The number of English arithmetics before the sixteenth century is very
small. This is hardly to be wondered at, as no one requiring to use even
the simplest operations of the art up to the middle of the fifteenth
century was likely to be ignorant of Latin, in which language there were
several treatises in a considerable number of manuscripts, as shown by
the quantity of them still in existence. Until modern commerce was
fairly well established, few persons required more arithmetic than
addition and subtraction, and even in the thirteenth century, scientific
treatises addressed to advanced students contemplated the likelihood of
their not being able to do simple division. On the other hand, the study
of astronomy necessitated, from its earliest days as a science,
considerable skill and accuracy in computation, not only in the
calculation of astronomical tables but in their use, a knowledge of
which latter was fairly common from the thirteenth to the sixteenth
centuries.