The tame ruddocke and the coward kite,
The cock, that horiloge is of thorpes lite.
This diversity is well exemplified in our nomenclature. Thus the term in its simple form is found in such entries as ‘Adam de Thorpe,’ or ‘Simon de Throp,’ or ‘Ralph de Trop,’ all of which are to be met with in the one same register; while compounded with other words, we are all familiar with such surnames as ‘Gawthorpe,’ ‘Winthrop,’ ‘Hartrop,’ ‘Denthorp,’ ‘Buckthorp,’ ‘Fridaythorp,’ ‘Conythorp,’ ‘Calthrop,’ or ‘Westropp.’ Our ‘Thrupps,’ too, we must not forget as but another corrupted form of the same root.
There are two words whose sense has become so enlarged and whose importance among English local terms has become so great that we cannot but give them a place by themselves. They are those of ‘town’ and ‘borough.’ Such registered names as ‘William de la Towne’ or ‘Ralph de la Tune,’ now found as ‘Town’ and ‘Tune,’ represent the former in its primeval sense. The term is still used in Scotland, as it was used here some generations ago, to denote a farm and all its surrounding enclosures. In Wicklyffe’s Bible, where we read ‘and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandize,’ it is ‘one into his toun.’ In the story of the Prodigal Son, too, it is similarly employed—‘And he wente and drough him to one of the cyteseynes of that cuntre, and he sente him into his toun to feed swyn.’ Let me quote Chaucer also to the same effect—
Whan I out of the door came,
I fast about me beheld,
Then saw I but a large field,
As farre as ever I might see,
Without toune, house, or tree.
It is thus a name I have already mentioned, ‘de la Townshende,’ the parent of our ‘Townsends,’ ‘Townshends,’ and ‘Townends,’ has arisen. Another entry, that of ‘Robert Withouten-town,’ has, as we might have expected, left no issue. Such names as ‘Adam de la Bury,’ or ‘Walter atte Bure,’ or ‘John atte Burende’ (the latter now extinct, I fear), open out to us a still larger mass of existing nomenclature. The manorial residence is still in many parts of England, with the country folk, the ‘bury.’ To this or ‘borough’ we owe our ‘Burys,’ ‘Boroughs,’ ‘Borrows,’ ‘Buroughs,’ ‘Burkes,’ ‘Broughs,’ ‘Burghs,’ and even ‘Bugges,’ so that, though Hood has inquired—