Examination of an Inscription

a foreign feal, it does not directly fall within my line of inveftiga- tion. In the collection of fcals in Scotland, engraved at the ex- pence of the Society, there is not, as I believe, a fmgle feal that has a date ; but the Cottingham feal, of which there is an engraving in Vetufta Monumenta [c] , has a date, and the difference between the mode of marking this date and that ufed in Mr. Boys's un- known feal, is ftriking. Ancient infcriptions on monuments, as you have obferved, are " exprefled in a circumlocution of phrafes, or in Roman, or Romano Lombardic characters." On the Cottingham feal (dated A. 1322) though the infcription is in French, Latin nu- merals for the hundreds and tens (cccxx) are placed between mill, and fecounde. On the other feal the date is- noted in four common figures ; nor is it an improbable furmife, that before the introduc- tion of Arabic numerals, dates on feals were fo unfrequent, becaufe the margins would not allow room for fo many characters as were neceffary. There was a ftill greater difficulty in dating coins that were much fmaller than moft feals, and, according to fir Martin Folkes, there was not a coin minted in England before the fixteenth century that had the date of the year imprefled upon it [</]. Snelling iuggefts his belief that the penny of Edward the Vlth, A. 1547, is the firft Englim coin that bears the date of the year, which is in Ro- man characters ; and Folkes notices a piece fomewhat broader than a groat of the fame year, on which the date is thus marked, M. D. X4 7. Sic in Folkes, p. 28 [e. Indeed, under the reign of Henry the Vlith he mentions a very uncommon and fmgular coin, of which the infcription is Manl. Tecke^. Phares. 1494; but this he fuppofes to have been coined by the duchefs of Burgundy for Perkin Warbeck, when he fet out to invade England in that [r] Vol. 1. N 5. [d A Table of Engliih Silver Coins. l<) Ibid, p. *S,