Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 6.djvu/394

248 cracks of the whip in the porch, these may probably have referred to the denials of St. Peter, to whom, with St. Paul, the church is dedicated; and it may be observed that, as those denials occurred out of the Sanhedrim or council, this may have been signified by the porch being chosen for the performance of this part of the ceremony. I see nothing in the First Lesson of the day to which it could possibly allude, nor in the Lesson of the ancient ritual for the benediction of the palms (Exodus, xv., 27, and xvi., 1—7), according to the Roman Missal. It is hard to conjecture at what part of the ancient office for Palm Sunday this commencement of the ceremony could have taken place.

Upon the whole, my conviction is, that very great changes were made from time to time in the mode of rendering the service by which the Broughton estate was held, until it had little in common with the original, and as these ought to have been matters of arrangement between the lord and the tenant, if the documents relating to the Manor of Hundon extend sufficiently far back, it is very likely something might be found in them respecting the alterations which took place at the Reformation, and also in 1662, when the Book of Common Prayer was last revised.

Every one must approve of the discontinuance of this singular interruption of Divine service; but it may not be without interest to the members of the Institute to have so curious a remnant of ancient usage brought before them; and, as one obscure matter often throws light on another, when they are brought into comparison, so this may happen presently to illustrate, or to be explained by some dark passage, with which it has not yet been compared. W. S. W.

a former Memoir on Ancient Personal Ornaments found in the British Islands, the readers of the Journal have been made acquainted with an interesting discovery of gold armillæ, found on the shore of Fifeshire, in 1848, and laid before the