Helmdon Mantle Tree Inscription, &c. 149
merals at the top of the pages coeval with the work itself. Inspection satisfied me, and the Arabic numerals not being once read in the book."
Mr. Henry Ellis, a very young student of St. John's College in Oxford, who has a strong and an useful propensity to antiquarian refearches, has found in a leaf of a MS. of Trivet Super Ovidi Metaniorphos', in the library of that college, in an old hand, this entry.
"Libér quondã Magri. Thome Egburhab. M. Rob. Elyot Ao Doi
(
symbol characters) (1471) dat' ad fit q. nõ vendat~r post ejus mortem, &c. Orate
qu. p. aña ejs." The remark of Mr. Gough, who communicated to me this extract, is, that it will at least make Arabic numerals in MS. keep pace with the specimens on brasses. And in the Introduction to Sepulchral Monuments, Vol. II. pp. cclix, cclxi, are the following pertinent observations on this subject.
"They appear in Bacon's Calender written about 1293 (Astle. p. 188, 189). They were at first rarely used, except in mathematical, astronomical, and geometrical works. They were afterwards admitted in calendars and chronicles, and to date MSS. but not introduced into charters before the sixteenth century; the appearance of such before the fourteenth would invalidate their authenticity. In the fourteenth and fifteenth they may be sometimes found, though very rarely in the minutes of notaries. These exceptions, should they be difcovered, would only help to confirm the rule that excludes them from appearing in instruments, previous to the sixteenth century. If there wanted any decisive proof of the improbability of the Arabic numerals having been common among us before the fifteenth century, one might deduce a weighty argument from their not appearing on sepulchral monuments till about the middle of the fifteenth century. Mr. North, in a sensible paper addressed by him to Mr. Folkes, and afterwards to his successor the earl of Morton, and communicated to the Society of Antiquaries, after I bought itamong;
