Q2 ON SOME ANCIENT BURTON MANUSCRIPTS. 
constitute a distinctive mark, testifying to the genuineness of the 
deed, in the same way that formerly the private seal of the maker of 
the deed testified to the same effect. And now, as you will be 
aware, distinctive private seals are not used. 
Now, as to the dates of these documents. The oldest of them 
is dated Monday, the 2nd day of February, 1310, showing that it 
is now upwards of 581 years old. The next oldest is dated 
Thursday, the 20th day of July, 1340, nearly 541 years ago. But 
you must not think the dates of these documents appear in the 
deeds in the form in which I have just given them. If they had 
been given in that form I may venture to say I should have dis- 
covered their antiquity long before I actually did discover it. 
This is the form in which the date of these two documents is put : 
—‘“ Datum apud Burton super Trentam die Lune in festo puri- 
ficationis beate Mariz, anno regni regis Edwardi filii regis 
Edwardi tertio.”” I say I am showing you the form in which the 
date is put in the deed, but the truth is I am giving you the words 
in full, not in the abbreviated form in which they appear on the 
parchment. Well, the translation of that Latin sentence, as you 
no doubt see, is—‘‘ Given at Burton-on-Trent on Monday, on the 
Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Mary, in the third year 
of the reign of King Edward, the son of King Edward.” Now, 
that is not, of course, the way in which we should date a document 
nowadays. We should not, at least not as a rule, give the day of 
the week, but we should give the day of the month, the month, 
and the year anno domini. I think this would satisfy most of us 
better than to be told such and such a document was dated on 
some saint’s day or another, in some year or another of a certain 
king. Now, this date can be modernised without much trouble. 
A reference to the calendar in the Prayer-book shows us that the 
Feast of the Purification of the Virgin falls on the 2nd of February. 
So the day of week and month is, ‘‘ Monday, the znd of February.” 
The question then is, in what year? But, before this, another 
question arises—namely, what king? The parchment says “ King 
Edward, the son of King Edward.” That might apply to Edward II. 
or Edward III., for each of these was the son of a King Edward. 
