Examination of an Infcription thought no Specimens were to be found before the thirteenth cen- tury, and Dr.Wallis imagined they might be traced in the times of the Saxons. Manufcripts indifputably coetaneous muft decide this point; and with all due fubmiffion to their talents, natural and acquired, when applied to other fubje&s more in their own lines of purfuit, the manufcripts ought to be examined by perfons better converfant in this branch of antiquities than thefe learned men feem to have been, if a judgment may be formed of their penetration and experience from their unfuccefsful readings of infcriptions on ftone and wood. Mr. North has well criticifed Dr. Ward's expofition of the date on the gateway near the great bridge at Cambridge [k~] ; and you have made fome pertinent remarks on his erroneous conception of the letters in the Rumfey window, as well as on the figures on the Mantle Tree at Saffron Walden, that are more likely to have been meant for vine tendrils on the Ton, that was part of the device of the name of Mydleton [/]. And after what I have fuggefted in the foregoing pages, may I prefume to advance that Dr. Willis's view and report of the Helmdon mantle-tree infcription deemed by him a paramount proof of the truth of his hypothecs, was fuperficial and unfatisfa6lory ? Not long after Dr.Wallis communicated his paper to the Royal Society, he was favoured by a learned friend m with a copy of an infcription over the great gate of the college of St. Auguftine at Briflol, which was concluded with thefe numerals I ito ; and this [/&] Archaeolog. V. X. p. 372. [/] Vetufta Monumenta, Vol. II. N" 19. [m] Cono-cuneus, &c. fol. 1684. Additions and Emendations, p. 153. The friend referred to was Dr. Thomas Smith, fellow of Magdalen college in Oxford (a reverend and learned perfon, and a curious obferver of antiquities, both at home and in foreign countries, as far as Greece and Turkey). 8 was
