In a cloke withoute cote or gowne,
Save a raggid hood to kover his crowne
Like a rutter hoyda.
Rutterkyn can speke no Englyssh,
His tonge runneth all on buttyrd fyssh,
Besmeared with grece abowte his disshe,
Like a rutter hoyda.
The nickname ‘rutterkin’ proves the Flemish origin of these troopers. Their capacity for stowing away food and drink, from all accounts, is not exaggerated in the poem from which the above is an extract. We have just mentioned our ‘Bachelors,’ and this reminds us of our ‘Childs,’ and of the days of chivalry. The term ‘child’ was a distinctly honourable title in the olden times. It was borne by the sons of all the higher nobility; if by the eldest son, then in right of his title to his father’s honours and possessions; if more generally by others, then until by some deed of prowess they had been raised to the ranks of knighthood. In either case ‘child’ was the term in use during this probationary state. Thus Byron in his ‘Childe Harold’ has but revived the ‘Childe Waters,’ ‘Childe Rolands,’ and ‘Childe Thopas’s’ of earlier times.[[190]] We owe many existing and several obsolete surnames to this custom. Our ‘Childs’ are but descendants of such a sobriquet as ‘Ralph le Child;’ our ‘Eyres’ of such an entry as ‘William le Eyre;’ some of our ‘Barnes’ may be but the offspring of such a personage as ‘Thomas le Barne’ (now ‘bairn,’ that is, the born one); while ‘Stephen le Enfant’ or ‘Walter le Enfaunt’ represents an appellation that is now obsolete in England.[[191]] I need scarcely add that this last, in the form of Infante and Infanta, still bears the same meaning in the royal families of Spain that Child did in our own land in more chivalric days.
The details of early feudal life are wonderfully depicted by our nomenclature. Owing to the boundless and forced ceremony which arose out of the prevailing spirit of feudal pride, our official memorials are well-nigh overwhelming. Feudal tenure itself became associated with office, and none seemed too servile for acceptance. As has been said of Charlemagne’s Court, so might it be said of those of others—‘they were crowded with officers of every rank, some of the most eminent of whom exercised functions about the royal person which would have been thought fit only for slaves in the palace of Augustus or Antonine’—‘to carry his banner or his lance, to lead his array, to be his marshall, or constable, or sewer, or carver, to do in fact such services, trivial or otherwise, as his lord might have done himself, in proper person, had it so pleased him—this was the position coveted by youths of birth and distinction at such a period as this.’ Many of these officerships, or the bare titles, still linger round the court of our sovereign. The higher feudatories, of course, followed the example thus set them by their suzerain, and the lesser barons these, and thus household officers sprang up on every side. See how this has left its mark upon our surnames. ‘John le Conestable,’ or ‘Robert le Constable,’ I need not say, is still well represented. In the ‘Man of Lawes Tale’ the poet says:—
The constable of the castel doun is fare