COMMUNICATIONS 
TO THE 
MONTHLY MEETINGS, 
1865. 
Jai^. 3.—The Eey. J. Keneick described the Eoman altar 
recently presented by Mr. Hailstone. It was found at Wike, near 
Harewood, where other Homan remains had been discovered. A 
Homan road branches from the great ridge between Aberford and 
St. Helen’s Hord, near Becca, and runs to Ilkley; Wike lies a little 
to the north of it. The altar has no inscription, but has a circular 
ornament, with crossing Knes, carved on one end. 
Mr. Kenrick next called attention to the rubbing of an inscription 
on a sepulchral monument, which had been laid on the top of one 
of the ruined walls of the Abbey nave. It reads hic jacet ema de 
BEN—the stone being fractured. The Hev. James Haine had kindly 
furnished him with some notes upon it. It appeared from numerous 
examples that it was customary for ladies, especially those who had 
been benefactresses to religious houses, to bequeath their remains for 
burial there. A remarkable instance of this occurs in the will of 
Jane Chamberlayne (a. d. 1501), who leaves her body to be buried 
in ‘‘the monastery of our Lady without the citie of Yorke, afore 
the altar of the blessed St. Ursula.” By the help of three deeds 
in the chartularies of the abbey, Mr. Haine has been able to 
ascertain that a lady of the name of Emma de Benfield or Benfeld, 
widow of Matthew de Benfield, of Marton, in Cleveland, had 
resigned her interest in some lands in Cleveland in favour of the 
abbey. One of the deeds was executed in York in 1252, and 
Mr. Haine concludes, with probability amounting almost to certainty, 
that the fractured stone covered the remains of Emma de Benfield. 
The form of the letters corresponds with the date which he assigns 
to the inscription, the latter part of the reign of Henry III. 
