The museum of this society contains, among other treasures, the _Household Book_ of the Duke of Norfolk; a large and valuable collection of early proclamations and ballads; T. Porter’s unique map of London (Charles I.); a folding picture in panel, of the “Preaching at Old St. Paul’s in 1616;” early portraits of Edward IV. and Richard III., engraved for the third series of _Ellis’s Letters_; a three-quarter portrait of Mary I. with the monogram of Lucas de Heere, and the date 1546; a curious portrait of the Marquis of Winchester (who died 1571); the portrait by Sir Antonio More, of Schorel, a Dutch painter; portraits of antiquaries--Burton, the Leicestershire antiquary, Peter le Neve, Humphrey Wanley Baker, of St. John’s College, William Stukeley, George Vertue, and Edward, Earl of Oxford, presented by Vertue; a Bohemian astronomical clock of gilt brass, made in 1525 for Sigismund, King of Poland, and bought at the sale of the effects of James Ferguson, the astronomer; and a spur of gilt brass, found on Towton field, the scene of the bloody conflict between Edward IV. and the Lancastrian forces. Upon the shank is engraved the following posey--“En loial amour tout mon coer.”[122] The Astronomical Society was instituted in 1820, and received the royal charter in 1st William IV. The entrance-money is two guineas, and the annual subscription the same amount. The annual general meeting is the second Friday in February. A medal is awarded every year. The society has a small but good mathematical library, and a few astronomical instruments. A little above the entrance door to “the Stamps and Taxes” there is a white watch-face let into the wall. Local tradition declares it was left there in votive gratitude by a labourer who fell from a scaffolding and was saved by the ribbon of his watch catching in some ornament. It was really placed there by the Royal Society as a meridian mark for a portable transit instrument in a window of an ante-room.[123] A tradition of Nelson belongs to this quiet square. An old clerk at Somerset House used to describe seeing the hero of the Nile pass on his way to the Admiralty. Thin and frail, with only one arm, he would enter the vestibule at a smart pace, and make direct for his goal, pushing across the rough round stones of the quadrangle, instead of taking, like others, the smooth pavement. Nelson always took the nearest way to the object he wished to attain.[124] The Royal Academy soon found a home in Somerset House. Germs of this institution are to be found as early as the reign of Charles I., when Sir Francis Kynaston, a translator of Chaucer into Latin (_circa_ 1636), was chosen regent of an academy in Covent Garden.[125]