BRIEFS. Royal Letters Patent, authorising collections for charitable purposes within churches, were termed “Briefs.” Lists of them, from the time of Elizabeth downwards, are often to be found on the fly-leaves of old register books, or in churchwardens’ accounts. The repair or rebuilding of churches in post-Reformation days, until nearly the beginning of the Catholic Revival, was almost invariably effected by this method. About the middle of last century, owing to the growing frequency of Briefs, it was ordered that they should only be granted on the formal application of Quarter Sessions. Much information as to the condition of the fabrics and other particulars relative to churches can be gathered from the petitions to Quarter Sessions, in those counties where the documents are accessible. The Briefs themselves were issued from the Court of Chancery, so we suppose they would be attainable at the P. R. O. At the B. M. is a large collection of original Briefs, from 1754 down to their abolition in 1828. They were presented to the Museum in 1829, by Mr. J. Stevenson Salt. ADVOWSON. The history of the advowson, if the living remained a rectory, was almost invariably intermixed with that of the manor or the moieties of the manor. Consequently it will be found, that, in the case of rectories, various particulars as to the owners of the advowson, and its value, at different periods, can be gleaned from the Inquisitions, and from the Patent and Close Rolls to which references have already been made; or, in the case of litigation, from the Plea Rolls and Year Books. If the living became at any time a Vicarage, care should be taken to look through the particulars given by Dugdale and Tanner, of the religious house to which the big tithes were appropriated, and more especially to carefully search the chartularies of that establishment, if any are extant. There is an excellent list of the various monastic Chartularies, _i.e._, ancient parchment books, containing transcripts or abstracts of the charters of the different houses, in the first two volumes of Nichols’ “Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica,” and a shorter one in Sims’ “Manual.” The Ordination of a Vicarage, _i.e._, the official appropriation of certain parts of the endowment for the sustentation of a vicar, required episcopal confirmation; and these ordinations will usually be found in the Episcopal Registers, if they are extant for the date when the rectory was formally appropriated. These ordinations often contain information of great interest, and have hitherto been very rarely searched for, and still more rarely printed.