Page:Archaeologia Volume 13.djvu/159

Rh ford when that survey was made; but there is not any thing improbable in the supposition that a parcel of the lands therein described as being in the crown might be very soon after granted to one of them; and it is indisputable that lands were long enjoyed by them under the denomination of the Manor of Preston and Allington. With respect to the royal manor of Aylesford, a tenure by antient demesne that was purchased in the second year of king James the 1st, by the sir Thomas Colepeper, of whose names the letters in the inscriptions are the initials. But be the surmise well founded or groundless, that the inscription is commemorative of a family epoch, the figures themselves will not cast a ray of light on the introduction of Arabic numerals, as the sculptor would clearly give a preference to figures that were most convenient, and most in use at the time he was employed; nor can there be any reasonable doubt of the buildings not being erected before the close of the sixteenth century.

Particularities in the materials of buildings, and in their style of structure, might be found to operate as forcibly against other dates imagined to be of very high antiquity, had the edifices on which they are exhibited been carefully surveyed. Of this opinion was bishop Lyttelton, who, in a Dissertation on the Antiquity of Brick Buildings, thus expressed his sentiments. "Our very worthy and learned brother, Dr. Ward, in his ingenious remarks on Arabian Numerals, impressed in Relievo on a brick building at Shalford in Bucks, has satisfactorily proved that the date could not be 1182, as was supposed, but rather 1382. He founds his objection upon the Arabian or Indian numerals being of later introduction into this part of Europe than the twelfth century. But had he known that the oldest brick building here (posterior to the Roman government) reached not higher than the close of the fourteenth century, this alone would have been a very strong argument against the sup- Rh