Leaving Europe for a moment, a name of peculiar interest is that of ‘Sarson,’[[147]] or ‘Sarasin,’ a sobriquet undoubtedly sprung from the Crusades in the East, and found contemporaneously, or immediately afterwards, in England as ‘Sarrasin,’ ‘Sarrazein,’ ‘Sarracen,’ and in the Latinized form of ‘Sarracenus.’ The maternal grandfather of Thomas à Becket was a pure-blooded Saracen, settled in England. The ‘Saracen’s Head,’ I need not remind the reader, has been a popular inn sign in our land from the days of Cœur de Lion and Godfrey. It would seem as if they were sufficient objects of public curiosity to be exhibited. In the ‘Issues of the Exchequer’ of Henry VI.’s reign is the following:—‘To a certain Dutchman, bringing with him a Saracen to the Kingdom of England, in money paid him in part payment of five marks which the Lord the King commanded to be paid him, to have of his gift.’ Speaking of the Saracens, however, we are led to say a word or two about the Jews, the greatest money-makers, the greatest merchants, the greatest people, in a commercial point of view at least, the world has known. No amount of obloquy, no extent of cruel odium and persecution, could break the spirit of the old Israelitish trader. Driven out of one city, he fled to another. Rifled of his savings in one land, he soon found an asylum in another, till a fresh revolution there also caused either the king or the people to vent their passions and refill their coffers at the expense of the despised Jew. ‘Jury’ would seem to be a corrupted surname taken from the land which our Bible has made so familiar to us. It certainly is derived from this term, but not the Jewry of Palestine. It was that part of any large town which in the Early and Middle Ages was set apart for these people, districts where, if they chose to face contumely and despite, they could live and worship together. Every considerable town in England and the Continent had its Jewish quarters. London with its ‘Jewry’ is no exceptional case. Winchester, York, Norwich, all our early centres of commerce, had the same. Johan Kaye, in his account of the siege of Rhodes, says: ‘All the strete called the Jure by the walles was full of their blood and caren (carrion).’ Our ‘Jurys’[[148]] are not, however, necessarily Jews, as it is but a local name from residence in such quarters, and doubtless at one time or another during the period of surname establishment Christians may have had habitation there. ‘Jew,’ on the other hand, as representing such former entries as ‘Roger le Jew’ or ‘Mirabilla Judæus,’ is undoubtedly of purely Israelitish descent. But these are not all. Our early records teem with such names as ‘Roger le Convers,’ or ‘Stephen le Convers,’[[149]] deserters from the Jewish faith. We cannot be surprised at many of the less steady adherents of the ancient creed changing their religious status, when we reflect upon the cruel impositions made upon them at various times.[[150]] I suspect our ‘Conyers’ have swallowed up the representatives of this name. Even in the day of its rise we find it set down in one record as ‘Nicholas le Conners.’
So much for general and national names. To pretend to give any category of the town-names that have issued from these wide-spread localities were, of course, impossible. Such sobriquets as ‘Argent,’ from Argentan; ‘Charters’ and ‘Charteris’ from Chartres; ‘Bullen,’ ‘Bollen,’ or ‘Boleyn’ from Boulogne,[[151]] with ‘Bulness’ as representative of ‘le Boloneis;’ ‘Landels’ from Landelles; ‘Death’ or ‘D’Aeth’ from Aeth in Flanders; ‘Twopenny’ from Tupigny in the same province; ‘Gant’ and ‘Gent’ from Ghent, once ‘de Gaunt;’ ‘Legge’ from Liege (in some cases at least); ‘Lubbock,’ once written ‘de Lubyck’ and ‘de Lubek,’ from Lubeck in Saxony; ‘Geneve,’ once ‘de Geneve,’ and ‘Antioch,’ once ‘de Antiochia,’ are but instances taken haphazard from a list, which to extend would occupy all my remaining space. Many of these are connected with particular trades, or branches of trades, for which in their day they had obtained a European celebrity. If the peculiar manufactures of such places at home as ‘Kendall’ and ‘Lindsey’ and ‘Wolsey’ have left in our own nomenclature the marks of their early renown, we should also expect such foreign cities as were more especially united to us by the ties of industry to leave a mark thereof upon our registers. Such names as ‘Ralph de Arras’ or ‘Robert de Arraz,’ a sobriquet not yet extinct in our midst, carry us to Arras in Artois, celebrated for its tapestried hangings.[[152]] Rennes in Brittany has given birth to our ‘Raines’ and ‘Rains.’[[153]] Chaucer talks of pillows made of ‘cloth of raines.’ Elsewhere, too, he makes mention of ‘hornpipes of Cornewaile,’ reminding us that in all probability some of our ‘Cornwalls’ hail from Cornouaile in the same province. Romanee in Burgundy, celebrated for its wine, has left a memory of that fact in our ‘Rumneys’ and ‘Rummeys.’ Some of my readers will remember that in the ‘Squyr of low degree’ the king, amongst other pleasures by which to soothe away his daughter’s melancholy, promises her,
Ye shall have Rumney.
Our ‘Challens’ are but lingering memorials of the now decayed woollen manufactures of Chalons, of which we shall have more to say anon; and not to mention others, our ‘Roans’ (always so spelt and pronounced in olden times), our ‘Anvers,’ once ‘de Anvers,’ our ‘Cullings,’ ‘Cullens,’[[154]] ‘Collinges,’ and ‘Lyons,’ are but relics of former trades for which the several towns of Rouen, and Antwerp, and Cologne, and Lyons, were notorious. The rights of citizenship and all other advantages seem early to have been accorded them. In the thirteenth century we find Robert of Catalonia and Walter Turk acting as sheriffs, and much about the same time a ‘Pycard’ was Mayor of London.
I must stop here. We have surveyed, comparatively speaking, but a few of our local surnames. From the little I have been able to advance, however, it will be clear, I think, that with regard to the general subject of nomenclature these additional sobriquets had become a necessity. The population of England, less than two millions at the period of the Conquest, was rapidly increasing, and, which is of far more importance so far as surnames are concerned, increasing corporately. Population was becoming every day less evenly diffused. Communities were fast being formed, and as circumstances but more and more induced men to herd themselves together, so did the necessity spring up for each to have a more fixed and determinate title than his merely personal or baptismal one, by which he might be more currently known among his fellows.
CHAPTER III.
SURNAMES OF OFFICE.
A class of surnames which occupies no mean place in our lists is that which has been bequeathed to us by the dignitaries and officers of mediæval times. Of these sobriquets, while some hold but a precarious existence, a goodly number are firmly established in our midst. On the other hand, as with each other class of our surnames, many that once figured in every register of the period are now extinct. Of these latter not a few have lapsed through the decay of the very systems which brought them into being. While the feudal constitution remained encircled as it was with a complete scheme of service, while the ecclesiastic system of Church government reigned supreme and without a rival, there were numberless offices which in after days fell into desuetude with the principle that held them together. Still, in the great majority of cases the names of these have remained to remind us of their former heyday glory, and to give us an insight into the reality of those now decayed customs to which they owed their rise.
We must be careful, however, at the outset to remark that a certain number of these names ought, strictly speaking, to be set down in our chapter upon sobriquets. They are either vestiges of the many outdoor pageantries and mock ceremonies so popular in that day, or of the numberless nicknames our forefathers loved to affix one upon the other, and in which practice all, high and low alike, joined. For instance, no one could suspect such a sobriquet as ‘Alan le Pope,’ or ‘Hugh le Pape,’ the source of one of our commonest and most familiar names, to be derived from the possessor of that loftiest of ecclesiastic offices.[[155]] It could be but a nickname, and was doubtless given to some unlucky individual whose overweening and pretentious bearing had brought upon him the affix. So, again, would it be with such a title as ‘Robert le Keser,’ that is, Cæsar, corresponding to the French ‘L’empriere’ and the obsolete Norman ‘le Emperer.’ This is a word of frequent occurrence in our earlier poets. Langland says of our Lord, there was
No man so worthie