Page:Archaeologia Volume 13.djvu/154

108 designed, there not being any reason to suppose that it was 6 or 9, and that a part had been obliterated.

No 2., (Pl. XII. fig. 4,) is drawn from the impost of a door-cafe stopped up, in a building situated in a field not far from the barn. Mr. Hasted styles it an outhouse, an error of the press, as I imagine, for oasthouse, because when he saw it it was used for drying hops. He might also have given a fac simile of this inscription as corroborative of his opinion that 1102 must be the date meant, there not being any room for the smallest addition to 0 or to 1 that immediately precedes the cypher; though some have thought that the second unit might be designed for 5, and you seem inclined to believe it denotes 3. The inscription on the oasthouse, as it appears to me, was the more eligible of the two for a Plate, because T. C. is twice carved; once with the shield that has on it the arms of Colepeper only, and again with a shield on which the fame coat is quartered with the arms of Hardreshull.

T. C. are unquestionably the initials of Thomas Colepeper; and it is observed by Mr. Hasted, that there was no person of those names possessed of Preston Hall between "Thomas Colepeper, son of John Colepeper, who about the middle of the reign of Edward III. married Elizabeth, daughter and heir of sir John Hardreshull, and who was therefore the first who could use the arms of Hardreshull quartered with his own, and Thomas Colepeper who died seized of this estate in 1587 ." 1