Page:Archaeologia Volume 13.djvu/169

Rh these figures in a work replete with numerals. This observation is equally pertinent to Registrum Temporale Roffense, a MS. compiled chiefly under the direction of Hamo de Hethe, who was bishop from 1319 to 1352. And may I not advance, without running a risque of its being disproved, that there is not in any episcopal or other ecclesiastical office, a register of the twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth century, whose folios have contemporary marks in the vulgar figures?

This of course leads to an inquiry when these figures became general, either in arithmetical accounts or in denoting years and days; and possibly the result of an investigation may be, that evidence positive will be wanting to prove any such early use of them as has been inadvertently conceived by some persons, and by others implicitly adopted. In my retired situation I am not by any means prepared to pursue this inquiry far; but it will give me pleasure should the questions I mean to propose, with not foreign surmises and remarks, serve as inuendos to guide others in the search, who may have opportunity to examine public libraries, or more copious private collections than are within my reach.

On the imaginary era of the introduction of Arabian numerals into England the under-written verses were quoted in the Gentleman's Magazine of the year 1783, from the Dreme of Chaucer, line 430, et seq.

"Shortly it was so full of bestes That though Argus the noble Countour Ysate to rekin in his countour And rekin with his figures ten, For by the figures newe all ken,