At the same time came in common use the humble grave stone laid flat with the pavement, sometimes with an inscription cut round the border of the stone, sometimes enriched with costly plates of brass, as every person who has examined our cathedral and parish churches cannot fail to have observed. But either avarice, or an over zealous aversion to some words in the inscription, has robbed most of these stones of the brass which adorned them, and left the less room for certainty when this fashion began. Earlier than the fourteenth century very few have been met with, and even towards the beginning of that century it is thought they were but rare. Mr. Lethieullier says that one was produced at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries, dated 1300.[65] Weever mentions one in St. Paul’s for Richard Newport, anno 1317, and gives another at Berkhampstead in Hertfordshire, which he by mistake dates 1306, the true date being 1356. Upon the whole, where we have not a positive date, it is hardly probable that any brass plate met with on grave stones can be older than 1350, and few so old, but from about 1380 they grew into common use and remained so even to the time of king James the first. Only after the reign of Edward the sixth we find the old gothic square letter changed into the roman round hand and the phrase _Orate pro anima_ universally omitted. Towards the latter end of the fourteenth century a custom prevailed likewise of putting the inscription in French and not in Latin. These inscriptions are generally from 1350 to 1400, and very rarely afterwards. John Stow has indeed preserved two, which were in St. Martin’s in the Vintry, dated 1310, and 1311. The late editor of the Antiquities of Westminster affirms (from what authority he does not say) that stone coffins were never or rarely used after the thirteenth century.[66] If this assertion had been correct we should have had an æra from whence to go upwards in search of any of those monuments where the stone coffin appears, as it frequently does, but there is reason to doubt the accuracy of this author’s statement. As Grecian architecture had a little dawning in Edward the sixth’s time, and made a further progress in the three succeeding reigns, we find, in the great number of monuments which were then erected, the small column introduced with its base and capital, sometimes supporting an arch, sometimes an architrave, but every where mixed with them, may be observed a great deal of the Gothic ornaments retained, as small spires, ill carved images, small square roses and other foliage, painted and gilt, which sufficiently denote the age which made them, though no inscriptions are left. HERALDIC SYMBOLS. Some knowledge of heraldry is very necessary in monumental researches, a coat of arms, device, or rebus, very often remains where not the least word of an inscription appears, and where indeed very probably there never was any.