Anne, daughter and coheir of Thomas Froximere of Wych, in Worcestershire, esq. and had issue Anthony Coket, esq. eldest son and heir, and Thomas, who purchased the manor of Brunsthorp in Norfolk, in or about 1570, where he resided. For a pedigree of whose descent see Blom. Nor. vol. vii. p. 6.

Their property in Ampton, it appears, was alienated in the early part of Henry VIII.'s reign, for in the twelfth of that King Sir Thos. Wyndham, knt. and Dame Elizabeth his wife, grant a lease for forty years of this manor, to Alys Wentworthe of Bury St. Edmund's, and John Croft of the county of Suffolk, gent. which lease was soon after transferred to Edward Coket, esq. and by deed dated June 29, in the thirty-fourth of the same King, Anthony Coket his son, resigns all claims by virtue of the said lease, to Sir Thomas Darcy, knt. then

owner.

Edward Coket died in or about 1543, and soon after Anthony Coket sold his estates in Appleton and West-Newton, and removed to South Myms in Hertfordshire.

In the chancel of the Church of Ickworth in this county, is a black marble slab, with the arms of Hervey, impaling Coket, and this inscription :

"In memory of William Harve' born in 1464, died 1538, and of Joan his wife, daughter of John Cocket of Ampton in Suffolk, both buried in St. Mary's Church at St. Edmund's Bury."

William Hervey was eldest son and heir of Thomas Hervey of Ickworth, and Jane his wife, sole daughter and heiress of Henry Drury, late of the same parish, esq. and by the above Joan Coket had issue John eldest son and heir, whose lineal descendants were created Baron Hervey of Ickworth by Queen Anne, Earl of Bristol by George I. and advanced to the more honourable title of Marquis of Bristol, and Earl Jermyn of Horningsheath in 1826. Sir Nicholas Hervey, second son of the above Wm. and Joan, was of the privy chamber to King Henry VIII.; his descendants also became ennobled in the eighteenth of King James I. by the title of Baron of Ross, in the county of Wexford in Ireland, afterwards, 3 Charles I. created Lord Hervey of Kidbrook in England.

In an old register belonging to the

grave,

For he in life commendam none could have."

"Mr. John Hare, Richmond Herald, says, that this John Dowe married Anne, daughter of Thos. Coket, sister to his great grandfather Froximere Coket, of Brunsthorp, esq. She outlived him, and was very charitable to the poor, and a benefactress to the Church of Attleburgh, where she was buried in 1626, and her husband in 1620."

Other female members of this family formed alliances with the houses of Yelverton, Bedingfield, Briggs, Butts, &c. all families of great antiquity and the first respectability, with the exception of poor old John Dowe, who, had he bequeathed a handsome mortuary at his death, would most likely have escaped the above severe censure on his character, however penurious his former life might have been.

Coket bare, Party per bend Argent and Sable, three fleur-de-lis in bend Counterchanged. A. P.

SHOULD the annexed Letter, addressed by Mr. George Vertue to Mr. Charles Christian, relative to the portraits of Milton, not have been printed, perhaps you may think it worthy to be admitted into your Magazine. It is copied from a transcript in Dr. Birch's hand-writing, in MS. Add. Brit. Mus. No. *5017, f. 71. This Letter, together with five other original ones, addressed to Milton, viz.; two written in Greek from Diodati, one in Latin from Petrus Heimbachius, one in Latin from Leo Ashema, and one in Italian from Carolo Dati, are stated to have been taken out of a copy of Newton's edition of Milton,

1831.]

419

Mr. CHRISTIAN,

Pray inform my Lord Harley, that I have on Thursday last seen the daughter of Milton, the poet. I carried with me two or three different prints of Milton's picture, which she immediately knew to be like her father, and told me her mother-in-law, living in Cheshire, had two pictures of him, one when he was a school-boy, and the other when above twenty. She knew of no other picture of him, because she was several years in Ireland before and after his death. She was the youngest of Milton's daughters by his first wife, and was taught to read to her father several languages.

Mr. Addison was desirous to see her once, and desired she would bring with her testimonials of her being Milton's daughter. But as soon as she came into the room, he told her she needed none, her face having much of the likeness of the pictures he had seen of him.

For my part, I find the features of her face very much like the prints. I showed her the painting I have to engrave, which she believes not to be her father's picture, it being of a brown complexion and black hair, and curled locks. On the contrary, he was of a fair complexion, a little red in his cheeks, and light brown lank hair.

I desire you would acquaint Mr. Prior I was so unfortunate to wait on him on Thursday morning last, just after he was gone out of town. It was [with] this intent, to inquire of him if he remembers a picture of Milton in the late Lord Dorset's collection, as I am told this was; or if he can inform me how I shall inquire or know the truth of this affair, I should be much oblig'd to him, being very willing to have all certainty on

Mr. URBAN,

GEO. VERTue.

Hotham, near Market
Weighton, May 7.

IN that elegant and interesting work, Archdeacon Coxe's Life of Benjamin Stillingfleet, I have recently noticed two (in my humble opinion, incorrect) statements, which appear to me to be of some little moment, as they affect a character, of whom, in the estimate of Archbishop Tillotson, "ecclesia nostra gloriatur." It is not intended to impute any shadow of blame to the late worthy Archdeacon. He could write only as the documents before him guided his hand. I presume to do nothing more, when I beg leave to differ from these assertions :-that Bishop Stillingfleet was not reconciled to his eldest son before his death; and that he did not remember him in his will.

Over the conduct of this son, in the earlier part of his life, it will be no disadvantage to draw a veil. From a note in Archdeacon Coxe's work (vol. i. p. 3), it clearly appears that Bishop Stillingfleet had advanced to him upwards of one thousand pounds beyond what he might be entitled to under his mother's marriage settlement; no inconsiderable sum, when the very different value of money in the reign of King William the Third is considered, and when it is taken into the account, that the Bishop's riches were intellectual, rather than pecuniary; that he voluntarily discharged a brother's debts, as well as extended assistance to different relatives; and, that he had to provide for other children, who were the comfort and support of his declining years. Dr. Edward Stillingfleet himself in a penitent letter to his father, now before me, after acknowledging an act of "unexpected" paternal kindness, freely admits that "none but so indulgent a parent could, after so many high provocations, have had compassion on a son who, by his own faults, hath rendered himself miserable,"

422

"And the name of the third is Hiddekel, that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth is Euphrates."

The city of Enoch in Nod, which Cain built after his banishment, has been placed in Susiana by Huetius, and in Arabia Deserta by Echard. Wells in his Geography of the Bible says, that it may possibly be Anocha. Of the memorials of a later age, which may still possibly be in existence, we read in Herodotus, 2, 106, Sesostris having subdued all the nations he passed through, erected in each country pillars with hieroglyphical inscriptions, significant either of their courage or cowardice. Herodotus mentions that he saw them in Palestine, and that "in Ionia there are two figures of this King formed out of a rock; one is in the road from Ephesus to Phocæa; the other between Sardis and Smyrna. Both of them represent a man five palms in height; the right hand holds a javelin, the left a bow; the rest of the armour is partly Egyptian, and partly Ethiopian." We are informed by the same historian, that Darius arriving at the sources of the Tearus in Thrace, was so delighted with the river, that he erected a column near the spot, in honour of its excellence, and that in the country of the Odrysians near Adrianople, near the river Artiscus, he raised an immense pile of stones, having ordered each of his soldiers to throw a stone on a certain spot as he passed. The columns of white marble which that Monarch erected near the Bosphorus with Assyrian and Greek characters, were removed to Byzantium. Yours, &c. E. W.

AS I have not met with any satisfactory account when the present

Roman letters were first used as numerals, or why those now in common use should have been selected for that purpose, I am induced to hazard a few remarks on the subject.

One of them is indeed commonly supposed the initial of the Latin term for a hundred, and another for a thousand; but if their origin had not been anterior to the cultivation of science and literature in ancient Rome, such letters would in every instance have been chosen as had borne some allusion to the quantity represented. And this has led me to

[May,

conclude that the original characters which have by degrees assumed their present form, were employed at a very distant period as the earliest and most simple mode of notation.

At first it was only necessary for the shepherd tending his flock to add notch to notch on a riven branch, as tallies were formerly kept in the Exchequer, and as cricket players now mark their game; or add to the number of lines inscribed upon a portable tablet in the manner milk-scores are still kept in the metropolis.

This kind of account, although fully sufficient for all practical purposes, when confined to a limited scale, must have been very inconvenient when extended to any length, as the entire number of incisions or notches were to be counted every time the aggregate was desired. We may therefore conjecture, as the mental faculties of these inhabitants of the plains expanded, an improvement took place in their tablets, by which the numbers inscribed could be reckoned with greater facility, and that this was effected by arranging the marks in a quintuple series; the first four units of every series being placed in an upright parallel position, crossed diagonally by the fifth, in the manner we sometimes see practised by carters, who chalk on the side of their wains the number of trusses of hay, or sacks of potatoes, with which it is laden.

In this manner would be formed the character to denote five, which we may fairly consider as the first invented. It is apparently taken from the leading feature of the first quintuple series, viz. the diagonal and last formed upright mark-V.

But from whatever source derived, we shall find that this angular character having been once adopted, was by change of position or duplicature, brought to denote every other character above five, now represented by numerals.

character was doubled, another of siTo express twice five, or ten, this milar form to the last being annexed, but in a reversed position, as if in imitation of the first and second quintuple group, X

To designate fifty, a change was made in the position of the character, one limb being placed vertically, and the other horizontally, L