended a catalogue of his various atchievements, from the works of Ricraft and Vicars. Among these, however, is not enumerated his capturing Malmesbury by storm, and taking Col. Henry Howard prisoner, on the 24th of May, 1644, as related in Corbet's "Military Government of Gloucester." It is to be regretted that in the "Bibliotheca Gloucestrensis," a collection of tracts relating to the civil war in that county, which was carefully and laboriously edited in 1825, and in which a fine copy of Col. Massey's portrait is published, the Editor should have been so ignorant of the Cheshire family, as to commence his memoir with stating, "We have been unable to ascertain any thing respecting his parents or the time of his birth."

Mr. URBAN, New Kent-road, Oct. 6.

THE very curious relic which is communicated to you for engraving by Mr. William Till, medallist, of Great Russell-street, Covent-garden, is said to have been discovered in the Temple Church during some of the repairs which have of late years taken place in that edifice. There appears no reason to doubt the authenticity of this statement, and the high antiquity of the object is certain.

It is delineated in the accompanying plate, of the original size, and is of brass very strongly gilt. It has formed, I think, a portion of the embossed ornaments of a pyx or small shrine, in which the consecrated Host GENT. MAG. October, 1833.

was kept. The whole box was probably of an oblong figure, and this brass-work was attached to one of its ends. The little chest was perhaps surrounded by military figures similar to the three which have been preserved, and they doubtless represent the soldiers watching the body of our Lord, which the shrine enclosed in its mystical form. The costume of the Roman centinels is made of course to conform with the period in which these figures were formed, and they are all represented with heads inclined forward, as if drowsy on their guard; a fancy quite at variance with Roman discipline.

It would be assuming too much to say that these figures were intended for Knight Templars, but they are certainly of a period somewhat anterior to that in which the more ancient portion of the Temple Church was first founded, and might with much probability have been part of the sacred ornaments used in Divine Service at that edifice, and which had been brought thither by the Templars, when they removed to the Thames side from their first establishment in Holborn.

The date of the foundation of the Round Church at the Temple has been preserved by an inscription formerly over one of its doors,* and which I thus render after the original Latin:

"In the year from the incarnation of our Lord 1185, on the fourth of the Ides of February, this Church was dedicated to the honour of the blessed Mary, by the Lord Eraclius, by the grace of God Patriarch of the Church of the Holy Resurrection; who indulged those who should repair thither annually, with sixty days remission of their enjoined penance."

We may safely attribute to the figures before us, which are said to have been found in this Church, an antiquity coeval with the earlier portion of the 12th century. They wear the steel cap of the Phrygian form, furnished with a nose-piece or nasal,-an appendage of the helmets which appear

on the heads of the warriors in the Bayeux Tapestry. The mailles or ringlets of the hauberk appear as in the armour depicted in that remark

* Engraved in Pegge's Sylloge of Inscriptions, pl. V.

able work, not interlinked, but sewn down, perhaps on a sort of gambeson. They bear kite-shaped shields, raised en dos d'ane, and having in the centre a boss remarkably resembling that on the shield of the enamelled sepulchral memorial of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Earl of Anjou, which was formerly suspended over his tomb in the Cathedral of Mans. On two of the shields are some approaches to armorial bearings. One is marked with four narrow bendlets, another is fretted. This fret is repeated in the front of the cap of the same figure. The shield of the third figure bears on each side of the boss the Grecian scroll, and in the front of his chapelle de fer are bendlets. The under tunics of the figures are long, and reach to the ancles. Such precisely is the form of the drapery on the figure of Geoffrey Plantagenet. The shoes are admirable illustrations of that passage of Geoffrey of Malmesbury, where, reprehending the luxury of costume in which the English indulged at the time when Henry the First began his reign, he says, "Then was there flowing hair and extravagant dress, and then was invented the fashion of shoes with curved points; then the model for young men was to rival women in delicacy of person, to mimic their gait, to walk with loose gesture half naked." The curvature of the points of the shoes in the little relic before us, in conformity with the custom censured by Malmesbury, is quite remarkable. One turns up, another down, one to the left, another to the right, and scarcely any two in the same direction.

It may be incidentally observed, that the fashion of long flowing hair, (fluxus crinium, Malmesbury's original expression,) is admirably illustrated by contemporary examples in the figures of Henry I. and his Queen, placed in the caryatid form, on either side the west door of Rochester Cathedral. The King's hair falls over his shoulders, and the Queen's is disposed in long plaited tresses, reaching almost to the knees.

Similar figures are described by Montfaucon, as decorating the front of the Cathedral of St. Denis, but he gives them an antiquity higher than their just date, and calls them les Rois

+ See it represented in Stothard's Monumental Effigies.

Merovingiens.

Where shall we seek

for such lively illustrations of ancient manners, as in the contemporary sculptures, illuminated paintings, and embossed ornaments (like those now before us), which the great consumer of all things may have suffered to descend to these later days?

I should have observed that the three figures I have been describing, are placed before as many arches of the circular style. The whole ornament has apparently been cast in a mould, and is in high relief. The armorial ornaments, mailles, &c. have been marked out with an engraving tool. A. J. K.

Mr. TILL has also communicated the Seal (fig. 2) which was likewise found near the tombs of the Knights Templars in the Temple Church, in the year 1830. It is of lead, with a cavity straight through it, to admit the silken cord, which formerly attached it to a deed; and it is highly preserved (save a cut across the obverse, from the spade of the workman). It belonged to Berengar, who succeeded De Pim as Custos, or Grand Master, of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, in 1365, and died in 1373. On the obverse, the prior is represented on his knees before the patriarchal cross, on either side of which are the letters A and (the latter defaced by the blow), and under the former a small star. On the reverse is represented the holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, the Saviour in his tomb; at his head an elevated cross; and above, a tabernacle or chapel, from the roof of which depend two incense pots. The inscriptions together on both sides read,-"FR. (frater) BERENGARII.

CUSTOS. PAUPERUM. HOSPITALIS JHERUSALEM."

The value and curiosity of this Seal is enhanced from the situation where it was discovered, and had lain above four centuries, being so accordant with its identity.

The British Museum wished to possess it, but as Mr. Till had previously promised it to his friend and an intelligent antiquary, Edward Spencer, esq. of Highgate, the original is in that gentleman's possession.

The Masters of this establishment appear, like the Popes, to have continued the same design upon their scals for a long succession of centu

ries, the execution alone varying with the skill and taste of the artist employed. We believe only one of the series has before been published, at least in this country. It is that of Raymond du Pay, who became Custos about 1113, and was engraved in our vol. xcv. ii. 497, from a leaden impression found at Norwich Castle. It exhibits the same kneeling figure and the holy Sepulchre, but is two centuries and a half earlier than the present in point of date. A third is now added, being that of Roger de Molins, attached to the Harleian Charter (43 I. 38) in the British Museum, which relates to the House of St. Cross near Winchester, and was executed in the very year of the foundation of the Temple Church, and witnessed by the patriarch Eraclius before mentioned, as well as by the King, &c. at Dover, 4 id. Apr. 1185.

IT has often been a subject of regret, that in the editions of the old Romance of Sir Tristrem, given to the world by Sir Walter Scott, the curious illustrations offered of the text in the Notes, and the able Introduction prefixed to the poem, should be so ill supported by the imperfect and inaccurate Glossary appended to the volume. For the Editor, however, there is much to be urged in excuse. Old English poetry, at the period when the work first appeared, was but little studied or understood, and it was considered sufficient to guess at the import of a word, without regarding its analogy or etymology; and even if the latter was ever thought of, any term of similar sound or meaning, selected at hazard from the continental languages, was set down as the etymon. But at present, when so much has been done (after the examples set us by the Germans, Danes, and French,) towards the elucidation of our ancient vernacular tongue, and greater interest seems to be taken daily in the revival of old English literature, it was to have been hoped and expected, that in a new edition of Sir Tristrem, some attempt would have been made

to render the Glossary more complete and more correct. This edition is now before me (forming the fifth volume of Sir W. Scott's Poetical Works), and sorry I am to say, it servilely repeats every error, and most of the misprints of the preceding editions! All that has been done to render the work more acceptable and useful, is a collation of the text with the Auchinleck MS. a task indispensibly necessary, and for which our thanks are due. It is certainly to be lamented that most of our poetical antiquaries have neither had the ability or industry to undertake the transcription of a MS., or, if they possessed the one, were deficient in the other quality. The consequence is obvious. A hired scribe was generally trusted to, and the copy often printed without further collation; and thus is it that very few indeed of the old English writers have been faithfully edited. I speak not from conjecture, but experience, having myself had the " drudgery" (as it is termed by ignorant or idle persons) of comparing a great part of what has been printed by Ritson, Percy, Pinkerton, Ellis, Weber, Utterson, Hartshorne, and Laing, with the original MSS., and, I must own, the list of corrigenda is very large indeed. Ritson, it is true, was the founder of a more accurate school, and (I believe) usually copied for himself; but his complete ignorance of Latin (in spite of what has been alleged by his recent biographer),* caused him to fall into errors he would have been sorry to commit. I speak not of literal errors, which are very numerous (and sometimes, with the utmost care, difficult to avoid,) but of more important variations. Thus, in his "Ancient Songs," esteemed the most scrupulously correct of his publications, we read in the Requiem to the Conspirators against Henry IV. p. 56,

"Placebo begynneth the Bishop of Herford;

Dilexi, for myn auauncement, saith the
Bisshop of Chestre,
Heir me, saith Salisbury, this goth to
ferre forthe."+

In the original the lines stand thus: Placebo begynneth the Bishop of Herford',

tion.