I may here observe that the words ICH WART are particularly distinct on a helmet, pictured in the Journal of the British Archæological Association, which the Secretary, Mr. Planche, in such matters the highest authority, regards as a tilting helmet. It may there have been in the original ICH WARTE, meaning I bide (my time).
But the centres and this inscription are the least difficulty. A second, frequently met with, is by far more puzzling. I could not give your readers any idea of it without a drawing: however it is found imperfectly depicted on the plates I have before mentioned in Nash's _Worcestershire_, and the _Gentleman's Magazine_, and I think I recollect also a very rude copy in a volume of Hearne's _Miscellaneous Works_, which I examined in the Gottingen Library, but whether belonging to the work or a MS. addition I cannot now call to mind. The fanciful and flowery form of its letters gives great scope to the imagination in assigning them their particular position in the alphabet, and the difficulty of reading them is enhanced by the doubts of German archæologists whether they are initials or component parts of a sentence. Herr Joseph v. Hammer Purgstall, however, in his version RECORD DE SCI GNSI, or in full _Recordamini de sancta Gnosi_, deduces thence his principal proof of Gnostic heresy amongst the calumniated Templars, in which I am sorry to say he has been too servilely followed in England: e.g. by Mr. Godfrey Higgins, in his posthumous _Anaclypsis_ (p. 830 note), as well as by E.G. Addison, _The Temple Church_ (p. 57), and by Mr. R.W. Billings more especially, who tacks to his account of this building an "Essay on the symbolical Evidences of the Temple Church, where the Templars are proved Gnostic Idolators, as alleged by Edward Clarkson, Esq." Had the learnedly hypothetic Austrian seen the engravings of the Crypt at Canterbury Cathedral (_Archæologia_, viii. p. 74.), and Ledwick's remarks on it in conjunction with the carvings at Glendalloch (_History of Ireland_, p. 174.), or those of Grymbald's Crypt at Oxford, he might have been expected to have attributed their monstrosities to his order, with as little hesitation and as thorough a contempt of chronology, or proved connection, as he has the curious and innocent sculptures of the church at Schöngrabern in Bohemia (vide _Curiositäten_, vol. viii. p. 501.).
