Alanus Basset al’ dimid. wimunde ville p. 1 m.
A. B. had the other half of the vill of Wycomb as a knight’s fee.
Simon de Pateshall, Wottesdon. Manor of Wottesdon or Wotthesdam.
Joh. Rabuz equum, saccum, et Brocham in exercitu Wall’ ad Custum Regis post primam noctem.
His service was to find a horse, sack, and broach on an expedition into Wales, the king finding him in provisions, or probably keeping him and his horse after the first night. It was a personal service to the Sovereign; the sack containing eatables and the can or pitcher drink for the king’s use.
“Port” and “Port-Reeve.”
By J. H. Round, M.A.
PART III
(Continued from Vol. V. page 287.)
BEFORE tracing the working of this process in the similar case of ceaster, it may be as well to dispose etymologically of port. I have avowedly restricted myself, in this paper, to port as it occurs in “port-reeve.” But Professor Skeat, in his “Etymological Dictionary” (p. 457), while wholly ignoring, it would seem, its meaning in this and the similar compounds, assigns to the Anglo-Saxon “port,” not merely the derivation direct from portus, but an identity of meaning with that word. And in support of that meaning, “a harbour, haven,” he aptly adduces Alfred’s translation of Bede, in which “to tham porte” means “to the haven.” Here, however, it might perhaps be urged that Alfred was influenced in his choice of the term by the “portus” in the original before him. It need not follow that when not so influenced, he would have spoken of a haven as a “port.” Moreover, it is possible, and indeed probable, that the original sense of “port” was replaced by that narrower one of a “haven” or “sea-port,” which it had certainly come to bear by Middle English days, in consequence of that recurrence to Latin models, in which Alfred had himself led the way, and which would lead to what might almost be termed a re-introduction of the word into the language, fresh from the Latin itself.