P.S.--I think I may plead the privilege of a postscript for the purpose of recording (what may be taken as) an indication, though perhaps not a proof, that the idea of devices or contrivances was implied in the name so recently as the period of the civil war. The _Mercurius Civicus_, a parliamentary paper, 1644, states that Devizes was being garrisoned for the king, in the following terms:
"Hopton is fortifying amain at the Devises in Wiltshire, but I fear greater fortifyings for the Devices in Oxford."
_Gold Signet Ring._--I possess an ancient gold signet ring, which was dug up a few years since not far from an old entrenchment in the borough of Leominster, in the county of Hereford, the device thereon being a _cock_; it is of very pure metal, and weighs 155 grains. It is in fine preservation: and device is rudely cut, but I beg to inclose an impression from which you may judge. Can any of your antiquarian readers throw any light on the subject to whom this device originally belonged?
In levelling the fortified entrenchment above referred to some half century ago, various utensils of pottery, burnt bones, spear and arrow heads, tesselated tiles, fragments of sculptured stones, and other relics of antiquity, were found.
_Ecclesia Anglicana._--I observe, in an interesting letter published in the December Number of the _Ecclesiologist_, in an enumeration of Service Books belonging to the English Church before the Reformation, and now existing in the Pepysian Library, Cambridge, the following title:
"No. 1198. Servicium de omni Officio Episcopali consernenta (_sic_) chorum ... secundum usum Ecclesie Anglicane."
Now I am anxious to know from any of your readers, who are better informed on these subjects than I am, or who have access to old libraries, whether _Ecclesia Anglicana_ is a _usual_ designation of the Catholic Church in England before the Reformation.
Service Books according to the use of some particular cathedral church are of course well known, as in this same list to which I have referred we find "secundum usum insignis ecclesie Eboracensis," "ad insignis ecclesiæ Sarisburiensis usum," &c.: but I should be glad to learn, in these days of _ultramontane_ pretensions, whether, even prior to the Reformation, the distinct nationality of the Anglican church was _commonly_ asserted by the use of such a title in her Service Books. I need scarcely observe how many interesting cognate questions might be asked on this subject.