Sine tomb, sine sheets, sine riches.’
In the neighbourhood of Belper this surname may be commonly met with. Some change of fashion at this date, encouraged by the mayoralty, would readily give rise to the sobriquet in the metropolis. Some country squire or bumpkin carried the new style into Derbyshire, and the Belper people still relate the fact of the grotesque appearance he then made in their eyes by the nom-de-plume that as a necessary consequence arose. ‘Sic est vita nominum.’
[495]. ‘Agnes Blakmantyll’ (W. 11) occurs in an old York register, 1455, but must have become obsolete with the bearer, I should imagine.
[496]. ‘John Caury-Maury’ (V. 8) belongs to this class. It was a nickname given to him on account of the exceedingly coarse cloth in which he was attired. In Skelton’s Elynour Rummyng, some slatterns are thus described—
‘Some loke strawry,
Some cawry mawry.’
‘Item, presentatum est quod ‘Johannes Caurymaury,’ ‘Johannes le Fleming,’ ‘Hugo Bunting,’ ‘Isaac de Stanford,’ et Lucas de eadem consueti fuerunt currere cum canibus suis sine warento,’ etc. (Chronicon Petroburgense. Cam. Soc., p. 138.)
[497]. This may be local.
[498]. We all remember in ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ how Armado, being pressed to fight, refuses to undress, and says: ‘The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt; I go woolward for penance.’
[499]. One feels much tempted to add ‘Roylance’ to this list. It certainly has a most kingly aspect. Still there can be little doubt that it is but a corruption of ‘Rylands.’