“What say you? the Archbishop’s dead?
A loss indeed! Oh, on his head
May Heaven its blessings pour;
But if with such a heart and mind,
In Manners we his equal find,
Why should we wish for Moore?”
I might mention other similar attempts at rhymical puns on this name; but let this epitaph from St. Bennet’s Churchyard, Paul’s Wharf, London, suffice:—
“Here lies one More, and no more than he;
One More, and no more! how can that be?
Why, one More, and no more may well lie here alone,
But here lies one More, and that’s more than one!”
To this generic class belongs every name that suggests the familiar objects of the country. Even the trees supply their quota. Who is not aware of Mr. Harper Twelvetrees’ existence, and cannot see that his ancestor having made his abode beside some remarkable group of birch or oak or chestnut trees, has been styled by his neighbours “Peter atte Twelve-trees”? Hence the French “Quatrefages,” and more English “Crabtree,” “Plumtree,” or “Plumptree,” “Rountree” (once written “Rowantree”), “Appletree,” and “Peartree.” All these names still exist, and I find entries to prove they lived at least six hundred years ago. To many of my readers it may seem somewhat strange that a single shrub should be pressed into the service of nomenclature in this manner. But let him imagine himself without a surname, living in the country, in a lane, with no landmark adjacent but a stile, or an oak, or an ash. How could he escape being called by his neighbours John Styles, or Oakes, or Ash? If there were no trees, nor even a stile, how could he avoid being designated as John in the Lane, and finally John Lane? Snooks might be set by “Twelvetrees,” for it is but a corruption of “Sennoks” and that of “Sevenoaks,” a well-known place in Kent.
(d) The next division of local names is specific—viz. the names of towns or villages, such as Preston, Buxton, Oldham, Lancaster, Chester, York, and indeed all that class so multitudinous of which the old distich already quoted says,—
“In ford, in ham, in ley, in ton,
The most of English surnames run.”
Sometimes the “ley” gets corrupted. There can be little doubt, for instance, that Hathaway is but a mispronunciation of Hatherley, and that Ann Hathaway’s progenitor hailed from Gloucestershire. Was ever a more beautiful as well as clever punning rhyme made than that imputed to Shakespear? One verse must suffice:
“Would ye be taught, ye feathered throng,
With Love’s sweet notes to grace your song,
To pierce the heart with thrilling lay?
Listen to mine Ann Hathaway!
She hath a way to sing so clear,
Phœbus might wondering stop to hear:
To melt the sad, make blithe the gay,
And Nature charm, Ann hath a way:
She hath a way,
Ann Hathaway,
To breathe delight, Ann hath a way.”
Five Hathaways and three Hathways still commemorate her in the Directory. The termination “field” is corrupted into the form of “full” in several cases; thus Charles Hatfull’s name reads somewhat queerly. Of course he belongs to the Hatfields who figure just above him.
See the tendency to migrate into, and not from London. The name London is rare, as the Directory shows. A man leaving Buxton for the capital, would be Walter-o’-Buxton; quitting the capital for the Peak of Derbyshire, he would be Walter-o’-London. But the tendency being for a young aspirant after fame and wealth to go thither, and not thence, made the surname London of rare occurrence. Perhaps there has been more than one Whittington who has fancied the bells have bid him stay and try his luck again in that big centre of life and industry, whose title is the most familiar place-name in the world. Curious that the mightiest city of the mightiest empire should be so scantily represented in its own Directory. The cause, as I have shown, is simple of explanation. We may here set “New,” “Newman,” and “Strange.” A new comer would easily get the sobriquet of “Matthew the New-man,” or “William the Strange,” or “Henry the New,” in the fresh community to which he had joined himself. The sobriquet has stuck to his children, and still remains.