by very intelligent and unbiased antiquaries. May I not then safely venture to again advance, that there has not been a well authenticated inscription on wood, stone, or metal, yet discovered with Arabic numerals of an earlier period than 1454, and that denoting on a brass plate in Ware church the death of Ellen Wood, and Mr. Gough tells me, that on another brass plate in the same church over the remains of Mr. Bramber, who there founded a chauntry chapel, there is the date of the year 1484 in the same numerals.
The earliest use of these characters in specifying the dates of deeds, and in numbering the leaves or pages of books in MS. is another proper object of inquiry. Against the repeated assertions of Dr. Harris, in his History of Kent, that they were thus originally employed by the compiler of Textus Roffensis, I declined offering myself as an evidence, from not having seen that curious book upwards of twenty years, and from my not having ever consulted it for the purpose of ascertaining this point. I therefore chiefly relied on the opinion of Dr. Pegge, who had seen it, and who had procured a collated copy, only suggesting the great improbability there was of bishop Ernulf's having so frequently used these vulgar figures in marking the leaves without having suffered any of them to slip by accident into the text itself. But I shall now subjoin a clear and full report given by the archdeacon of Rochester, who, with Mr. Wrighte, our secretary, has, at my request, lately examined the book. "We are both (writes Dr. Law) decidedly of opinion, that the figures on the top of the pages are modern. I should not have presumed to adduce my testimony, if there could be a doubt of the recent insertion of the above figures. Mr. Wrighte took a fac simile of the numeral characters at the beginning of the book, which is now conveyed to you. I am amazed that any one who ever inspected the Textus Roffensis could suppose the nu-merals
