The Use of Arabic and Roman Numerals in English Archives
This subject was not considered in any great detail in the work of Mr. Johnson and myself upon Court Hand because in the medieval period Arabic numerals do not appear to any considerable extent in English Archives—indeed their appearance there at any date before the late fifteenth century may be taken as fairly strong evidence of foreign influence—and concerning Roman numerals there was little to say. Moreover the subject had been recently dealt with by Dr. Hill. But in the period after 1500 Arabic figures begin slowly to fight their way into English Archives—i. e. into business writings; and since this (the Archive) class of documents is precisely that which was more or less closed to Dr. Hill it seems worth while to indicate in a preliminary sketch the types of document which may be of use to any student interested in further research along these lines; and to give the results of some tentative examination of them by the present writer, even when these are negative. The questions of interest are—where and when do Arabic figures make their entry into English Archives ? how far are they affected by being used in conjunction with the special Set Hands which were such a feature of Archive writing in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? how far do they retain any of the primitive forms ? and can these be used at all as criteria for dating ?