and has four C-scrolls in relief like the last, but so arranged as to inclose a cruciform space. The date suggested by the coin would be suitable, but the association may have been accidental.
A remarkable brooch (coloured plate, fig. 5), that belongs to a very limited series of enamelled Anglo-Saxon jewellery, was found about 9 ft. deep during the spring of 1839, when sewage works were in progress opposite Dowgate Hill in Upper Thames Street. It lay in a dark-coloured stratum of earth apart from anything that could throw light on its history, and is fortunately in excellent preservation, the pin alone being deficient. It passed into the British Museum in 1856, and is there exhibited along with two other circular enamelled brooches which with the Alfred jewel afford interesting material for a study of the subject. An excellent reproduction in colour accompanied Mr. Roach Smith’s account written in 1840 and published by the Society of Antiquaries,[1] and his attribution of this ouche, as he elected to call it, to the time of Alfred cannot be seriously challenged. His opinion that it was the work of foreign artists working in England is also plausible; but his conjecture that the person represented is King Alfred can hardly be proved or disproved without further discoveries of the kind.
The brooch is 1.4 in. in diameter, having at the centre a convex medallion with enamelled cell-work (cloisonné) which represents a male bust facing, crowned, and draped with a mantle and tunic. The crown has three radiating stems with pellets, and the scroll extensions on either side may represent locks of hair or possibly fillets connected with the crown. On the right shoulder is fastened the mantle, and the brooch itself was probably intended to be worn in that position. The colours are now much faded, but were apparently semi-translucent blue and green separated by slender partitions of gold, while the face is opaque white. Round the enamelled portion is a broad open-work gold border with four equidistant pearls, and between them wheels of six flat spokes interrupting the floral scrolls that fill the remaining spaces, the whole being inclosed between pearled borders. The perforated lugs between which the pin was fastened are still in position as well as a slender loop at the top, projecting backwards, no doubt for suspension from the dress; but the catch to hold the point of the pin is now missing, though its original position is clear.
Attention has recently been drawn to this interesting trio by Mr. O. M. Dalton, whose remarks before the Society of Antiquaries are accompanied by photographs of the Towneley (or Hamilton) and Castellani brooches.[2] He considers that the London jewel has the strongest claims of any to an Anglo-Saxon origin, but confesses that parallels are hard to find. The regal features are not treated in the conventional style of Constantinople, while the costume is that worn by Teutonic princes, and not by Byzantine emperors between the ninth and twelfth centuries. Further the open-work border is of exceptional freedom, and belongs to western Europe, though the crown and mantle were more or less cosmopolitan at the time. The portrait is better than that on the Alfred jewel, but is not at all closely related, and consequently cannot be attributed with equal confidence to native goldsmiths,
