• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

THE VASCULUM. Vol. VIII. No. I. October. 1921. DOCUMENTARY FORMS OF PERSONAL AND PLACE NAMES. A. HAMILTON THOMPSON. The vagaries of medieval clerks in their renderings of personal and place names are familiar to all students of historical documents. While they are sometimes exaggerated in print by careless or incompetent editors, they are nevertheless remarkable enough to raise the question whether the authority of manuscript forms of such names can be safely cited as scientific evidence for their origin and development. Where we have local charters to deal with, or documents drawn up by persons whose acquaintance with a particular neighbourhood may be reasonably assumed, the value of forms which may occur in some variety can hardly be disputed. There may be, and there frequently are, clerical errors; but the local knowledge is first hand, and the student of philology and dialect cannot dismiss puzzling forms lightly in such a context. On the other hand, it is customary to attach considerable importance to the evidence of documents which have not this advantage. For the purposes of local history. the records of the various courts of the Crown are indispensable. From the rolls of Parliament and Chancery, and still more from the vest series of plea-rolls of the Curia Regis and its sub-divisions of the King's Bench and Common Bench, the history and customs of manors in all parts of England may be traced and information gained which otherwise would have perished. But these records were written at a centre of legal business by scribes who can have known few of the many places and people whose names they set down. Their work was official and mechanical, depending upon a knowledge of common forms and of their manipulation to suit particular instances. If the language which they used was Latin, they thought, at any rate during the period in which their legal terminology became stereotyped in French. They had no personal interest in the multitude of cases which came under their notice, and, save where some point of law was raised which excited their lively appreciation they followed their routine without much attention to individual details outside their immediate sphere. As recorders of the process of suits, of the non- appearance of defaulters and the 2 consequent issue of writs of distraint and attachment, of days given to litigants and of fines incurred by them, they are doubtless beyond criticism; but we may well doubt whether they were quite as accurate and methodical in their treatment of the names of the suitors and of the places mentioned in the pleas. A case in point is a suit, recorded in the Curia Regis rolls, which has its beginning at Michaelmas, 1224. Albreda or Aubrée, the widow of John of Birlawe, brought a suit in which she demanded as her dower the third parts of the vills of Birlawe, i.e., Barleyhill, Cronkley and Espershields, three hamlets a few miles to the west and north-west of Shotley Bridge. The actual details of the case are immaterial to our purpose, and of the persons with whom Aubrée came into litigation one only need be mentioned. This was William of Meynhermer, who figures frequently in Northumbrian lawsuits of this period. His name appears to have been a constant problem to the clerks, who spelt it, whether in English or Latin forms, at their will. Menullhereman, Mesnill Heremeri, Mesneheremer, Meinnilgarin, are four distinct forms which it assumed at their hands. The place-names, however, fared even more remarkably. "Birlawe" is a simple name; but in 1224 it is rendered as Balagh and Berlegh. At Michaelmas, 1225, we find Birlawe; and this, with unimportant variations, remains constant until the last that we hear of the suit in 1235-6. Similarly, Cronkley, which it is difficult to recognize as the Queneclive of the first entry, becomes Crumclive in 1225 and remains as Crumclive, Crunclive, Crumeclive or Crumbeclive. Espershields, on the other hand, received more elastic treatment. From Osbrhteshal in 1224, it becomes Esperdosel in 1225, to which succeed Estpringshal (1225), Estbrichtstokes (1226), Estwerchteshal (1229), Estbrictescales and Estberdesheles (1230), and Estperseles (1236). In all three cases it is clear that, as the suit proceeded, the names became more familiar to the clerks, and that they arrived at more or less settled forms; but it took some time for their rendering of the last to arrive at approximate correctness. Numerous parallel instances might be cited. Between1221 and 1224 we find one and the same manor under the forms Heleg', Herlegh, Holehaghe, Helleg', Hedlegh, and Estlegh. The context enables us to identify it with Healey, seven miles east of Hexham; but we might otherwise feel some perplexity. Thrunton, near Whittingham, again, in a suit which began in 1223, is successively Traynton, Trornton, Trowenton and Troweton. With such variations before us, only one conclusion seems possible. The names were taken down orally in 3 court, and the clerk treated them in his notes as they sounded to him, trusting entirely to his ear for the spelling. With the written records before us, we are tempted to imagine that he depended upon some authoritative original for his forms, while as a matter of fact, all that he had to rely upon in making up his rolls was the rough notes of the case made by himself or one of his fellow. As the names became more familiar to his ear, he reproduced them more accurately: what he heard at first as Queneclive he heard later as Crumclive, and so on. The gradual process from an incorrect to an approximately accurate form is highly interesting; but the efforts of an untrained ear to catch unfamiliar sounds and accustom itself to a pronunciation which was probably often imperfect or almost inaudible do not constitute first-rate evidence for the origin of a name or for its transitions of form. At any rate, before the evidential value of a casual form for etymological purposes is accepted, the circumstances in which it occurs should be carefully considered. What has been said of the plea-rolls may be illustrated further from medieval diocesan records. Here there is evidence that clerks often worked from dictation, and, in such large dioceses as Lincoln, with some 1750 parishes within its boundaries, most of the places can have been little more than names to them. But they were names which were thoroughly familiar, and consequently the forms employed are fairly stable, and variations, though many, are of a minor character. When, however, the clerks had to deal with the names of places in other dioceses and to depend upon their ears alone, we find curiosities akin to those of the plea-rolls. We might well give up "Wrlin" in the diocese of Hereford, mentioned in a Document entered in Archbishop Wickwane's register at York, c. 1284, as an insoluble riddle, were it not that the contemporary Hereford register proves it to be Wordyn or Worthyn, i.e., Worthen in Shropshire. The further we go from the local centre, the less trustworthy the forms become, until we arrive at the astonishing perversions of English names in the records of the Roman Curia and in the large number of documents relating to England which are included in the body of the Canon Law. In these last, where the legal significance was everything, and the individual place or person meant nothing to the writers, we may, by the careful exercise of our powers of identification, discover some unnoticed link in the history of some English church or monastory; but the strange shapes in which the names are concealed are valueless as regards the history of the names themselves. 4 THE PURPOSE OF THE ROMAN WALL. R. G. COLLINGWOOD, M.A., F.S.A. Among the many questions which historians and antiquaries have asked concerning the Roman Wall of Northumberland and Cumberland-the most striking and most discussed relic of antiquity, perhaps, in these islands-there is one that has been curiously seldom raised. What precise object had its builders in view? How exactly did they intend to use it, and how did they in fact use it? The question has not been raised because the answer has been taken for granted. It has always been assumed that the Wall was a military work in the fullest sense, a continuous fortification like the wall of a town, designed to repel or at least to check invading armies not, in this case, attacking the outskirts of any mere city but those of a province. The Roman troops have always been imagined lining the top of the Wall and from that strong position, entrenched as it were on the rampart-walk behind the parapet, repelling the attacks of Caledonian armies that attempted to carry the work by breach or escalade. Many circumstances help to make such a view credible. The Wall was some eight feet thick and perhaps fifteen to twenty feet high including the parapet; its immense strength -for it is practically a concrete wall cast solid into a facing of ashlar masonry-rendered it proof against anything short of scientific mining-work such as that of the Middle Ages; its tactical position, defended by a great ditch and in many places crowning the summit of inaccessible precipices, seemed specially designed for this kind of employment. But there are certain features of the Wall which have never been taken into account by this view, and seem hardly capable of being reconciled with it. The object of this paper is to state them, and to suggest a possible explanation of them. (1) The ordinary view has had the advantage of statement in late years by a man peculiarly qualified for the work.

Load more

  154

Copy Link