[ a8 5 3 
cannot be fo antienr, appears to me highly probable 
from feveral Confederations, taken from the Shape of 
the Figures, Form of the Letters>_ Spelling of the 
Words, and Drefs of the Images. 
As to the Figures, I have never met with the 
Five any thing like the Shape of it upon this Stone 
' (which comes pretty near the modern Form) till the 
fourteenth Century j except in one lingle Inftance of 
a Date 1295, {a) which I had the Honour to commu- 
nicate to this Society upon the Seventh of June 
laft. In the Table of Characters prefixed to N°. 439 
of the Philofophical Tranf actions the Figure Five is 
given from three Writers of the thirteenth Century, 
in two Forms both very different from that upon this 
Stone. One was taken from -Maximus Planudes , a 
Greek Writer, which is like the /£of that Language in- 
verted in this manner gf 3 and the other from Johannes 
de Sacra Bofco and Roger Bacon, which is made thus 
The latter of thefe continued in Ufe till ther 
Beginning of the fixteenth Century, as appears from 
a Manufcript preferved in the Inner Temple ( b ), bear- 
ing Date the xxi Tere of King Henry the vii, and 
the Ter e of our Lorde 1^093 to which is prefixed a 
Calender, wherein all the Figures are like thofe of 
Roger Bacon . 
The Letters in this Sculpture are mixed, being 
partly Raman , and partly Saxon', as we often find, 
that the Workmen took great Liberties in varying 
and. mixing their Letters. Thofe of the latter Sort. 
are 
• (a) See Vhil Tramp. No. 4.74. p. 91. 
(b) This- they call their Grace Book ‘ feecaufe it contains, among, 
ihany other Things, Graces' to be tiled before and after JVieak 
