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XI. Additional Remarks on the Helmdon Mantle-Tree Inscription, and on the Knowledge and Use of Arabic Numerals in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Centuries. By the Rev. Sam. Denne, F.A.S.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

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Extract

It was observed by the late Dr. Johnson, that “of an art universally practised the first teacher is forgotten;” and strictly applicable to this general position is the declaration of Mr. North, that, “though next to the art of printing there is no invention of more extensive use than that of the numeral figures or cyphers, yet, when, where, and by whom they were invented, are questions never perhaps to be clearly answered. Despairing, therefore, of success in such an investigation, the inquiries I proposed were limited to periods when the vulgar figures of arithmetick were certainly known in England, and my humble attempt was, and is, to mark the very slow progress made for centuries in the use of these rudiments of a science, an ignorance in which is now deemed disreputable in those who have acquired other branches of a liberal education.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1800

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References

page 141 note [a] Lives of the Poets, V. II. p. 109.

page 141 note [b] Archaeologia, V. X, p. 361.

page 150 note [c] Archaeologia, V. X. p. 375.

page 150 note [d] P. 721, Edit. Watts.

page 153 note [e] There is an error in the computation: the total not being 33, but 34, as is plain from the underwritten items.

Why it was judged expedient to proscribe fo many as. eight days in January, and one only in June and October, no reason is assigned.

Why the festival of Crispin and Lammas Day had the black mark set upon them shall be submitted to the surmise of others. But Ult. KaL Nov. may have been deemed inauspicious, because sol suit in saggittario, and, as observed under that month 46 Sagittarius subito mittit sagittas. “In ‘the Myrrour, or Glasse of Helth,’ published A. 1543, (Typographical Antiq. Vol. I. p. 375,) it is noticed on the back of a leaf,” These bene the thre perylous Mondayes in the yeare to let bloud, to take any medicyne, or purgation—The first Monday of August. The second is, the last Monday of April. And the thyrde is the last Mondaye of December” But if it were an object to save the expence of embalming, of all the days and nights in the year the most lucky tor coming into the world would have been the 5h of the kalends of April, and the ides of August, it being prognosticated in the calendar belonging to Mr. Gough, that the bodies of the persons born on those days or nights would never be liable to putrefacion.— “Julius–et funt duo dies et nodtes in anno, in quibus si quis natus suerit, nunquam putrinet usque in diem judicil.”

page 155 note [g] In a letter from Mr. H. Ellis, of St. John's College, Oxford, dated Feb. 12, 1797, are these passages relative to Arabic numerals in a calendar, and in an ancient deed.

“In MS. Rawlin, I°. p. 811, are two ancient calendars on vellum, one in Roman the other in Arabic numerals, which are beautifully expressed in blue and red. At the bottom of one of the pages is in a fair hand,

“Orate p. aiàb, Rici suller capellani et Rici Aleyn

“Kervr qui dederunt hunc librum Ecclie be Marie

“Virginis de Bury Sci Edmundi Anno dm 1842.”—(1472).

In the next place. I shall mention ancient deeds, though you will not find that to be a prolific article. Yet in searching for materials for this letter, I carefully examined several large folios of ancient charters in Dr. Rawlinson's collection of MSS. at the Bodleian, and I am sorry to add that I was rewarded with one instance only, viz. MS. Rawlins, 1329, at the 11th folio of which is a small charter beginning

“Sciant p‘fent’ & futuri quod ego Wills de tongesdedi concessi et hac p'fenti carta mea consirmavi Willo fil' Willi le Frenche una plac' terr' in villa de Melison, &c. &c. Dat. apd Welynton die mercur' px. post fm Sci Augustini Anno 1717 ⊕ tertii a c˜questu˜ quarto.” If it be 4 H. 3 it should be 1130 instead of 1217.

The seal is gone.—The figures I conjecture are meant to express the year 1414, but ⊕ tertii, &c. is at present unintelligible to me.”

The following is communicated by Mr. Gough. “In an almanack and prognostication for the yeare of our Lord MV & XLV1II, by M. Alphonsus Laet, brother of M. Jasper Laet, imprynted at London (the printers name torn off) all the numerals are Arabic, except the Golden Number, cycle of the sun, Indictio Romana, and calculation of a lunar eclipse. Perhaps this may be one of the first printed calendars.”

page 158 note [h] Archaeolog. V. X. p. 363. + (h. 2.) See note after r at p. 3.

page 158 note [i] All the “Assizes of Bread” printed in the sixteenth century have the Roman numerals, and they were continued with the black letter through the seventeenth to 1714.” R. G.

page 160 note [k] The Introduction, &c. printed A. 1595, by Ja. Roberts, feems to have been an improved edition of this Treatise.

page 160 note [l] Record's Arithmetick, edit. 1658, p. 7.

page 161 note [m] Mr. Herbert, in his Typographical Antiquities, p. 600, in the margin, assigns A. 1549 for the date of tire edition of Record's Ground of Artes, but concludes the line with A. 1561, from inadvertency as I apprehend.

There must have been an edition before 1551, as the book was dedicated to King Edward VI, who died in that year; and as Mr. Herbert notices an edition in 1558, if there were one in 1561, it must have been a third edition.

Of the edition in 1558 he remarks, that this seems to be the first edition teaching Fractions; a surmise that does not appear to be well founded, since his book previously published would on such a supposition have been less useful than the treatise written by Hugh Oldcastle, and published in 1543, or than that printed by Hertford at St. Alban's in 1546 and reprinted by him in London; for these treatises “taught to reeken with hole numbers or in broken.” And under such a defect, Record could not have flattered himself “that Tome would like his booke above, any. other English Arithmetic; hitherto published” as he suggests in the preface to the reader Besides he styles his “Whetstone of Witte,” which was a subsequent treatise, “the second part of Arithmetick, containing the extraction of Rootes.”

To the treatise printed by Hertford was pretixed “A Cut of a Man placing counters on a table.” To the edition of Record's Arithmetick, A. 1558, there was a cut of the Doctor sitting at a table teaching Arithmetick to two men sitting at the same table, and a third looking on.

page 163 note [n] By a statute of the Grammar School founded at Sandwich, A. 1580, by sir Robert Man wood, “Every scholler hereafter to be admitted to be hable before his admission to write competentlie and to read perfectlie both English and Lattyne. Such as are already placed in the schole to attaine writing competentlie within one quarter of a yere next comminge, or else to attain the same.” (Collections for History of Sandwich, by William Boys, Esq. p. 226.) But in a note the founder grants a further latitude and indulgence. I do ordain when sufficient place in the fchool-house is more than to suffice the Grammar scholars, than one convenient person that can write well shall in the said school-house teach scholars to read and write; to be appointed by the mayor and jurates, and have a stipend yearlie of 41b. And that during such teaching no other person shall be permitted within the town to teach writing of English, unless licenced by the mayor and jurates.” May not this be an unique instance of a prohibition and monopoly adapted to prevent the progress of youth in learning their native language? The founder must have meant by writing competentlie to write legibly, can hardly be said of himself, judging from the sac simile epislle published by Mr. Boys, Cyphering was not an art deemed a necessary acquisition by sir Robert, though to the young inhabitants of a Cinque Port, and of the parishes contiguous, one should have imagined that some of the time appropriated for their instruction might have been as usefully employed in figures as “in varying of Latin, practising exercises of Airthonil Progymnasmata, or in pearcing some of the words of a lesson.” p. 23c, 231.

page 164 note [o] The Life of Dr. John Colet, dean of St. Paul's, p, 100.

page 164 note [p] Ibid, p. 124.

page 165 note [q] Record's Arithmetick, p. 4, 5. The scholar replys at p. 6, “This art is fo necessary for man, that (as I thinke now) so much as a man lacketh of it, so much he lacketh of his sense and wit.”

page 165 note [r] The Life of William of Wykeham, by Robert Lowth, D. D. p. 177.

page 166 note [s] Anglia Sacra, V. XI. p. 7, De vita Aldhelmi.

“De ratione vero calculationis quid commemorondum; cum tantæ supputationis Immmens desperatio colla mentis oppreslerit; ut otrnem præteritum lectionis laborem parvi penderem, cujus me pridem secreta cubicula nosse credideram; et ut sententia beati Hieronymi, dum se occasio obtulit, utar, Zui mibi prius videbar Sciolus, rurfus capi esse difcipulus; sic quod tandem superna gratia sretus, difficilima rerum arguraenta ct calculi suppositiones, quas partes nuraeri appellant, lectionis instantia reperi,”

page 168 note [t[ Life of Johnson, V. II. p. 321.

page 168 note [u] Non Extinguetur. Motto to the seal of the Society.