Place-names and history
Mawer, A. (Allen), 1879-1942
S4B , M44pf 1 A A = ^= — — n I A = 0 H ^^— — 1 0 = ^^= 132 0 ■ IE ;^^2 — 3 m _ en o 8 ^ = :> ^^^ 1 — 9 m ^^^ 1 — ^^= CD 9 = 5 m 3 1 = i — zzzzz: — i _ ■< 1 Mawer Place-Names and History THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY Robert Spence Watson Memorial Lecture delivered before the Literary and Philosophical Society , Newcastle-upon-Tyne, September 25, 1922 BY ALLEN MAWER, M.A. Published for the Survey of English Place-names LIVERPOOL THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF LIVERPOOL LTD. LONDON HODDER AND STOUGHTON LTD. 1922 Price One Shilling net U PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY Robert Spence Watson Memorial Lecture delivered before the Literary and Philosophical Society, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, September 25, 1922 BY ALLEN MAWER, M.A. Published for the Survey of English Place-names LIVERPOOL THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF LIVERPOOL LTD. LONDON HODDER AND STOUGHTON LTD. 1922 Any author's profits arising from the sale of this Lecture will go to the Funds of the Survey Di /V!4H^ NOTE In publishing this lecture, whose sole purpose is to further the interests of the Survey of English Place- names now being carried on under the patronage of the British Academy, two words of cordial acknowledg- ment are due. The first is to Professor F. M. Stenton, whose advice and criticism in this as in all else that has to do with the Survey, have been of the greatest help to the author ; the second to the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle-on-Tyne, to whose kindness the author is indebted for the occasion of its delivery. A.M. 695972 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY TN delivering the Spence Watson Memorial Lecture it is a matter at the same time both of duty and of keen personal pleasure for me to pay an opening word of tribute to the great Northumbrian in whose honoured memory it was founded. When I first came to Newcastle some thirteen years ago Dr. Spence Watson was still a leader in all educational and philanthropic work. His health was already extremely precarious, but one still saw flashes of the great leader of men, of the student eager alike for the promotion of learning and for the dissemination of all the great and good things which learning can give to men. He himself, both by speech and writing, had done much to revive our interest in those great pioneers of learning and letters who made early Northumbria famous throughout Western Europe. His whole life and work were standing proofs of the entire difference between chauvinist nationalism and true patriotism. To the former he was utterly opposed by birth, instinct, and upbringing. Inspired by the latter he showed himself a great lover of England, still more of English speech, English letters, and English history. They were to him the very breath of life and in him they lived again. In venturing to-night to speak to you upon Place-names, a subject finding its very roots in English soil and English history, one would fain hope that some breath of inspiration from the man whom we are assembled to honour may fall on one who, however imperfectly, would desire to promote the same broad and humane ideals of study for which he himself stood. 6 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY From the earliest times civilised men have been interested in the origin and meaning of the names of places. Historians indulged freely in speculations upon their meaning. Sometimes they may have hit upon the truth, but as a rule their speculations were based upon an entirely inadequate or false basis of philological knowledge. When the Venerable Bede tells us of the flight of St. Wilfrid to Selsey in Sussex, he informs us that Selceseu means ' island of the marine cow,'1 and he is probably correct if by his vitulus marinus he means a seal, for it is quite possible that they may then have frequented the Sussex coast. More puzzling is his interpretation of Strenceshalc, the scene of the Synod of Whitby, as ' bay of the lighthouse,'2 if indeed that is the proper rendering of the Latin sinus fart, and one knows to what lively controversy his rendering of the old name for Gateshead as caput caprae, ' the head of the goat,'3 has led. Asser, in his Life of Alfred,^ gives us Celtic and Latin renderings of Snotengabam, the old name for Nottingham. They are, respectively, Tigguo-cubauc and speluncarum domus, and Celtic and Latin alike mean ' house of caves,' which is curiously apt in its description of Nottingham, but cannot possibly be a rendering of the O.E. Snotengabam, which clearly contains a patronymic. A little later the author of a life of St. Oswald tells us that the island of Ramsey in Huntingdonshire has been quite fittingly so called from the Latin ramis, 1 branches,' and the English ig, ' an island,' for ' the island is as it were hedged round by great trees.'5 The interest of this monstrous hybrid is only excelled by that of the etymology which Prior Fossour suggested for Findon Hill near Durham. He is writing to Bishop Hatfield after the Battle of Neville's Cross and, when mentioning that the pursuit of the Scots PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORT 7 continued as far as Findon, he adds, perhaps by way of academic jest, that the place may have been prophetically so called as there the fin had been finally donne to the wars between the English and the Scots.6 Such etymologies are seldom correct, but they are always interesting ; and in this, as in other matters of legendary history, it is well to remember that what people believed to be the truth is often more important historically than the truth itself. In more recent times historians who have done great service to English, and more especially to Anglo-Saxon history, have turned again to place-names as a source of historical knowledge. John Mitchell Kemble based his far-reaching theories of family and tribal settlement of Early England, his famous ' mark- theory,' largely upon the evidence of place-names. Wherever he found names in -ing like Harling (Norf.), or in -ingham like Walsingham (ib.)9 or in -ington like Billington (Staffs.), he was inclined to interpret them as containing plural patronymic forms. Thus Harling means ' the sons of Hserel,' Walsingham means ' home- stead of the sons of Waels,' and Billington ' farm of the sons of Billa.' All such names are taken as evidence for some form of family settlement. Further, he believed that such names should be closely associated with settlements on the Continent involving the same personal names. We must thus link up the Wcelsings of Norfolk with the Vblsung family of Scandinavian saga, whose most famous member was Sigurd himself.7 Now there is no doubt of the existence of names of these types in England and the first two are specially frequent in the districts first settled, but when we look at the names more closely and examine their early forms we find that, in a large number of these names, the ing 8 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORT element, in the present day form, whether simple or compound, medial or final, goes back to something quite different in Old English and has no significance so far as any settlement is concerned. In still more recent times Dr. Round has advanced a most interesting theory with regard to the Saxon settlement of Britain based on a study of the -ingham names in Sussex8 and their distribution in relation to the rivers ; but though his conclusions are in the main correct, the evidence is to some extent vitiated by the fact that even so careful a scholar as Dr. Round has overlooked the fact that some of the hams go back to O.E. hamm rather than to O.E. ham. Now the latter suffix, the ancestor of our modern home, whatever its exact meaning in place-names may be, must have some historical significance in any treatment of the question of the Saxon settlement, but the former simply denotes * a confined space,' or ' a bend in a river,' and is of purely topographical significance. So far, then, we have full recognition of the value of place-names as a possible source of historical knowledge but false or unsatisfactory conclusions drawn from them. In all alike the causes are the same. Too much reliance has been placed on present-day forms or on forms of comparatively recent origin, and there has been a failure to collect adequate evidence as to the ultimate history of the name. It is only within the last twenty years or so, largely owing to the pioneer efforts of the late Professor Skeat, that the great truth has been established which lies at the base of all place-name study, viz., that it is impossible to place any satisfactory interpretation upon the history of a name until we have traced it as far back as the records will allow, and that in many cases, unless the records go a good way back, speculations upon its PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY 9 meaning are worse than useless. With the assertion of this cardinal truth place-name study passed at once out of the phase of speculative guesswork and became an exact science in which, so far as adequate evidence has been preserved, valid conclusions can be drawn which may be of real value to the historian. Before dealing with these conclusions one may, however, point out certain gains incidental to these discoveries, whose value the historian will readily recognise. In our early records the sites of the chief incidents of our history, the scenes of its battles, sieges, treaties, and the like, are naturally recorded in the forms in use at that time. In very early documents, such as Bede's Ecclesiastical History and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, these forms are at times so very different from their modern descendants that their identification is often a matter of great difficulty. Until a few years ago it was largely a matter of guesswork, and even to the present day many false identifications, with consequent vitiation of the history based on them, are current in our textbooks. Study of the historical development of the modern name will often explode the traditional identification and, what is more satisfactory, knowledge of the old forms of some other name will often reveal the correct one. The Chronicle mentions two great fights at Wodnesbeorg in the struggle for supremacy between Wessex and Mercia.9 This has been traditionally identified with Wanborough in Wiltshire.10 It was enough that each contained a w, an n, and a b, and that the site was not impossible. When we go back, however, in the history of the name we find that Wanborough was Wanbeorgan in Saxon times11 and cannot possibly be the same as Wodenesbeorg, whereas there actually is a barrow in Alton Priors in Wiltshire io PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORT which we know, on the authority of a Saxon Charter of 825, to have been called Wodnesbeorg.12 The name is no longer extant, the barrow being now known as Adam's Grave, but it is clearly the true site of the battle.13 Or again, the Chronicle in 833 and 840 mentions fights with the Danes at a place called cet Carrum. This has commonly been identified with Charmouth in Dorsetshire,14 but that is phonetically impossible. In Domesday Cernemude15 is the form given for Charmouth, and rightly so, for it stands at the mouth of the River Cerne. Mr. Bruce Dickins demonstrated recently that the place is really to be identified with Carhampton on the Somersetshire coast, whose early forms suggest that its first element is the very word carrum, ' at the rocks,' with which Northumbrians are familiar in Carham-on-Tweed. At Carhampton there is a wild and rocky valley which might fittingly be thus described.16 Place-names may tell us of otherwise unknown movements from one district or kingdom into another. The early forms of Conderton in Worcestershire and Exton in Hampshire are Cantuaretun and East Seaxnatmi,17 i.e., farm of the men of Kent and of the men of Essex respectively. These incursions, peaceful or otherwise, find no other record than in place-names. Place-names may preserve the last trace of some powerful people or ancient settlement. The Wych in Wychwood Forest in Oxfordshire is the sole surviving trace of the ancient Mercian kingdom of the Hzvicce, who settled in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and part of Oxfordshire.18 Florence of Worcester's Ttene19 as the name of the district in which the New Forest stands is the last trace of the Jutish settlement in South Hampshire. The Chertsey Cartulary tells us of a PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORT n district called. Sunninges20 clearly the name of some powerful family of settlers. The ' provincia ' has been lost, but it has left its mark in Sonning, Sunninghill and Sunningwell. Lost tribes may be recovered. Bede mentions a district which he calls in Feppingum21 and says was in the province of Middle Anglia. This was very effectively lost until place-name study showed that there is a place now called Phepson (formerly Fepsetnatun)22 in Himbleton in Worcestershire, not far over what must have been the southern border of Middle Anglia. Feppingas means the settlers in or on Fepp, whatever that was. Fepscete means the settlers at or from Fepp, and it is clear that the two places are connected. Probably there was a small settlement of men from the Fepping district at Phepson. There are two peoples of allied race to our own, one in Saxon times and the other in post-Conquest days, who played an important part in our history which has not as yet received its full meed of attention. I refer to the Frisians and Flemings. According to one tradition the Frisians actually took part in the conquest of England and we know that, as the great seafaring nation of Western Europe, their sailors helped Alfred against the Vikings. Both Frisians and Flemings have left a deep mark on our place-names. Among those due to the former we may mention Friesthorp and two Friestons in Lincolnshire, Friston in Lincolnshire and Sussex, two Frisbys in Leicester- shire, more than one Fryston in Yorkshire, Frizington in Cumberland and Frizinghall near Bradford. To the latter we may ascribe Fleming Hall in Cumberland and Flimby in the same county, Flempton in Suffolk, Fiendish in Cambridgeshire, Flimwell in Sussex. All the latter contain the name Fleming as their first element. 12 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY Hoary legends may also be destroyed by the same process of the study of the early forms of place-names. When we find Dukesfield near Hexham was called Dukesfeld nearly two hundred years before the battle of Hexham we can no longer believe that the farm was so called from the capture there of the Duke of Somerset after the Battle of Hexham.23 When Sandiacre in Nottinghamshire is already called Sandiriaca2i [sic] in Domesday, all the clerical authority in the world which has more than once been hurled at the head of the student of place-names cannot produce any conviction that the place is really so called from St. Jean d'Acre, and Dr. Round has written very amusingly of such legends as that of the founding of Colchester by King Cole, whose fate is sealed by the form Colnece aster in the Saxon Chronicle,25 which shows clearly that Colchester is the Roman fort on the River Colne and not the city once ruled over by old King Cole, and of Abbot's Lench in Worcestershire, which really has no ecclesiastical associations at all but instead was once held or owned by a man bearing the somewhat prosaic name of Abba.2Q But, as I said at the outset, these are merely incidental services which place-name study may render to the cause of historical truth. Its greatest value lies in the material which it affords, not for the correction of the minutiae of historical fact, important as they may be, or in its power of exploding ill-founded legend, but on the constructive side. Fortunate as we may be in comparison with other nations in the wealth of our early documents, it is still true that for the reconstruc- tion of our past history, more especially of our history before the Norman Conquest, our documentary evidence is often miserably inadequate and has for the most part been worked until it is threadbare. There PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORT 13 is little or no hope of much that is fresh being got out of the major documents, and on many points of interpretation scholars are in hopeless disagreement. Apart from the documents there are only two sources of information left open to us. The one is Archaeology and the other is Place-name Study. We are only just beginning to appreciate them at their true value, and the second is as yet an almost unworked mine. When these two fields have been fully explored we may hope to have a fresh store of historical facts of the utmost value, not only in themselves, but also because with their aid we shall be able to go back once more to our documents and we shall find in the light of our fuller knowledge of the facts that many dark places are now clear, many of the gaps in our documentary evidence have been made good, and it may even be that some of the contending historians will then find it possible to reconcile their differing judgments upon the matters in hand. Let us look in a little more detail at the ways in which this may be brought about. Among the darkest problems of our history are the stories of Celtic Britain and of the conquest and settlement of Celtic Britain by its Teutonic invaders. We know all too little of the racial divisions of Celtic Britain. Place-name study can do much in enabling us to distinguish between the Brythonic and the Goidelic elements in Britain. A study of our river names is revealing to us very clearly the existence of a pre-Celtic element in our midst, and with its aid we may hope to establish the racial affinities of these pre-Celtic inhabitants far more definitely and clearly than has ever been possible in the past. On the question of the survival of a Celtic population in Britain it has been pointed out long since that the 14 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY great majority of the Waltons, Walcotes, Walworths, Walfords, and the like, scattered up and down England give evidence of the survival of small groups of JVealas, i.e., foreigners or Britons, amid their con- querors, but Dr. Ekwall, in his recent epoch-making book on the Place-names of Lancashire, has shown how on the evidence of the place-names of that county it is possible to demonstrate the existence of certain clearly-marked islands of Celtic population which must have long survived amid the Anglian settlements, more especially in certain districts which, by reason of their physical features, were more or less inaccessible at that time.27 In an earlier book, Scandinavians and Celts in North-W est Britain, he showed, on the basis of similar evidence, how we may distinguish in Cumberland, Westmorland and North Lancashire, Celtic names of Brythonic origin from names due to the influence of Scandinavian settlers who had come from Ireland and the Isles, and were familiar with Gaelic methods of place-nomenclature. Such curious inversion com- pounds, i.e., compounds with inversion of the usual order of the elements, as we find in Aspatria, i.e., ash Patrick or Butterilket, i.e., booths Ulfketill, in place of the normal ' Patrick's ash ' or ' UlfketilPs booths,' could only have been given by Scandinavian settlers familiar with Irish methods of place-nomenclature.28 Place-name study is showing too how dangerous it is to assume that because a place bears a name which looks convincingly English, therefore the place-name, and ultimately the settlement itself, takes its rise from English settlers. What could be more convincingly English in origin than the old names Eoforwic for York, Searoburh for Salisbury, or the Suffolk Dunwich, going back to the thirteenth century ? One would say PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY 15 that they were good Anglo-Saxon names meaning respectively ' boar-dwelling,' ' fort of trickery,' and ' hill-dwelling,' did we not happen to know that all these forms are merely folk-perversions of earlier Celtic names, Eburacum, Sorbiodunum, and Domnoc, and one cannot but suspect that a great deal of this has gone on throughout the development of our English place-names. Unluckily we seldom have the evidence definitely to prove it. We come next to the evidence which place-names may throw upon the racial divisions and spheres of influence of our Teutonic conquerors, upon the fashion and manner of the English Conquest of Britain. Dr. Ekwall has shown recently how a study of them may help us in distinguishing the parts played by the Northumbrians and Mercians in the Anglian conquest of what we now call Lancashire.29 A comparison of the place-names of Kent with those of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight might reinforce the archaeological evidence and give at least30 one more criterion by which we might judge the extent and character of the impress made upon these districts by the early Jutish settlements of which Bede speaks. On the manner of the settlement we should have a flood of light if only we had really worked out the full meaning and force of the various suffixes used in our place-names. We have suffixes ton, worth, zvich and wick and ham, all commonly rendered more or less vaguely and unsatisfactorily as ' enclosure, dwelling, farm, homestead.' We are now beginning to discover that each of them probably once had a distinctive and well-defined meaning. Dr. G. B. Grundy, working on the evidence of Saxon Charters for Wiltshire, shows that the suffix worth occurs seventy-five times, in seventy-three of which it has an attribute prefixed. 16 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORT Of these eight are descriptive, eleven are uncertain, and no less than fifty-four are personal. On the other hand, there are forty-six wicks, forty-three of which are accompanied by an attribute. Thirty-seven are descriptive, four are uncertain, and two are personal. He rightly suggests that this contrast points to the fact that the worth was some kind of personal possession while the wick denoted something which belonged to the community generally, and goes on to show that the descriptive elements used with wick make it clear that in many cases we should be justified in rendering it as ' dairy-farm.'31 Or, to take another case from these districts, more than one scholar has recently suggested to me, quite independently, that the frequency with which place-names containing wic as their first element are associated with Roman remains suggests that in these cases at least wic should be connected with the Latin vicus. Wickham Bushes in Berkshire and in Hertfordshire, Weekley in Northamp- tonshire, and many other Wickhams are either adjacent to or on the line of a Roman road. Anotherr suffix of interest is stow. This is usually rendered ' place,' and we are not thereby committed to very much. Recently I examined all the names in stow for which I had early forms. There were some forty in all. In seventy-five per cent, of them the name was compounded with a saint's name or used in close association with it, or else was compounded with such a word as ' Christian,' ' God,' or ' holy.' In illustration of the first class I may mention Hibbaldstow in Lincolnshire from St. Hygebeald, Instow in Devon- shire from St. John, and Stow-on-the-Wold in Gloucestershire which was once Stow St. Edward. For the second class we may note Christow in Devon, Godstow in Oxfordshire and Halstow in Devon.32 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY 17 It is clear, therefore, that the chief use of stow in Early English place-names was, like that of the Welsh llan, to denote land dedicated to the service of some saint or of the church generally. Bridstow in Hereford- shire affords interesting confirmation of this. In the Book of Llandaff it is called Lann San Bregit.33 Instow Church is dedicated to St. John Baptist, Stow-on-the-Wold to St. Edward the Confessor, and Scawby, the next parish to Hibbaldstow, to St. Hygebeald. But not only have we to discover the meaning of the various suffixes in use, we have also to examine their distribution. Surely it is of the utmost import- ance in studying the question of the English settlement of Britain to note and endeavour to explain such facts as the following, based upon an analysis of the distribution throughout England of all those suffixes which can in any way be associated with the manner of the settlement, as distinct from those which are of a purely descriptive and topographical character. (For convenience' sake I present them in the form of percentages of the whole number of such names examined.) For the suffix ham the distribution figures are as follows : — Norfolk 26 per cent., Suffolk 22, Essex 15, Cambridge 22, Surrey 25, Sussex 21. As we go westward there is a regular and well-marked fall, and the figures for the Western border counties are : — Cheshire 5 per cent., Staffordshire 1, Shropshire 1, Herefordshire 3, Worcestershire 5, Gloucestershire, 2. On taking the same group of counties and examining the distribution of the suffix ton we get the following results : — Norfolk 33 per cent., Suffolk 22, Cambridge- shire, 40, Essex 17, Surrey 18, Sussex 31, in contrast to Cheshire 51 per cent., Staffordshire 48, Shrop- 1 8 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY shire 58, Herefordshire 66, Worcestershire 45, and Gloucestershire 48. At this stage of our studies we are hardly in a position adequately to account for these striking differences or for others which might be similarly demonstrated. We are only at the beginning of our investigations, but no one can doubt the intense significance from the historical point of view of these and many other like phenomena with which I might deal if time permitted. Another point of great interest is to try to discover, so far as may be, the relative age of the various suffixes in use in our place-names and thereby make some progress towards settling another important historical question, viz., the time at which various names and types of names first made their appearance on the map. We are too much inclined to look upon them all as more or less of the same age. The truth is, as Maitland pointed out long since, that the map of England was not written out, as it were, in one hand or at one time. It is ' the most wonderful of all palimpsests,'34 and if we are to interpret it aright we must distinguish the age and activities of the various scribes who have had a hand in it. For the solution of the first problem we may well endeavour to discover what suffixes were in living use at particular periods of our history. For the Anglo- Saxon period we have the incomparable wealth of material to be found in the Saxon charters from the seventh century onwards. From them we can gather very full information as to the types of place-name in use at that time in Southern, South-Eastern and South-Western England. We shall be safe in assuming that types other than these, found on the present-day map, are not of Anglo-Saxon origin. For the time of the Norman Conquest we have the all-important PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY 19 Domesday Book. It is a well-known fact that there are a good many place-names in Domesday which evidently contain as their first element the personal name of the tenant TRE or TRW recorded in the same entry. Thus Blackmanstone in Kent was held TRE by one Blacman.35 From such a name as this it is clear that the suffix tun was a living one in the days of the Conquest ; and if we examine the evidence of Domesday as a whole, we find, so far at least as my investigations have carried me, that the only suffixes denoting human habitation or settle- ment still in living use at the time of the compilation of the Domesday record were ton, cote, ley, worthy and field. I know of no case of ham or worth, and this is significant of their age. Coming still further down we find plenty of evidence for the active survival of ton as a place-name suffix in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in such names as Marlston in Berkshire, earlier Mar teles ton, held in 1264 by Richard Martel36 or Forston in Dorsetshire, earlier Forsardeston, held in 1285 by William Forsard.37 Similarly the active survival in post-Conquest times of the suffix by is witnessed by such names as Aglionby in Cumberland, involving the Anglo-Norman name Agyllun38 and by two interesting cases recently pointed out to me by Colonel Parker, President of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society. Halnaby in Yorkshire seems to have taken its name from one Halnath living there in 121 8, and Jolby in the same county from one Joel living at about the same time.39 Such names as these last show clearly that we are not justified in assuming that wherever we have the suffix by we have an actual Scandinavian settlement. We are only at the beginning of the examination of evidence of this kind, and unfortunately its collection is 20 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORT by no means an easy task, for the particular detail which illuminates the whole matter is only too often likely to remain unobserved even by the most careful reader of the document in which it is found. Its significance is by no means always apparent at first glance. With one other great field of historical investigation in which place-names evidence plays an important part you are doubtless in some measure familiar. I refer to the way in which place-names may be used in determining the extent and character of the Viking settlements in various parts of England. Critically used they may be of the utmost value. They may, as Dr. Ekwall has recently shown in his Lancashire book, enable us to distinguish the part played by Danish and Norse invaders in these settlements ;40 they may, as I tried to show in a lecture before this Society some two years ago, enable us to trace very distinct evidence of small Scandinavian settlements in Northumberland, where all the rougher and readier tests for such fail us entirely.41 Since that time a yet more interesting case has come under my notice. Eastern and North-Eastern England were, we know, settled by Danes rather than Norsemen ; but in the tenth century, Norsemen from Ireland and the Isles were very busy in Yorkshire and the Danelaw generally.42 They have left their mark in the decoration used in the carved stones of certain districts of Yorkshire as distinct from those which show the more common Jellinge or Anglo-Danish type of ornamentation.43 The presence of these Norse settlers is confirmed by three pieces of place-name evidence. First, the term Northman was in Old English used of a Norseman, as distinct from a Dane. Now there are many Normanbys and Normantons in the Danelaw, PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY 21 but there are none in Cumberland, Westmorland, or Lancashire. The apparent anomaly really proves the truth of the story of the Norse settlements in the East. Norse settlers in a Danish area would be distinctively so called by their Anglo-Danish neighbours. In a purely Norse area Normanton and Normanby would have no meaning. Every place might have been so called. Second, there is a puzzling group of names in Yorkshire — Arras, Arram, Eryholme, Argam, Airy Holme44 — all derived from the Norse erg, ' a shearing,' ' a pasture-farm.' The word is a Norse borrowing from Irish and unknown in Denmark. It could only have come in through Norse Vikings from Ireland or the Isles. Third, the Irbys and Irebys and Irton in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire are Irish bys and tons, so distinguished because settled by Vikings nicknamed the ' Irishmen ' from the fact that they had come from the Norse settlements in Ireland. Enough has been said, I hope, to show how important is the part which place-name study may play in the reconstruction of the past. Before I conclude I should like to say something also of its great value, its largely unsuspected value, as an aid not only in reconstructing but also in illustrating our past history. Again and again in our history lessons or lectures, whether they deal with political or social history, we might bring to bear effective evidence from place-names in concrete illustration of the points under discussion. Let me take a few illustrations. When we are speaking of the well-known distinction between bocland and folcland in Anglo-Saxon times, between land granted to some individual or corporation by hoc or charter, and folcland which was not so 22 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY distributed, would not the matter best be brought home, at least in a large number of the counties of England, by pointing out that all the Bucklands scattered up and down the country are nothing but cases of bocland and that, as is only natural, folcland as a place-name is much more rare, indeed, I only know of one case, that of Faulkland in Somersetshire ?45 The way in which, with the one exception of Buckland in Lincolnshire, the Bucklands are confined to the South of England gives cause for reflection as to whether the system of grant by hoc or charter ever really prevailed to any great extent outside that area. Or we may be speaking of the assessment of all estates at so many hides and mentioning how common was the grouping of these hides in blocks of five and ten units or multiples of these. We could, in illustra- tion of this, point not only to the familiar Hyde as a place-name, which you will find all over the South and Midlands, but still better, one could point to a Fivehead in Somersetshire, three Fifeheads in Dorsetshire, Fyfield in Gloucestershire, two Fyfields in Berkshire and one in Hampshire and one in Essex, two Fifields in Oxfordshire and two in Wiltshire, each representing an earlier ' Five-hide.' Of these some ten are mentioned in Domesday and seven are actually assessed at five hides.46 One of the Berkshire Fyfields is assessed at twenty hides — a remarkable increase, while the Somerset Fivehead is assessed at only one-and-a-half hides. The ten-hide unit is illustrated in Tinhead in Wiltshire, for earlier ' ten-hide ' and the same is still more effectively disguised in Combe-in-Teignhead in Devonshire. Unluckily, neither of these is mentioned in Domesday, but we have a good example of a higher multiple in Piddle Trenthide, also known as Piddle thretty or thirty Hide in the Middle Ages. This is PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY 23 duly assessed at that amount in Domesday.47 The present-day forms show how completely the origin of many of these names has been forgotten. We are all familiar with the old division of the shires into hundreds or, in the Scandinavian districts, into wapentakes, each with their moots, things, or assemblies, but what a flood of fresh light is thrown on their character by a study of the names of the meeting-places from which they took their names. The meetings seldom or never took place in any well-known centre of population, in village, town or city. Rather they were held in some wild and open country spot, chosen either because it was generally accessible to all who had a right to attend or else because of the presence of some ancient barrow, some cross or stone, some sacred object hallowed by time or superstition. So remote and unimportant were these centres of assembly that it is often very difficult nowadays to identify their actual sites. Let us look at some of their names a little more closely. We are all familiar with Glasgerion's ' full great oath by oak and ash and thorn,' the sacred trees of the North, and we are not surprised to find that many hundreds take their names from thorn-bushes, ash- trees and oaks. One of the thorn bushes is called, significantly enough, Spelthorne, i.e., the thorn of spell or speech. We have examples also of hundreds taking their names from the box, the alder, a clump of willows and a thicket.48 Some sixteen others, additional to these, include the element ' tree ' in their name. There are two ' long or tall trees,' an ' apple- tree,' a ' grey tree,' beside many others named after their owners. One of the Wiltshire hundreds met at an alder-stump ; in Northamptonshire we have a meeting in a grove with a new building, perhaps 24 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORT a hall of assembly in it ; and in the Danelaw we have three wapentakes whose names now end in land, which are really formed from the O.N. lundr, a grove, a word which may well have still had the same heathen associations which it had in Scandinavia.49 Hills natural or artificial, we are not surprised to find, often formed the meeting-place. Such are Pirehill or ' peartree-hill ' in Staffordshire, Smithdown or ' smooth down '50 in Norfolk, Radcliffe or ' redcliff ' in Somersetshire and Staincliffe or ' rocky cliff ' in Yorkshire. The two commonest suffixes denoting meeting-places of this type are law or low from O.E. hlaw, and barrow or borough from O.E. beorg. Either of these O.E. words may be used equally well of a hill or artificial mound, whether barrow or mote-hill. Among them we find two ' rough ' barrows, a ' long ' barrow, two ' swains ' or peasants' barrows, a ' knights ' or freemen's barrow, and many others named from their owners, or yet more probably from the hero or chieftain whose burial place they had once formed.51 Closely allied to these we have, especially in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, hundreds whose name ends in O.N. haugr, the Scandinavian equivalent of the terms just discussed. Among them we may note especially the Norfolk Thingoe, ' howe of the thing or assembly ' and Gallow, earlier Galghou, where the howe seems to have been crowned by a gallows. In Dorsetshire we find the corresponding British word in the Hundred of Creech.52. Ancient camps or fortifications as places of assembly are marked more than once by the presence of the suffix bury, the best example being perhaps Badbury Hundred in Dorsetshire which met at Badbury Rings, the site of an ancient camp. Of assemblies at stones PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY 25 we may note a Whitestone in Somersetshire and a Whitstone in Gloucestershire, Greatstones in Gloucestershire and Staine in Cambridgeshire. These are but a few among many. At times the place of assembly was marked by some staple, post or pillar as in the hundreds of Staple in Sussex and Wiltshire and of Thurstable, earlier Turestaple, in Essex.53 In such names as Swineshead in Gloucestershire and Manshead in Bedfordshire we may have, as Dr. Bradley has suggested, yet more interesting reference to some banner or other symbol bearing the figure of an animal or man used as the sign of assembly for that particular hundred. In Christian times it was often marked by a cross, as in Brothercross and Giltcross in Norfolk, and ■ Staincross and possibly Buckrose54 in Yorkshire. Convenience as a meeting-place probably accounts for the large number of hundredal names in which we have mention of a ford or bridge. The former are specially common in East Anglia, the latter are found in all parts of England. Mention of the numerous unofficial shires like Hexhamshire and several other shires in your own Northumberland, or of Hallamshire and Richmondshire in Yorkshire, which have survived into modern times, would serve to illustrate another great feature of mediaeval life, viz., the existence of ' liberties ' where the king's writ did not run, where some great noble or powerful corporation held practically independent sway. Of slightly different significance is the curious harness found in Berkeley Harness in Gloucestershire — about whose origin there has been much idle speculation — in Lugharness in Herefordshire and Bromfield Harness in Shropshire. All alike go back to the O.E. hierness, ' hearing,' and mark districts which 26 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY ' heard,' ' obeyed,' or ' belonged ' to the manors or estates from which they took their names.56 Two interesting questions of ownership are happily illustrated by place-names. There has been a good deal of discussion about the question of the ownership of land by women in early times. There is abundance of pre-Conquest evidence from place-names for the existence of this, and from all parts of England. We may note as examples Afflington in Dorset, Bucklebury in Berkshire, Balterley in Staffordshire, Wilderley in Shropshire, Hilborough in Norfolk, Worldham in Hampshire in Saxon England. The early forms of these names show that they contain the female names of Aelfrun, Burghild, Bealdthryth, Wilthryth, Hildeburh, Wserhild.56 Similarly in the Danelaw we have Raventhorpe in Lincolnshire, Gunthorpe in Nottinghamshire, Helperthorpe and Hilderthorpe in Yorkshire contain the Scandinavian women's names Ragnhildr, Gunnhildr, Hialp and Hildr.57 Investigation into the history of the Saxon church shows that often the church was regarded as a profit- yielding appurtenance to an estate and that one has in many cases to speak of an ' owned ' church. In the twelfth century the ' owner ' of a church could grant it to a clerk in formulae which would be appropriate, e.g., for the grant of a mill. The owner would stipulate for a yearly rent and the tenant would pledge his faith to pay it.58 This is illustrated by the way in which a place-name in church often has the owner's name prefixed to it. Alvechurch in Worcestershire is ' Aelfgyth's church,' Buckminster in Leicestershire is ' Bucca's minster,' Offchurch in Warwickshire is ' Offa's church,' while Pitminster involves the patronymic Pipping. In Layston in Hertfordshire, which was originally ' Leofstan's church,' the ' church ' PLACE-NAMES AND HIST0R1' 27 has been dropped and we are left simply with the owner's name.59 It is worth noting that in the first case we have a church owned by a woman. Or, to turn to a somewhat different field of historical study, viz., the part played by freemen in the Early English social system. What abundance of evidence would be furnished in illustration of this by a study of our place-names ! The numerous Knightons, Knightleys and the like scattered up and down England all contain as their first element the O.E. cnibt, ' young man,' ' freeman,' in its genitive plural form. In three cases we can actually trace the freemen in Domesday. Knighton in Berkshire was held by 5 liberi homines, in Dorsetshire by 2 taint and in Hampshire by 8 liberi homines. It is noteworthy that all these are TRE. By the time of William they were held by individual tenants.60 The word cild, our ' child,' the ' Childe ' of ' Childe Rowland to the dark tower came ' and other ballads, possibly represented a higher social status than the cniht. It is found in many of the Chiltons and Chilcotes which are fairly common in the South and Midlands and in Child Hanley and Childerley. In one case only have the ' children ' been traced in Domes- day, viz., in Childerley, which was held TRE by 4 sochemanni.61 Lower down in the social scale stood the swan or peasant, who has left us many names like Swanton in Norfolk, i.e., ' farm of the peasants,' two Swantons in Kent, Swanbourne in Buckinghamshire, Swanage in Dorsetshire, Swampton, Swanmore, Swanthorpe and Swanwick in Hampshire, and Swanborne in Sussex. In none of these cases have we in Domesday anything other than a single tenant, and this makes it look as if we should look upon the ' swains ' as persons dwelling at 28 PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY these places but not as holding or owning land. Yet more familiar are the Charltons which we find from Northumberland to the Isle of Wight, all from O.E. ceorla tun, ' farm of the ceorls or freemen.' One would like to trace their holders in Domesday, but the task is a big one. My impression is that there are not many cases like that of Charlton in Northampton- shire where we duly find TRE 4 taini liberi62 in possession. All these names alike, with the possible exception of those in swan, represent, I believe, settlements formed originally by some group of freemen as distinct from those which were in the hands of some great eorl and his retainers. That so few are in the possession of freemen in Domesday is a measure of the decline of freedom since the days of the Saxon Conquest.63 In similar fashion we might illustrate the Scandinavian social system and more especially its qualities of freedom, equality, and independence by reference to many names used in the Danelaw. One would, in the first place, point to the numerous Carltons in these counties, sown a good deal more thickly than the equivalent English Charltons. But there are also other types of name of interest in this connexion. Bonby in Lincolnshire and Burstwick in the East Riding, earlier Bondebrustzvyk,Q/k both contain the O.N. bondi, ' a peasant farmer,' apparently in the genitive plural form. Now Bonby was held TRE by Grinketill, Halfdanr, and four other taint,65 while we hear as late as 1297 that the ' bonde ' of Burstwick held of the king certain lands in that town.36 In Drointon in Staffordshire, Drinkstone in Suffolk, Dringhouses and Dringhoe in Yorkshire, we have illustrations of yet another social class, the dreng or warrior class, and these would serve to give colour to discussions of the PLACE-NAMES AND HISTORY 29 system of drengage tenure so widely prevalent in the Middle Ages in your own Palatinate and elsewhere in the North of England. 