the fourteenth century, but, from the great sums paid for books, and the distant parts from whence it was procured, I think there is little reason to suppose that it was ever supplied at such a price as to have been used as paper now is[1].
That the artificers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were conversant with means of working in wood, we have abundant valuable proofs in the multiplicity of carvings yet remaining; there can be no doubt that they must have been well acquainted with various modes of smoothing wooden surfaces; and though I have not been able to ascertain the exact period at which plumbago was first used as a material for marking, there can be no doubt but some of the marking substances, which almost all parts of the kingdom produce, were well known at that time[2].
If once we admit the probability that tablets of wood, and chalk, a leaden plummet, or other marking substances, composed the chief implements of design, used by ancient architects, we shall I think find an easy mode of accounting for that absence of designs which has been noticed. It is clear, that even supposing that, in order to give the degree of permanence to some of the drafts which it was absolutely necessary that the ground-plan and some other general designs should have, those particular designs were drawn with some sharp instrument, so as to impress them as it were on the substance of the wooden tablet, the tablets when the construction was executed would only need the operation of smoothing to receive a new design, or, as is still more likely, the piece of wood which had exhibited the design would be put to some use which would effectually destroy the design impressed on it; and there is the more reason to suppose this has been the case, because those woods which alone could be made use of for this purpose are in themselves of no great permanence.
The only ancient design now extant, as I believe, in England, is of a date after the introduction of printing. This is preserved in the British Museum, and has been engraved in Lysons' Magna Britannia, in the history of the county of Cambridge. It is a design for a tower, which appears to have been intended to be added to King's college chapel, Cambridge, and it is I believe on paper; it is not very excellent in composition, though certainly valuable as an ancient design.
