intended to swear by God's face, or the face of Christ, he meant more especially to swear by some particular one painted by St. Luke, of whose works as a painter, the ancients pretended, as I think the Romanists still do, to have many specimens. See Dr. Cave's Lives of the Apostles, p. 180. Thus the faces of Christ being various, first his real face; secondly, the veronica, or his face impressed upon the handkerchief, concerning which see Calmet's Dict. in voc. and thirdly, this painted by St. Luke; the king chose to swear by this last, and this last might very well be expressed by per sanctum vultum de Luca, that is, de Luca factum.The conclusion is, that the usual oath of king William Rufus, was not by St. Luke's face, but by the face of Christ, depicted by St. Luke, who is said to have been very skilful in that profession, is at this day the reputed patron of the painters, and concerning whom and his works, as an artist, much I presume may be seen in a tract of Greyer the Jesuit, (and something probably about his pourtraitures of Jesus Christ) but for my part, I have not the book by me.

1754, Sup.

I am, Sir,
Yours, &c.

PAUL GEMSEGE.

XXXIII. On the Origin of Tradesmen's Tokens.

MR. URBAN,

THE best account of the money, called Tradesmen's Tokens, which we have at present, I presume is to be drawn from the different pages of Mr. Leake's Historical Account of English Money, London, 1745, 8°. Mr. Thoresby's Musæum, p. 379, and Mr. Drake's Eboracum, in the appendix, p. cx. from whence it appears, that from and during the reign of queen Elizabeth to that of king Charles II. the tradesmen and victuallers in general, that is, all that pleased, coined small money or tokens for the benefit and convenience of trade. And for this there was in a manner a perfect necessity, since, at that time, there were but few brass halfpennies coined by authority, and no great quantity of farthings, which likewise were in bulk very small.

Now this small money, by which I mean halfpence and farthings, were coined by the incorporations of cities and boroughs, by several of the companies there, and by the tradespeople and victuallers at pleasure, both in them, and

in country villages: it was struck for necessary change; the sorts were, as I said, halfpence and farthings; the figure was sometimes eight square, but mostly round; the devices very various; and the materials were lead, tin, copper, or brass. Every community, tradesman, or tradeswoman, that issued this useful kind of specie, was obliged to take it again when it was brought to them, and therefore in cities and larger towns, where many sorts of them were current, a tradesman kept a sorting box, into the partitions of which, (which we may suppose were nearly as many as there were people there that coined) he put the money of the respective coiners, and at proper times, when he had a competent quantity of any one person's money, he sent it to him, and got it changed into silver. One of these sorting boxes I once saw, at the city of Rochester in Kent, with ten or a dozen partitions in it.

And in this manner they proceeded till the year 1672, when king Charles II. having struck a sufficient quantity of halfpence and farthings for the intention and exigencies of commerce, these Nummorum Famuli were superseded, and an end was put to these shifts and practices of the victuallers and shopkeepers, as being no longer either necessary or

useful.

The inquiry then is, how this affair of coining was managed and conducted by the private tradesman. At the borough of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, Mr. Edward Wood, and afterwards his son Richard Wood, who were both of them apothecaries, coined money amongst others; and on the death of the late Mr. Edward Wood, son of the said Richard, the dies and the press were found in the house, from whence we are enabled to comprehend the whole process, which may be presumed not to have been very intricate. These Woods coined only halfpennies, and there were two sets of dies, one for the father's, and the other for the son's money, who I suppose had a set of dies made for himself on his father's decease. They were apothecaries, as was mentioned above, and the device was accordingly Apollo Opifer. These dies I have seen, and by the favour of the gentlemen concerned, to whom I am greatly obliged, one set has fallen into my possession. What I mean by a set is an obverse and reverse; these were cut upon two small pieces of steel, which were afterwards welded upon a larger block of iron. The press consisted of four pieces. of good oak, not less than four inches thick, and very strongly dove-tailed together. In the upper cross-piece was fastened an iron box with a female screw, through

which there passed a stout iron screw of an inch or more diameter, to the bottom of which was fixed one of the dies; whilst the other was received into a square hole made in the bottom cross-piece, where it lay very steady as in a proper bed. The screw was wrought by hand, in the manner of a capstan, by means of four handles affixed to the top of it, of about nine inches long each. And thus, after the copper was reduced to a proper thickness, shorn to a size, and commodiously rounded, many hundreds of halfpence might be coined, by two persons, in a very short time, by a man we will suppose to ply the screw, and a woman or boy to put on and take off the pieces. And yet, I assure you, sir, these Chesterfield halfpennies were extremely well struck.

1757, Nov.

Yours, &c.

S. P.*

XXXIV. Letter from Mr. Ames, Secretary to the Society of Antiquaries in London, to Dr. Bevis; in which were inclosed some ancient dates found in the pulling down part of London Bridge

in 1758.

SIR,

I HAD about two years ago, in some remarks on a date found among the rubbish in taking down the Black Swan Inn in Holbourn, given my opinion, that our numerical characters were first brought into England at the return of Richard I.+ from the holy wars, and that probably our people had learned them among the Saracens ; but that it was some time after this that they were received among us, or that people were convinced of their utility.

Now having looked farther into this matter, I continue still of the same mind, and would willingly be informed from you, how early these characters were introduced into astronomical MSS. in England, as I know you must have sought after such in the libraries:. for how astronomers could carry on their calculations in the Roman way of notation, I am not able to conceive.

The Arabians and Persians are said to have had these characters many ages ago; and it is certain they are to be

[* Samuel Pegge.]

He came back to England in 1124.

met with in Arabic books of great antiquity; but then it is held, that they had them from the more eastern nations: perhaps some of your foreign correspondents may be able to clear up this point.

I shewed you and sir Hans Sloane a little MS. of recipes in physic, wherein there are abundance of numeral characters for expressing the subdivisions of weights, used about the time of Henry III. The marks are so odd and many, that I cannot represent them without a copper-plate, as we have no type or letter to exhibit them withal. One thing is very singular, that when their numbers went beyond ten, they were obliged to put the Roman numerals over them to shew their power or value, as

ΧΙ XIX XX C CCCC M

VI.M

10.1, 109, 20, 100, 400, 1000, 6000, &c.

Soon after, or about this time, they changed the Arabic five, 0, to y or 4, or drew a stroke through it thus, o, or o The invention of printing finally settled their form as they have remained ever since.

The earliest date in Arabic characters that I have met with here, was published in quarto, in the year 1734, by my late worthy friend Mr. David Casley, among 150 specimens of various manners of writing (some few of which are still to be disposed of by his widow) is 1797,* which some read one thousand two hundred ninety seven, from the similitude of the last figure to our present 7, though I think it like enough to the first figure, to stand for one thousand two hundred ninety two.

Some will have it that the Moors brought the Arabic figures into Spain and Portugal, in the beginning of the eighth century, when they overrun those countries, from whence we learned them; this I think too far back, as we had then but little commerce; besides, had it been so, we should have met with them frequently in MSS. of ancienter times than we do; however, this I choose to submit to your judgment, and am,

Sir,

Yours, &c.

* See the original in the Cottonian Library, VESPASIAN, A. II. 1. or a strict copy in plate XV. of Mr. Casley's Book.

Dr. Bevis's Answer to the foregoing.

DEAR SIR,

I AM so little versed in matters of antiquity, that I do not know to whom you could have applied less qualified to give you satisfaction than myself. All I can say is, that it seems to me probable enough that King Richard's return from the east might bring us the first notice of the Indian or Arabic numerals. I always thought the proofs Dr. Wallis alleges for their much greater antiquity among us, too precarious to be relied upon; and I find that far better judges are of the same opinion. The oldest MS. I can remember to have seen, penned in England, where these characters are used, was in the library of the late William Jones, esq. F. R. S. and, I suppose, passed after his death, with his whole most valuable collection of mathematical books, into the hands of the present right honourable the earl of Macclesfield. It is a large folio, written by Richard Wallingford, monk, and afterwards abbot of St. Alban's, finished in 1326, and entitled Albion, consisting of astronomical canons or rules, and tables; the figures of four and five being very like those you have specified in your letter.

After all, perhaps, the Arabians themselves were not perfectly acquainted with the use of the characters in question, above a century or two before Richard's return; in support of which conjecture of mine, I will offer one plain fact to your consideration. We have in the Bodleian Library an Arabic MS. of Ibn Younis, a famous astronomer, who flourished at the latter end of the tenth century, as we know from his observations of some eclipses near Cairo, recorded in another MS. of his, brought into Europe by Golius, and deposited in the public library at Leyden. All the numerals employed in the Oxford book, as our learned friend the reverend Mr. Costard assures me, who collated it at my request, are the Arabic figures; and, what is very remarkable, wherever any number is expressed by them, it is immediately after explained in words at length; thus, if 123 is set down, one hundred twenty and three immediately follows.

I have no foreign correspondent to propose your query to, since the death of professor Schultens: I am told Dr. Sharpe of Oxford is an excellent orientalist, but I have not the honour of an acquaintance with him.

1758, Oct.

Yours, &c.