Page:Archaeologia Volume 13.djvu/199

 Helmdon Mantle Tree Infcrtptlon, 149 merals at the top of the pages coeval with the work itfelf. Infpec- tion fatisfied me, and the Arabic numerals not being once read in the book." Mr. Henry Ellis, a very young fludent of St. John's College in Oxford, who has a ftrong and an ufeful propenfity to antiquarian refearches, has found in a leaf of a MS. of Trivet Super Qvidi Metaniorphos, in the library of that college, in an old hand, this entry. " Liber quonda~Magri. Thome Egburhab. M. Rob. ElyotADoi i^Ai (1471) dat' ad fit q. no vendafr poftejus mortem, &c. Orate qu. p. ana ejs." The remark of Mr. Gough, who communicat- ed to me this extract, is, that it will at leafl make Arabic numerals - in MS. keep pace with the fpecimens on brafTes. And in the In- troduction to Sepulchral Monuments, Vol. II. pp. cclix, cclxi, are the following pertinent obfervations on this fiibjecl:* " They- appear in Bacon's Calender written about 1293 (Aftle. p. 188, 189). They were at firn: rarely ufed, except in mathema- tical, aftronomical, and geometrical works. They were afterwards admitted in -calendars and chronicles, and to date MSS. but not introduced into charters before the iixteenth century; the appear- ance o.f fueh before the fourteenth would invalidate their authen- ticity. In the fourteenth and fifteenth they may be fometimes found, though very rarely in the minutes of notaries. Thefe ex- ceptions, fhould they be difcovered, would only help to confirm the rule that excludes them from appearing in instruments, .previous to the fixteenth century, If there wanted any decifive proof of the impro- bability of the Arabic numerals having been common among us before the fifteenth century, one might deduce a weighty argument from - their not appearing on feoulchral monuments till about the middle of the fifteenth century. Mr. North, in a fenfible paper addrefTed by Mm to Mr. Folke' -.md afterwards to hisfucceflbr the earl of Mor- ton^and communi -. to the .Society of Antiquaries, after I bought it among ;