“If a man be baptized by the name of Thomas, and after, at his confirmation by the bishop, he is named John, he may purchase by the name of his confirmation.... And this doth agree with our ancient books, where it is holden that a man may have divers names at divers times, but not divers christian names.”
This is all very plain. Even in James I.’s days thousands of our countrymen had no fixed surnames, and changed them according to caprice or fancy. But the christian name was a fixture, saving in the one case of confirmation. Lord Coke is referring to an old rule laid down by Archbishop Peckham, wherein any child whose baptismal name, by accident or evil thought, had a bad significance is advised, if not compelled, to change it for one of more Christian import.
The chief point of interest, however, in this decision of Lord Coke’s, is the patent fact that no thought of a double christian name is present in his mind. Had it been otherwise, he would never have worded it as he has done. Archbishop Peckham’s rule had evidently been infringed, and Lord Coke upholds the infringement. A child with such an orthodox name as Thomas (a name with no immoral significance) might, he lays it down, become John at confirmation. Even in such a case as this, however, John is not to be added to Thomas; it must take its place, and Thomas cease to be recognized.
Lord Coke, of course, was aware that Charles I.’s queen was Henrietta Maria, the late king Charles James, and his son Henry Frederic. It is possible, nay probable, that he was not ignorant of Thomas Maria Wingfield’s existence, or that of Thomas Posthumus Hobby. But that these double baptismal names should ever become an every-day custom, that the lower and middle classes should ever adopt them, that even the higher orders should ever go beyond the use of “Maria” and “Posthumus,” seems never to have suggested itself to his imagination.
There is no doubt the custom came from France in the first instance. There, as in England, it was confined to the royal and aristocratic circles. The second son of Catharine de’ Medici was baptized Edward Alexander in 1551. Mary Stuart followed the new fashion in the names of her son Charles James. The higher nobility of England slowly copied the practice, but within most carefully prescribed limits.
One limitation was, the double name must be one already patronized by royalty.
Henrietta Maria found her title repeated in Henrietta Maria Stanley, daughter of the ill-fated James, Earl of Derby, who for his determined loyalty was beheaded at Bolton, in Lancashire, in 1651. She was born on the 17th of November, 1630, and was buried in York Minster on the 13th of January, 1685. Sir Peter Ball, attorney to the queen of Charles I., baptized his seventeenth child by the name of his royal mistress, Henrietta Maria. He followed her fortunes after as before the king’s execution (Polwhel’s “Devon,” p. 157). These must both have been considered remarkable cases in their day. The loyalty of the act would be its sanction in the eyes of their friends.
But while some copied the double name of the queen (also the name of the queen’s mother), other nobles who had boys to christen mimicked the royal nursery of James I. Henry Frederick, Earl of Arundel, was born in 1608, and Henry Frederick Thynne, brother of Lord Weymouth, was created a baronet in 1641. No one need doubt the origin of these double forms. Again loyalty would be their answer against objections.
But side by side with these went “Maria” (used for either sex) and “Posthumus,” or Posthuma—the only two instances recalled by Camden as in use among “private men.” There seems good reason to believe that, for two or three generations at least, these were deemed, by some unwritten code, the only permissible second names outside the royal list.
The case of Wingfield is curious. Three generations, at least, bore a second name “Maria,” all males. The first was Edward Maria, of Kimbolton, who received the female title in honour of, and from, the Princess Mary, daughter of Henry VIII., his godmother; the second was Thomas Maria, adduced by Camden; and the third is referred to in the following document: