Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature
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Title: Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature
Author: Charles Wareing Endell Bardsley
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CURIOSITIES OF PURITAN NOMENCLATURE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
_Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 7s. 6d._
OUR ENGLISH SURNAMES: their Sources and Significations.
"Mr. Bardsley has faithfully consulted the original mediaeval documents and
works from which the origin and development of surnames can alone be
satisfactorily traced. He has furnished a valuable contribution to the
literature of surnames, and we hope to hear more of him in this
field."--_Times._
_CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY, W._
CURIOSITIES OF
PURITAN NOMENCLATURE
BY CHARLES W. BARDSLEY
AUTHOR OF "ENGLISH SURNAMES, THEIR SOURCES AND SIGNIFICATIONS"
"O my lord,
The times and titles now are alter'd strangely"
KING HENRY VIII.
London
CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1880
[_The right of translation is reserved_]
_Printed by William Clowes and Sons, Limited, London and Beccles._
DEDICATED TO HIS FELLOW MEMBERS OF THE HARLEIAN SOCIETY.
PREFACE.
I will not be so ill-natured as to quote the names of all the writers who
have denied the existence of Puritan eccentricities at the font. One, at
least, ought to have known better, for he has edited more books of the
Puritan epoch than any other man in England. The mistake of all is that,
misled perhaps by Walter Scott and Macaulay, they have looked solely to
the Commonwealth period. The custom was then in its decay.
I have to thank several clergymen for giving me extracts from the
registers and records under their care. A stranger to them, I felt some
diffidence in making my requests. In every case the assistance I asked for
was readily extended. These gentlemen are the Rev. W. Sparrow Simpson, St.
Matthew, Friday Street, London; the Rev. W. Wodehouse, Elham, Canterbury;
the Rev. J. B. Waytes, Markington, Yorks.; the Rev. William Tebbs,
Caterham Valley; the Rev. Canon Howell, Drayton, Norwich; the Rev. J. O.
Lord, Northiam, Staplehurst; and the Rev. G. E. Haviland, Warbleton,
Sussex. The last-named gentleman copied no less than 120 names, all of
Puritan origin, from the Warbleton records. I beg to thank him most
warmly, and to congratulate him on possessing the most remarkable register
of its kind in England. Certain circumstances led me to suspect that
Warbleton was a kind of head-quarters of these eccentricities; I wrote to
the rector, and we soon found that we had "struck ile." That Mr. Heley,
the Puritan incumbent, should have baptized his own children by such names
as Fear-not and Much-mercy, was not strange, but that he should have
persuaded the majority of his parishioners to follow his example proves
wonderful personal influence.
Amongst the laity, I owe gratitude to Mr. Chaloner Smith, Richmond,
Surrey; Mr. R. R. Lloyd, St. Albans; Mr. J. E. Bailey, F.S.A., Manchester;
Mr. J. L. Beardsley, Cleveland, U.S.A.; Mr. Tarbutts, Cranbrook, Kent; and
Mr. Speed, Ulverston.
Of publications, I must needs mention _Notes and Queries_, a
treasure-house to all antiquaries; the Sussex Archaeological Society's
works, and the _Yorkshire Archaeological and Topographical Journal_. The
"Wappentagium de Strafford" of the latter is the best document yet
published for students of nomenclature. Out of it alone a complete history
of English surnames and baptismal names might be written. Though inscribed
with clerkly formality, it contained more _pet forms_ than any other
record I have yet seen; and this alone must stamp it as a most important
document. The Harleian Society, by publishing church registers, have set a
good example, and I have made much use of those that have been issued.
They contain few instances of Puritan extravagance, but that is owing to
the fact that no leading Puritan was minister of any of the three churches
whose records they have so far printed. I sincerely hope the list of
subscribers to this society may become enlarged.
For the rest--the result of twelve years' research--I am alone
responsible. Heavy clerical responsibilities have often been lightened by
a holiday spent among the yellow parchments of churches in town and
country, from north to south of England. As it is possible I have seen as
many registers as any other man in the country, I will add one
statement--a very serious one: there are thousands of entries, at this
moment faintly legible, which in another generation will be wholly
illegible. What is to be done?
Should this little work meet the eye of any of the clergy in Sussex, Kent,
and, I may add, Surrey, I would like to state that if they will search the
baptismal records of the churches under their charge, say from 1580 to
1620, and furnish me with the result, I shall be very much obliged.
VICARAGE, ULVERSTON,
_March, 1880_.
NOTE.
W. D. S. in the Prologue = "Wappentagium de Strafford."
C. S. P. = "Calendar of State Papers."
CONTENTS.
PROLOGUE.
THE PET-NAME EPOCH IN ENGLAND.
PAGE
I. THE PAUCITY OF NAMES AFTER THE CONQUEST 1
II. PET FORMS 9
(_a._) Kin 9
(_b._) Cock 13
(_c._) On or In 17
(_d._) Ot or Et 21
(_e._) Double Terminatives. 30
III. SCRIPTURE NAMES ALREADY IN USE AT THE REFORMATION 34
(_a._) Mystery Names 34
(_b._) Crusade Names 35
(_c._) The Saints' Calendar 36
(_d._) Festival Names 36
CHAPTER I.
THE HEBREW INVASION.
I. THE MARCH OF THE ARMY 38
II. POPULARITY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 59
III. OBJECTIONABLE SCRIPTURE NAMES 70
IV. LOSSES 76
(_a._) The Destruction of Pet Forms 76
(_b._) The Decrease of Nick Forms 82
(_c._) The Decay of Saint and Festival Names 92
(_d._) The Last of some Old Favourites 99
V. THE GENERAL CONFUSION 109
CHAPTER II.
PURITAN ECCENTRICITIES.
I. INTRODUCTORY 117
II. ORIGINATED BY THE PRESBYTERIAN CLERGY 121
III. CURIOUS NAMES NOT PURITAN 128
IV. INSTANCES 134
(_a._) Latin Names 134
(_b._) Grace Names 138
(_c._) Exhortatory Names 155
(_d._) Accidents of Birth 166
(_e._) General 176
V. A SCOFFING WORLD 179
(_a._) The Playwrights 182
(_b._) The Sussex Jury 191
(_c._) Royalists with Puritan Names 194
VI. BUNYAN'S DEBT TO THE PURITANS 198
VII. THE INFLUENCE OF PURITANISM ON AMERICAN NOMENCLATURE 201
EPILOGUE.
DOUBLE CHRISTIAN NAMES: THEIR RISE AND PROGRESS.
I. ROYAL DOUBLE NAMES 213
II. CONJOINED NAMES 222
III. HYPHENED NAMES 224
IV. THE DECAY OF SINGLE PATRONYMICS IN BAPTISM 228
V. THE INFLUENCE OF FOUNDLING NAMES UPON DOUBLE BAPTISMAL
NAMES 233
INDEX 239
CURIOSITIES OF PURITAN NOMENCLATURE.
PROLOGUE.
THE PET-NAME EPOCH IN ENGLAND.
"One grows too fat, another too lean: modest Matilda, pretty pleasing
Peg, sweet-singing Susan, mincing merry Moll, dainty dancing Doll,
neat Nancy, jolly Joan, nimble Nell, kissing Kate, bouncing Bess with
black eyes, fair Phillis with fine white hands, fiddling Frank, tall
Tib, slender Sib, will quickly lose their grace, grow fulsome, stale,
sad, heavy, dull, sour, and all at last out of fashion."--_Anatomy of
Melancholy._
"Be the jacks fair within, the jills fair without, the carpets laid,
and everything in order?"--_The Taming of the Shrew._
I. THE PAUCITY OF NAMES AFTER THE CONQUEST.
There were no Scripture names in England when the Conqueror took
possession; even in Normandy they had appeared but a generation or two
before William came over. If any are found in the old English period, we
may feel assured they were ecclesiastic titles, adopted at ordination.
Greek and Latin saints were equally unnoticed.
It is hard to believe the statement I have made. Before many generations
had passed, Bartholomew, Simon, Peter, Philip, Thomas, Nicholas, John, and
Elias, had engrossed a third of the male population; yet Domesday Book has
no Philip, no Thomas, only one Nicholas, and but a sprinkling of Johns. It
was not long before Jack and Jill took the place of Godric and Godgivu as
representative of the English sexes, yet Jack was from the Bible, and Jill
from the saintly Calendar.
Without entering into a deep discussion, we may say that the great mass of
the old English names had gone down before the year 1200 had been reached.
Those that survived only held on for bare existence. From the moment of
William's advent, the names of the Norman began to prevail. He brought in
Bible names, Saint names, and his own Teutonic names. The old English
names bowed to them, and disappeared.
A curious result followed. From the year 1150 to 1550, four hundred years
in round numbers, there was a very much smaller dictionary of English
personal names than there had been for four hundred years before, and than
there has been in the four hundred years since. The Norman list was
really a small one, and yet it took possession of the whole of England.
A consequence of this was the Pet-name Epoch. In every community of one
hundred Englishmen about the year 1300, there would be an average of
twenty Johns and fifteen Williams; then would follow Thomas, Bartholomew,
Nicholas, Philip, Simon, Peter, and Isaac from the Scriptures, and
Richard, Robert, Walter, Henry, Guy, Roger, and Baldwin from the Teutonic
list. Of female names, Matilda, Isabella, and Emma were first favourites,
and Cecilia, Catharine, Margaret, and Gillian came closely upon their
heels. Behind these, again, followed a fairly familiar number of names of
either sex, some from the Teuton, some from the Hebrew, some from the
Greek and Latin Church, but, when all told, not a large category.
It was, of course, impossible for Englishmen and Englishwomen to maintain
their individuality on these terms. Various methods to secure a
personality arose. The surname was adopted, and there were John Atte-wood,
John the Wheelwright, John the Bigg, and John Richard's son, in every
community. Among the middle and lower classes these did not become
_hereditary_ till so late as 1450 or 1500.[1] This was not enough, for in
common parlance it was not likely the full name would be used. Besides,
there might be two, or even three, Johns in the same family. So late as
March, 1545, the will of John Parnell de Gyrton runs:
"Alice, my wife, and Old John, my son, to occupy my farm together,
till Olde John marries; Young John, my son, shall have Brenlay's land,
plowed and sowed at Old John's cost."
The register of Raby, Leicestershire, has this entry:
"1559. Item: 29th day of August was John, and John Picke, the children
of Xtopher and Anne, baptized.
"Item: the 31st of August the same John and John were buried."
Mr. Burns, who quotes these instances in his "History of Parish
Registers," adds that at this same time "one John Barker had three sons
named John Barker, and two daughters named Margaret Barker."[2]
If the same family had but one name for the household, we may imagine the
difficulty when this one name was also popular throughout the village. The
difficulty was naturally solved by, _firstly_, the adoption of _nick_
forms; _secondly_, the addition of _pet_ desinences. Thus Emma became by
the one practice simple _Emm_, by the other _Emmott_; and any number of
boys in a small community might be entered in a register as Bartholomew,
and yet preserve their individuality in work-a-day life by bearing such
names as Bat, Bate, Batty, Bartle, Bartelot, Batcock, Batkin, and Tolly,
or Tholy. In a word, these several forms of Bartholomew were treated as so
many separate proper names.
No one would think of describing Wat Tyler's--we should now say Walter
Tyler's--insurrection as Gowen does:
"_Watte_ vocat, cui _Thoma_ venit, neque _Symme_ retardat,
_Bat_--que _Gibbe_ simul, _Hykke_ venire subent:
_Colle_ furit, quem _Bobbe_ juvat, nocumenta parantes,
Cum quibus, ad damnum _Wille_ coire volat--
_Crigge_ rapit, dum _Davie_ strepit, comes est quibus _Hobbe_,
_Larkin_ et in medio non minor esse putat:
_Hudde_ ferit, quem _Judde_ terit, dum _Tibbe_ juvatur
_Jacke_ domosque viros vellit, en ense necat."
These names, taken in order, are Walter, Thomas, Simon, Bartholomew,
Gilbert, Isaac, Nicholas, Robert, William, Gregory, David, Robert (2),
Lawrence, Hugh, Jordan (or George), Theobald, and John.
Another instance will be evidence enough. The author of "Piers Plowman"
says--
"Then goeth Glutton in, and grete other after,
_Cesse_, the sonteresse, sat on the bench:
_Watte_, the warner, and his wife bothe:
_Tymme_, the tynkere, and twayne of his prentices:
_Hikke_, the hackney man, and _Hugh_, the pedlere,
_Clarice_, of Cokkeslane, and the clerke of the churche:
_Dawe_, the dykere, and a dozen othere."
Taken in their order, these nick forms represent Cecilia, Walter, Timothy,
Isaac, Clarice, and David. It will be seen at a glance that such
appellatives are rare, by comparison, in the present day. Tricks of this
kind were not to be played with Bible names at the Reformation, and the
new names from that time were pronounced, with such exceptions as will be
detailed hereafter, in their fulness.
To speak of William and John is to speak of a race and rivalry 800 years
old. In Domesday there were 68 Williams, 48 Roberts, 28 Walters, to 10
Johns. Robert Montensis asserts that in 1173, at a court feast of Henry
II., Sir William St. John and Sir William Fitz-Hamon bade none but those
who bore the name of William to appear. There were present 120 Williams,
all knights. In Edward I.'s reign John came forward. In a Wiltshire
document containing 588 names, 92 are William, 88 John, 55 Richard, 48
Robert, 23 Roger, Geoffrey, Ralph, and Peter 16. A century later John was
first. In 1347, out of 133 common councilmen for London, first convened,
35 were John, 17 William, 15 Thomas, (St. Thomas of Canterbury was now an
institution), 10 Richard, 8 Henry, 8 Robert. In 1385 the Guild of St.
George at Norwich contained 377 names. Of these, John engrossed no less
than 128, William 47, Thomas 41. The Reformation and the Puritan
Commonwealth for a time darkened the fortunes of John and William, but the
Protestant accession befriended the latter, and now, as 800 years ago,
William is first and John second.
But when we come to realize that nearly one-third of Englishmen were known
either by the name of William or John about the year 1300, it will be seen
that the _pet name_ and _nick form_ were no freak, but a necessity. We
dare not attempt a category, but the surnames of to-day tell us much. Will
was quite a distinct youth from Willot, Willot from Wilmot, Wilmot from
Wilkin, and Wilkin from Wilcock. There might be half a dozen Johns about
the farmstead, but it mattered little so long as one was called Jack,
another Jenning, a third Jenkin, a fourth Jackcock (now Jacox as a
surname), a fifth Brownjohn, and a sixth Micklejohn, or Littlejohn, or
Properjohn (_i.e._ well built or handsome).
The _nick_ forms are still familiar in many instances, though almost
entirely confined to such names as have descended from that day to the
present. We still talk of Bob, and Tom, and Dick, and Jack. The
introduction of Bible names at the Reformation did them much harm. But the
Reformation, and the English Bible combined, utterly overwhelmed the _pet_
desinences, and they succumbed. Emmot and Hamlet lived till the close of
the seventeenth century, but only because they had ceased to be looked
upon as altered forms of old favourite names, and were entered in vestry
books on their own account as orthodox proper names.
II. PET FORMS.
These pet desinences were of four kinds.
(_a_) _Kin._
The primary sense of _kin_ seems to have been relationship: from thence
family, or offspring. The phrases "from generation to generation," or
"from father to son," in "Cursor Mundi" find a briefer expression:
"This writte was gett fra kin to kin,
That best it cuth to haf in min."
The next meaning acquired by _kin_ was child, or "young one." We still
speak in a diminutive sense of a manikin, kilderkin, pipkin, lambkin,
jerkin, minikin (little minion), or doitkin. Appended to baptismal names
it became very familiar. "A litul soth Sermun" says--
"Nor those prude yongemen
That loveth Malekyn,
And those prude maydenes
That loveth Janekyn:
* * *
Masses and matins
Ne kepeth they nouht,
For Wilekyn and Watekyn
Be in their thouht."
Unquestionably the incomers from Brabant and Flanders, whether as
troopers or artisans, gave a great impulse to the desinence. They tacked
it on to everything:
"_Rutterkin_ can speke no Englyssh,
His tongue runneth all on buttyred fyssh,
Besmeared with grece abowte his dysshe
Like a rutter hoyda."
They brought in Hankin, and Han-cock, from Johannes; not to say Baudkin,
or Bodkin, from Baldwin. _Baudechon le Bocher_ in the Hundred Rolls, and
_Simmerquin Waller_, lieutenant of the Castle of Harcourt in "Wars of the
English in France," look delightfully Flemish.
Hankin is found late:
"Thus for her love and loss poor Hankin dies,
His amorous soul down flies."
"Musarum Deliciae," 1655.
To furnish a list of English names ending in _kin_ would be impossible.
The great favourites were Hopkin (Robert),[3] Lampkin and Lambkin
(Lambert), Larkin (Lawrence), Tonkin (Antony), Dickin, Stepkin
(Stephen),[4] Dawkin (David), Adkin,[5] now Atkin (Adam, not Arthur),
Jeffkin (Jeffrey), Pipkin and Potkin (Philip), Simkin, Tipkin (Theobald),
Tomkin, Wilkin, Watkin (Walter), Jenkin, Silkin (Sybil),[6] Malkin (Mary),
Perkin (Peter), Hankin (Hans), and Halkin or Hawkin (Henry). Pashkin or
Paskin reminds us of Pask or Pash, the old baptismal name for children
born at Easter. Judkin (now as a surname also Juckin) was the
representative of Judd, that is, Jordan. George afterwards usurped the
place. All these names would be entered in their orthodox baptismal style
in all formal records. But here and there we get free and easy entries, as
for instance:
"Agnes Hobkin-wyf, iiii{d}."--W. D. S.
"Henry, son of Halekyn, for 17-1/2 acres of land."--"De Lacy
Inquisition," 1311.
"Emma Watkyn-doghter, iiii{d}."--W. D. S.
"Thi beste cote, Hankyn,
Hath manye moles and spottes,
It moste ben y-wasshe."
"Piers Plowman."
_Malkin_ was one of the few English female names with this appendage. Some
relics of this form of Mary still remain. Malkin in Shakespeare is the
coarse scullery wench:
"The kitchen malkin pins
Her richest lockram 'bout her reechy neck,
Clambering the walls to eye him."
"Coriolanus," Act ii. sc. 1.
While the author of the "Anatomy of Melancholy" is still more unkind, for
he says--
"A filthy knave, a deformed quean, a crooked carcass, a maukin, a
witch, a rotten post, a hedge-stake may be so set out and tricked up,
that it shall make a fair show, as much enamour as the rest."--Part
iii. sect. 2, mem. 2, sub-sect. 3.
From a drab Malkin became a scarecrow. Hence Chaucer talks of
"malkin-trash." As if this were not enough, malkin became the baker's
clout to clean ovens with. Thus, as Jack took the name of the implements
Jack used, as in boot-jack, so by easy transitions Malkin. The last hit
was when Grimalkin (that is, grey-malkin) came to be the cant term for an
old worn-out quean cat. Hence the witch's name in "Macbeth."
It will be seen at a glance why Malkin is the only name of this class that
has no place among our surnames.[7] She had lost character. I have
suggested, in "English Surnames," that Makin, Meakin, and Makinson owe
their origin to either Mary or Maud. I would retract that supposition.
There can be little doubt these are patronymics of Matthew, just as is
Maycock or Meacock. Maykinus Lappyng occurs in "Materials for a History of
Henry VII.," and the Maykina Parmunter of the Hundred Rolls is probably
but a feminine form. The masculine name was often turned into a feminine,
but I have never seen an instance of the reverse order.
Terminations in _kin_ were slightly going down in popular estimation, when
the Hebrew invasion made a clean sweep of them. They found shelter in
Wales, however, and our directories preserve in their list of surnames
their memorial for ever.[8]
(_b_) _Cock._
The term "cock" implied _pertness_: especially the pertness of lusty and
swaggering youth. To cock up the eye, or the hat, or the tail, a haycock
in a field, a cock-robin in the wood, and a cock-horse in the nursery, all
had the same relationship of meaning--brisk action, pert
demonstrativeness. The barn-door cockerel was not more cockapert than the
boy in the scullery that opened upon the yard where both strutted. Hence
any lusty lad was "Cock," while such fuller titles as Jeff-cock, or
Sim-cock, or Bat-cock gave him a preciser individuality. The story of
"Cocke Lorelle" is a relic of this; while the prentice lad in "Gammer
Gurton's Needle," acted at Christ College, Cambridge, in 1566, goes by the
only name of "Cock." Tib the servant wench says to Hodge, after the needle
is gone--
"My Gammer is so out of course, and frantic all at once,
That Cock our boy, and I, poor wench, have felt it on our bones."
By-and-by Gammer calls the lad to search:
"Come hither, Cock: what, Cock, I say.
_Cock._ How, Gammer?
_Gammer._ Go, hie thee soon: and grope behind the old brass pan."
Such terms as nescock, meacock, dawcock, pillicock, or lobcock may be
compounds--unless they owe their origin to "cockeney," a spoiled,
home-cherished lad. In "Wit without Money" Valentine says--
"For then you are meacocks, fools, and miserable."
In "Appius and Virginia" (1563) Mausipula says (Act i. sc. 1)--
"My lady's great business belike is at end,
When you, goodman dawcock, lust for to wend."
In "King Lear"
"Pillicock sat on pillicock-hill"
seems an earlier rendering of the nursery rhyme--
"Pillicock, Pillicock sate on a hill,
If he's not gone, he sits there still."
In "Wily Beguiled" Will Cricket says to Churms--
"Why, since you were bumbasted that your lubberly legs would not carry
your lobcock body."
These words have their value in proving how familiarly the term _cock_ was
employed in forming nicknames. That it should similarly be appended to
baptismal names, especially the nick form of Sim, Will, or Jeff, can
therefore present no difficulty.
_Cock_ was almost as common as "_kin_" as a desinence. _Sim-cock_ was
_Simcock_ to the end of his days, of course, if his individuality had come
to be known by the name.
"Hamme, son of Adecock, held 29 acres of land.
"Mokock de la Lowe, for 10 acres.
"Mokock dal Moreclough, for six acres.
"Dik, son of Mocock, of Breercroft, for 20 acres."--"The De Lacy
Inquisition," 1311.
Adecock is Adam, and Mocock or Mokock is Matthew. In the same way
Sander-cock is a diminutive of Sander, Lay-cock of Lawrence, Luccock of
Luke, Pidcock and Peacock of Peter, Maycock and Mycock of Matthew,
Jeff-cock of Jeffrey, Johncock of John, Hitch-cock or Hiscock or Heacock
of Higg or Hick (Isaac), Elcock of Ellis, Hancock or Handcock of Han or
Hand (Dutch John), Drocock or Drewcock of Drew, Wilcock of William,
Badcock or Batcock of Bartholomew, and Bawcock of Baldwin, Adcock or
Atcock of Adam, Silcock of Silas, and Palcock of Paul:
"Johannes Palcock, et Beatrix uxor ejus, iiii{d}."--W. D. S.
"Ricardus Sylkok, et Matilda uxor ejus, iiii{d}."--W. D. S.
The difficulty of identification was manifestly lessened in a village or
town where _Bate_ could be distinguished from _Batkin_, and _Batkin_ from
_Batcock_. Hence, again, the common occurrence of such a component as
_cock_. This diminutive is never seen in the seventeenth century; and yet
we have many evidences of its use in the beginning of the sixteenth. The
English Bible, with its tendency to require the full name as a matter of
reverence, while it supplied new names in the place of the old ones that
were accustomed to the desinence, caused this. It may be, too, that the
new regulation of Cromwell in 1538, requiring the careful registration of
all baptized children, caused parents to lay greater stress on the name as
it was entered in the vestry-book.
Any way, the sixteenth century saw the end of names terminating in "cock."
(_c._) _On or In._
A dictionary instance is "violin," that is, a little viol, a fiddle of
four strings, instead of six. This diminutive, to judge from the Paris
Directory, must have been enormously popular with our neighbours. Our
connection with Normandy and France generally brought the fashion to the
English Court, and in habits of this kind the English folk quickly copied
their superiors. Terminations in _kin_ and _cock_ were confined to the
lower orders first and last. Terminations in _on_ or _in_, and _ot_ or
_et_, were the introduction of fashion, and being under patronage of the
highest families in the land, naturally obtained a much wider popularity.
Our formal registers, again, are of little assistance. Beton is coldly and
orthodoxly Beatrice or Beatrix in the Hundred Rolls. Only here and there
can we gather that Beatrice was never so called in work-a-day life. In
"Piers Plowman" it is said--
"_Beton_ the Brewestere
Bade him good morrow."
And again, later on:
"And bade Bette cut a bough,
And beat _Betoun_ therewith."
If Alice is Alice in the registrar's hands, not so in homely Chaucer:
"This _Alison_ answered: Who is there
That knocketh so? I warrant him a thefe."
Or take an old Yorkshire will:
"Item: to Symkyn, and Watkyn, and Alison Meek, servandes of John of
Bolton, to ilk one of yaim, 26{s}. 8{d}."--"Test. Ebor." iii. 21.
Surtees Society.
Hugh, too, gets his name familiarly entered occasionally:
"_Hugyn_ held of the said earl an oxgang of land, and paid yearly
iii{s}. vi{d}."--"The De Lacy Inquisition," 1311.
Huggins in our directories is the memorial of this. But in the north of
England Hutchin was a more popular form. In the "Wappentagium de
Strafford" occurs--
"Willelmus Huchon, & Matilda uxor ejus, iiii{d}."
Also--
"Elena Houchon-servant, iiii{d}."
that is, Ellen the servant of Houchon. Our Hutchinsons are all north of
Trent folk. Thus, too, Peter (Pier) became Perrin:
"The wife of Peryn."--"Manor of Ashton-under-Lyne," Chetham Society,
p. 87.
Marion, from Mary, is the only familiar instance that has descended to us,
and no doubt we owe this fact to Maid Marion, the May-lady. Many a Mary
Ann, in these days of double baptismal names, perpetuates the impression
that Marion or Marian was compounded of Mary and Ann.
Of familiar occurrence were such names as _Perrin_, from Pierre, Peter;
_Robin_ and _Dobbin_, from Rob and Dob, Robert; _Colin_, from Col,
Nicholas; _Diccon_, from Dick, Richard; _Huggin_, from Hugh; _Higgin_,
from Hick or Higg, Isaac; _Figgin_, from Figg, Fulke;[9] _Phippin_, from
Phip and Philip; and _Gibbin_, or _Gibbon_, or _Gilpin_, from Gilbert.
Every instance proves the debt our surnames have incurred by this
practice.
Several cases are obscured by time and bad pronunciation. Our Tippings
should more rightly be Tippins, originally Tibbins, from Tibbe (Theobald);
our Collinges and Collings, Collins; and our Gibbings, Gibbins. Our
Jennings should be Jennins; _Jennin_ Caervil was barber to the Earl of
Suffolk in the French wars ("Wars of England in France," Henry VI.).
Robing had early taken the place of Robin:
"Johanne Robyng-doghter, iiii{d}."--W. D. S.
Such entries as Raoulin Meriel and Raoul Partrer (this Raoul was private
secretary to Henry VI.) remind us of the former popularity of Ralph and of
the origin of our surnames Rawlins and Rawlinson:
"Dionisia Rawlyn-wyf, iiii{d}."--W. D. S.
Here again, however, the "_in_" has become "_ing_," for Rawlings is even
more common than Rawlins. Deccon and Dickin have got mixed, and both are
now Dickens, although Dicconson exists as distinct from Dickinson. Spenser
knew the name well:
"Diggon Davie, I bid her 'good-day;'
Or Diggon her is, or I missay."
"Matilda Dicon-wyf, webester, iiii{d}."--W. D. S.
The London Directory contains Lamming and Laming. Alongside are Lampin,
Lamin, and Lammin. These again are more correct, all being surnames formed
from Lambin, a pet form of Lambert:
"Willelmus Lambyn, et Alicia uxor ejus, iiii{d}."--W. D. S.
Lambyn Clay played before Edward at Westminster at the great festival in
1306 (Chappell's "Popular Music of ye Olden Time," i. 29). The French
forms are Lambin, Lamblin, and Lamberton, all to be met with in the Paris
Directory.
All these names are relics of a custom that is obsolete in England, though
not with our neighbours.
(_d._) _Ot and Et._
These are the terminations that ran first in favour for many generations.
This diminutive _ot_ or _et_ is found in our language in such words as
_poppet_, _jacket_, _lancet_, _ballot_, _gibbet_, _target_, _gigot_,
_chariot_, _latchet_, _pocket_, _ballet_. In the same way a little page
became a _paget_, and hence among our surnames Smallpage, Littlepage, and
Paget.
Coming to baptism, we find scarcely a single name of any pretensions to
popularity that did not take to itself this desinence. The two favourite
girl-names in Yorkshire previous to the Reformation were Matilda and Emma.
Two of the commonest surnames there to-day are Emmott and Tillot, with
such variations as Emmett and Tillett, Emmotson and Tillotson. The
archbishop came from Yorkshire. _Tyllot_ Thompson occurs under date 1414
in the "Fabric Rolls of York Minster" (Surtees Society).
"Rome, April 27, Eugenius IV. (1433). Dispensation from Selow for
Richard de Akerode and Emmotte de Greenwood to marry, they being
related in the fourth degree."--"Test. Ebor.," iii. 317.
"Licence to the Vicar of Bradford to marry Roger Prestwick and Emmote
Crossley. Bannes thrice in one day" (1466).--"Test. Ebor.," iii. 338.
Isabella was also popular in Yorkshire: hence our Ibbots and Ibbotsons,
our Ibbetts and Ibbetsons. Registrations such as "Ibbota filia Adam," or
"Robert filius Ibote," are of frequent occurrence in the county archives.
The "Wappentagium de Strafford" has:
"Johanna Ibot-doghter, iiii{d}.
"Willelmus Kene, et Ibota uxor ejus, iiii{d}.
"Thomas Gaylyour, et Ebbot sa femme, iiii{d}."
Cecilia became Sissot or Cissot:
"Willelmus Crake, & Cissot sa femme, iiii{d}."--W. D. S.
In the "Manor of Ashton-under-Lyne" (Chetham Society), penned fortunately
for our purpose in every-day style, we have such entries as--
"Syssot, wife of Patrick.
"Syssot, wife of Diccon Wilson.
"Syssot, wife of Thomas the Cook.
"Syssot, wife of Jak of Barsley."
Four wives named Cecilia in a community of some twenty-five families will
be evidence enough of the popularity of that name. All, however, were
known in every-day converse as Sissot.
Of other girl-names we may mention Mabel, which from Mab became Mabbott;
Douce became Dowcett and Dowsett; Gillian or Julian, from Gill or Jill
(whence Jack and Jill), became Gillot, Juliet, and Jowett; Margaret became
Margett and Margott, and in the north Magot. Hence such entries from the
Yorkshire parchments, already quoted, as--
"Thomas de Balme, et Magota uxor ejus, chapman, iiii{d}.
"Hugo Farrowe, et Magota uxor ejus, smyth, iiii{d}.
"Johannes Magotson, iiii{d}."
Custance became Cussot, from Cuss or Cust, the nick form. The Hundred
Rolls contain a "Cussot Colling"--a rare place to find one of these
diminutives, for they are set down with great clerkly formality.
From Lettice, Lesot was obtained:
"Johan Chapman, & Lesot sa femme, iiii{d}."--W. D. S.
And Dionisia was very popular as Diot:
"Johannes Chetel, & Diot uxor ejus, iiii{d}.
"Willelmus Wege, & Diot uxor ejus, iiii{d}."--W. D. S.
Of course, it became a surname:
"Robertus Diot, & Mariona uxor ejus, iiii{d}.
"Willelmus Diotson, iiii{d}."--W. D. S.
It is curious to observe that Annot, which now as Annette represents Anne,
in Richard II.'s day was extremely familiar as the diminutive of Annora or
Alianora. So common was Annot in North England that the common sea-gull
came to be so known. It is a mistake to suppose that Annot had any
connection with Anna. One out of every eight or ten girls was Annot in
Yorkshire at a time when Anna is never found to be in use at all:
"Stephanus Webester, & Anota uxor ejus, iiii{d}.
"Richard Annotson, wryght, iiii{d}."--W. D. S.
As Alianora and Eleanora are the same, so were Enot and Anot:
"Henricus filius Johannis Enotson, iiii{d}."--W. D. S.
Again, Eleanor became Elena, and this Lina and Linot. Hence in the Hundred
Rolls we find "Linota atte Field." In fact, the early forms of Eleanor are
innumerable. The favourite Sibilla became Sibot:
"Johannes de Estwode, et Sibota uxor ejus, iiii{d}.
"Willelmus Howeson, et Sibbota uxor ejus, iiii{d}."--W. D. S.
Mary not merely became Marion, but Mariot, and from our surnames it would
appear the latter was the favourite:
"Isabella serviens Mariota Gulle, iiii{d}."--W. D. S.
"Mariota in le Lane."--Hundred Rolls.
Eve became Evot, Adam and Eve being popular names. In the will of William
de Kirkby, dated 1391, are bequests to "Evae uxori Johannes Parvying" and
"Willielmo de Rowlay," and later on he refers to them again as the
aforementioned "Evotam et dictum Willielmum Rowlay" ("Test. Ebor.," i.
145. Surtees Society).
But the girl-name that made most mark was originally a boy's name,
Theobald. Tibbe was the nick form, and Tibbot the pet name. Very speedily
it became the property of the female sex, such entries as Tibot Fitz-piers
ending in favour of Tibota Foliot. After the year 1300 Tib, or Tibet, is
invariably feminine. In "Gammer Gurton's Needle," Gammer says to her
maid--
"How now, Tib? quick! let's hear what news thou hast brought
hither."--Act. i. sc. 5.
In "Ralph Roister Doister," the pet name is used in the song, evidently
older than the play:
"Pipe, merry Annot, etc.,
Trilla, Trilla, Trillary.
Work, Tibet; work, Annot; work, Margery;
Sew, Tibet; knit, Annot; spin, Margery;
Let us see who will win the victory."
Gib, from Gilbert, and Tib became the common name for a male and female
cat. Scarcely any other terms were employed from 1350 to 1550:
"For right no more than Gibbe, our cat,
That awaiteth mice and rattes to killen,
Ne entend I but to beguilen."
Hence both Tibet and Gibbet were also used for the same; as in the old
phrase "flitter-gibbett," for one of wanton character. Tom in tom-cat came
into ordinary parlance later. All our modern Tibbots, Tibbetts, Tibbitts,
Tippitts, Tebbutts, and their endless other forms, are descended from
Tibbe.
Coming to boys' names, all our Wyatts in the Directory hail from
Guiot,[10] the diminutive of Guy, just as Wilmot from William:
"Adam, son of Wyot, held an oxgang of land."--"De Lacy Inquisition."
"Ibbote Wylymot, iiii{d}."--W. D. S.
_Payn_ is met in the form of Paynot and Paynet, _Warin_ as Warinot, _Drew_
as Drewet, _Philip_ as Philpot, though this is feminine sometimes:
"Johannes Schikyn, et Philipot uxor ejus, iiii{d}."--W. D. S.
_Thomas_ is found as Thomaset, _Higg_ (Isaac) as Higgot, _Jack_ as
Jackett, _Hal_ (Henry) as Hallet (Harriot or Harriet is now feminine), and
Hugh or Hew as Hewet:
"Dionisia Howet-doghter, iiii{d}."--W. D. S.
The most interesting, perhaps, of these examples is Hamnet, or Hamlet.
Hamon, or Hamond, was introduced from Normandy:
"Hamme, son of Adcock, held 29 acres of land."--"De Lacy Inquisition,"
1311.
It became a favourite among high and low, and took to itself the forms of
Hamonet and Hamelot:
"The wife of Richard, son of Hamelot."--"De Lacy Inquisition," 1311.
These were quickly abbreviated into Hamnet and Hamlet. They ran side by
side for several centuries, and at last, like Emmot, defied the English
Bible, the Reformation, and even the Puritan period, and lived unto the
eighteenth century. Hamlet Winstanley, the painter, was born in 1700, at
Warrington, and died in 1756. In Kent's London Directory for 1736 several
Hamnets occur as baptismal names. Shakespeare's little son was Hamnet, or
Hamlet, after his godfather Hamnet Sadler. I find several instances where
both forms are entered as the name of the same boy:
"Nov. 13, 1502. Item: the same day to Hamlet Clegge, for money by him
layed out ... to the keper of Dachet Ferrey in rewarde for conveying
the Quenes grace over Thamys there, iii{s}. iiii{d}."
Compare this with--
"June 13, 1502. Item: the same day to Hampnet Clegge, for mone by him
delivered to the Quene for hir offring to Saint Edward at Westm.,
vi{s}. viii{d}."--"Privy Purse Expenses, Eliz. of York," pp. 21 and
62.
Speaking of Hamelot, we must not forget that _ot_ and _et_ sometimes
became _elot_ or _elet_. As a diminutive it is found in such dictionary
words as bracelet, tartlet, gimblet, poplet (for poppet). The old ruff or
high collar worn alike by men and women was styled a _partlet_:
"Jan. 1544. Item: from Mr. Braye ii. high collar partletts, iii{s}.
ix{d}."--"Privy Purse Expenses, Princess Mary."
Hence partlet, a hen, on account of the ruffled feathers, a term used
alike by Chaucer and Shakespeare.
In our nomenclature we have but few traces of it. In France it was very
commonly used. But Hughelot or Huelot, from Hugh, was popular, as our
Hewletts can testify. Richelot for Richard, Hobelot and Robelot for
Robert, Crestolot for Christopher, Cesselot for Cecilia, and Barbelot for
Barbara, are found also, and prove that the desinence had made its mark.
Returning, however, to _ot_ and _et_: Eliot or Elliot, from Ellis (Elias),
had a great run. In the north it is sometimes found as Aliot:
"Alyott de Symondeston held half an oxgang of land, xix{d}."--"De Lacy
Inquisition," 1311.
The feminine form was Elisot or Elicot, although this was used also for
boys. The will of William de Aldeburgh, written in 1319, runs--
"Item: do et lego Elisotae domicellae meae 40{s}."--"Test. Ebor.," i.
151.
The will of Patrick de Barton, administered in the same year, says--
"Item: lego Elisotae, uxori Ricardi Bustard unam vaccam, et
10{s}."--"Test. Ebor.," i. 155.
"Eliseus Carpenter, cartwyth, et Elesot uxor ejus, vi{d}."--W. D. S.
As Ellis became Ellisot, so Ellice became Ellicot, whence the present
surname. Bartholomew became Bartelot, now Bartlett, and from the pet form
Toll, or Tolly, came Tollett and Tollitt.
It is curious to notice why Emmot and Hamlet, or Hamnet, survived the
crises that overwhelmed the others. Both became baptismal names in their
own right. People forgot in course of time that they were diminutives of
Emma and Hamond, and separated them from their parents. This did not come
about till the close of Elizabeth's reign, so they have still the credit
of having won a victory against terrible odds, the Hebrew army. Hamnet
Shakespeare was so baptized. Hamon or Hamond would have been the regular
form.
Looking back, it is hard to realize that a custom equally affected by
prince and peasant, as popular in country as town, as familiar in
Yorkshire and Lancashire as in London and Winchester, should have been so
completely uprooted, that ninety-nine out of the hundred are now unaware
that it ever existed. This was unmistakably the result of some disturbing
element of English social life. At the commencement of the sixteenth
century there was no appearance of this confusion. In France the practice
went on without let or hindrance. We can again but attribute it to the
Reformation, and the English Bible, which swept away a large batch of the
old names, and pronounced the new without addition or diminution. When
some of the old names were restored, it was too late to fall back upon the
familiarities that had been taken with them in the earlier period.
(_e._) _Double Terminatives._
In spite of the enormous popularity in England of _ot_ and _et_, they bear
no proportion to the number in France. In England our _local_ surnames are
two-fifths of the whole. In France _patronymic_ surnames are almost
two-fifths of the whole. Terminatives in _on_ or _in_, and _ot_ and _et_,
have done this. We in England only adopted double diminutives in two
cases, those of _Colinet_ and _Robinet_, or _Dobinet_, and both were
rarely used. Robinet has come down to us as a surname; and Dobinet so
existed till the middle of the fifteenth century, for one John Dobynette
is mentioned in an inventory of goods, 1463 (Mun. Acad. Oxon.). This
Dobinet seems to have been somewhat familiarly used, for Dobinet Doughty
is Ralph's servant in "Ralph Roister Doister." Matthew Merrygreek says--
"I know where she is: Dobinet hath wrought some wile.
_Tibet Talkapace._ He brought a ring and token, which he said was
sent
From our dame's husband."--Act. iii. sc. 2.
Colin is turned into Colinet in Spenser's "Shepherd's Calendar," where
Colin beseeches Pan:
"Hearken awhile from thy green cabinet,
The laurel song of careful Colinet?"
Jannet is found as Janniting (Jannetin) once on English soil, for in the
"London Chanticleers," a comedy written about 1636, Janniting is the
apple-wench. _Welcome_ says--
"Who are they which they're enamoured so with?
_Bung._ The one's Nancy Curds, and the other Hanna Jenniting: Ditty
and Jenniting are agreed already ... the wedding will be kept at our
house."--Scene xiii.
But the use of double diminutives was of every-day practice in Normandy
and France, and increased their total greatly. I take at random the
following _surnames_ (originally, of course, christian names) from the
Paris Directory:--Margotin, Marioton, Lambinet (Lambert), Perrinot,
Perrotin, Philiponet, Jannotin, Hugonet, Huguenin, Jacquinot, and
Fauconnet (English Fulke). Huguenin (little wee Hugh) repeats the same
diminutive; Perrinot and Perrotin (little wee Peter) simply reverse the
order of the two diminutives. The "marionettes" in the puppet-show take
the same liberty with Mariotin (little wee Mary) above mentioned. Hugonet,
of course, is the same as Huguenot; and had English, not to say French,
writers remembered this old custom, they would have found no difficulty in
reducing the origin of the religious sect of that name to an _individual_
as a starting-point. _Guillotin_ (little wee William) belongs to the same
class, and descended from a baptismal name to become the surname of the
famous doctor who invented the deadly machine that bears his title. I have
discovered one instance of this as a baptismal name, viz. Gillotyne
Hansake ("Wars of English in France: Henry VI.," vol. ii. p. 531).
Returning to England, we find these pet forms in use well up to the
Reformation:
"Nov., 1543. Item: geven to Fylpot, my Lady of Suffolk's lackaye,
vii{s}. vi{d}.
"June, 1537. Item: payed to Typkyn for cherys, xx{d}."--"Privy Purse
Expenses, Princess Mary."
"1548, July 22. Alson, d. of Jenkin Rowse."--St. Columb Major.
"1545, Oct. 3. Baptized Alison, d. of John James."--Ditto.[11]
"Ralph Roister Doister," written not earlier than 1545, and not later than
1550, by Nicholas Udall, contains three characters styled Annot Alyface,
Tibet Talkapace, and Dobinet Doughty. Christian Custance, Sim Suresby,
Madge Mumblecheek, and Gawyn Goodluck are other characters, all well-known
contemporary names.
In "Thersites," an interlude written in 1537, there is mention of
"_Simkin_ Sydnam, Sumnor,
That killed a cat at Cumnor."
_Jenkin_ Jacon is introduced, also _Robin_ Rover. In a book entitled
"Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic" (Henry VIII.), we find a
document (numbered 1939, and dated 1526) containing a list of the
household attendants and retinue of the king. Even here, although so
formal a record, there occurs the name of "Hamynet Harrington, gentleman
usher."
We may assert with the utmost certainty that, on the eve of the Hebrew
invasion, there was not a baptismal name in England of average popularity
that had not attached to it in _daily converse_ one or other of these
diminutives--_kin_, _cock_, _in_, _on_, _ot_, and _et_; not a name, too,
that, before it had thus attached them, had not been shorn of all its
fulness, and curtailed to a monosyllabic nick form. Bartholomew must
first become Bat before it becomes Batcock, Peter must become Pierre
before Perrot can be formed, Nicholas must be abbreviated to Col or Cole
before Col or Cole can be styled Colin, and Thomas must be reduced to Tom
before Tomkin can make his appearance.
Several names had attached to themselves all these enclytics. For
instance, Peter is met with, up to the crisis we are about to consider, in
the several shapes of Perkin or Parkin, Peacock, Perrot, and Perrin; and
William as Willin (now Willing and Willan in our directories), Wilcock,
Wilkin, and Wilmot, was familiar to every district in the country.
III. SCRIPTURE NAMES ALREADY IN USE AT THE REFORMATION.
It now remains simply to consider the state of nomenclature in England at
the eve of the Reformation in relation to the Bible. _Four_ classes may be
mentioned.
(_a._) _Mystery Names._
The leading incidents of Bible narrative were familiarized to the English
lower orders by the performance of sacred plays, or mysteries, rendered
under the supervision of the Church. To these plays we owe the early
popularity of Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Sara,
Daniel, Sampson, Susanna, Judith, Hanna or Anna, and Hester. But the
Apocryphal names were not frequently used till about 1500. Scarcely any
diminutives are found of them. On the other hand, Adam became Adcock and
Adkin; Eve, Evott and Evett; Isaac, Hickin, and Higgin, and Higgot, and
Higget; Joseph, Joskin; and Daniel, Dankin and Dannet.
(_b._) _Crusade Names._
The Crusaders gave us several prominent names. To them we are indebted for
_Baptist_, _Ellis_, and _Jordan_: and _John_ received a great stimulus.
The sacred water brought in the leathern bottle was used for baptismal
purposes. The Jordan commemorated John the Baptist, the second Elias, the
forerunner and baptizer of Jesus Christ. Children were styled by these
incidents. _Jordan_ became popular through Western Europe. In England he
gave us, as already observed, Judd, Judkin, Judson, Jordan, and Jordanson.
Elias, as Ellis, took about the eighth place of frequency, and John, for a
while, the first.
(_c._) _The Saints' Calendar._
The legends of the saints were carefully taught by the priesthood, and the
day as religiously observed. All children born on these holy days received
the name of the saint commemorated: St. James's Day, or St. Nicholas's
Day, or St. Thomas's Day, saw a small batch of Jameses, Nicholases, and
Thomases received into the fold of the Church. In other cases the gossip
had some favourite saint, and placed the child under his or her
protection. Of course, it bore the patron's name. A large number of these
hagiological names were extra-Biblical--such as Cecilia, Catharine, or
Theobald. Of these I make no mention here. All the Apostles, save Judas,
became household names, John, Simon, Peter, Bartholomew, Matthew, James,
Thomas, and Philip being the favourites. Paul and Timothy were also
utilized, the former being always found as Pol.
(_d._) _Festival Names._
If a child was born at Whitsuntide or Easter, Christmas or Epiphany, like
Robinson Crusoe's man Friday, or Thursday October Christian of the
Pitcairn islanders, he received the name of the day. Hence our once
familiar names of Noel or Nowell, Pask or Pascal, Easter, Pentecost, and
Epiphany or Tiffany.
It will be observed that all these imply no direct or personal
acquaintance with the Scriptures. All came through the Church. All, too,
were in the full tide of prosperity--with the single exception of Jordan,
which was nearly obsolete--when the Bible, printed into English and set up
in our churches, became an institution. The immediate result was that the
old Scripture names of Bartholomew, Peter, Philip, and Nicholas received a
blow much deadlier than that received by such Teutonic names as Robert,
Richard, Roger, and Ralph. But that will be brought out as we progress.
The subject of the influence of an English Bible upon English nomenclature
is not uninteresting. It may be said of the "Vulgar Tongue" Bible that it
revolutionized our nomenclature within the space of forty years, or little
over a generation. No such crisis, surely, ever visited a nation's
register before, nor can such possibly happen again. Every home felt the
effect. It was like the massacre of the innocents in Egyptian days: "There
was not one house where there was not one dead." But in Pharoah's day they
did not replace the dead with the living. At the Reformation such a locust
army of new names burst upon the land that we may well style it the Hebrew
Invasion.
CHAPTER I.
THE HEBREW INVASION.
"With what face can they object to the king the bringing in of
forraigners, when themselves entertaine such an army of Hebrewes?"
_The Character of a London Diurnall_ (Dec. 1644).
"Albeit in our late Reformation some of good consideration have
brought in Zachary, Malachy, Josias, etc., as better agreeing with our
faith, but without contempt of Country names (as I hope) which have
both good and gracious significations, as shall appeare
hereafter."--CAMDEN, _Remaines_. 1614.
I. _The March of the Army._
The strongest impress of the English Reformation to-day is to be seen in
our font-names. The majority date from 1560, the year when the Genevan
Bible was published. This version ran through unnumbered editions, and for
sixty, if not seventy, years was the household Bible of the nation. The
Genevan Bible was not only written in the vulgar tongue, but was printed
for vulgar hands. A moderate quarto was its size; all preceding versions,
such as Coverdale's, Matthew's, and of course the Great Bible, being the
ponderous folio, specimens of which the reader will at some time or other
have seen. The Genevan Bible, too, was the Puritan's Bible, and was none
the less admired by him on account of its Calvinistic annotations.
But although the rage for Bible names dates from the decade 1560-1570,
which decade marks the rise of Puritanism, there had been symptoms of the
coming revolution as early as 1543. Richard Hilles, one of the Reformers,
despatching a letter from Strasburg, November 15, 1543, writes:
"My wife says she has no doubt but that God helped her the sooner in
her confinement by reason of your good prayers. On the second of this
month she brought forth to the Church of Christ a son, who, as the
women say, is quite large enough for a mother of tall stature, and
whom I immediately named _Gershom_."--"Original Letters," 1537-1558,
No. cxii. Parker Society.
We take up our Bibles, and find that of Zipporah it is said--
"And she bare him (Moses) a son, and he called his name Gershom: for
he said, _I have been a stranger in a strange land_."--Exod. ii. 22.
The margin says, "a desolate stranger." At this time Moses was fled from
Pharaoh, who would kill him. The parallel to Richard Hilles's mind was
complete. This was in 1643.[12]
In Mr. Tennyson's drama "Mary," we have the following scene between
Gardiner and a yokel:
"_Gardiner._ I distrust thee,
There is a half voice, and a lean assent:
What is thy name?
_Man._ Sanders!
_Gardiner._ What else?
_Man._ Zerrubabel."
The Laureate was right to select for this rebellious Protestant a name
that was to be popular throughout Elizabeth's reign; but poetic license
runs rather far in giving this title to a _full-grown man_ in any year of
Mary's rule. Sanders might have had a young child at home so styled, but
for himself it was practically impossible. So clearly defined is the
epoch that saw, if not one batch of names go out, at least a new batch
come in. Equally marked are the names from the Bible which at this date
were in use, and those which were not. Of this latter category Zerrubabel
was one.
In the single quotation from Hilles's letter of 1543 we see the origin of
the great Hebrew invasion explained. The English Bible had become a fact,
and the knowledge of its personages and narratives was becoming _directly_
acquired. In every community up and down the country it was as if a fresh
spring of clear water had been found, and every neighbour could come with
jug or pail, and fill it when and how they would. One of the first
impressions made seems to have been this: children in the olden time
received as a name a term that was immediately significant of the
circumstances of their birth. Often God personally, through His prophets
or angelic messenger, acted as godparent indeed, and gave the name, as in
Isaiah viii. 1, 3, 4:
"Moreover the Lord said unto me, Take thee a great roll, and write in
it with a man's pen concerning Maher-shalal-hash-baz.
"And I went unto the prophetess; and she conceived, and bare a son.
Then said the Lord to me, Call his name Maher-shalal-hash-baz.
"For before the child shall have knowledge to cry, My father, and my
mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall be taken
away before the king of Assyria."
Here was a name palpably significant. Even before they knew its exact
meaning the name was enrolled in English church registers, and by-and-by
zealot Puritans employed it as applicable to English Church politics.
All the patriarchs, down to the twelve sons of Jacob, had names of direct
significance given them. Above all, a peculiar emphasis was laid upon all
the titles of Jesus Christ, as in Isaiah vii. 14:
"Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his
name Immanuel."
At the same time that this new revelation came, a crisis was going on of
religion. The old Romish Church was being uprooted, or, rather, a new
system was being grafted upon its stock, for the links have never been
broken. The saints were shortly to be tabooed by the large mass of English
folk; the festivals were already at a discount. Simultaneously with the
prejudice against the very names of their saints and saintly festivals,
arose the discovery of a mine of new names as novel as it was
unexhaustible. They not merely met the new religious instinct, but
supplied what would have been a very serious vacuum.
But we must at once draw a line between the Reformation and Puritanism.
Previous to the Reformation, so far as the Church was concerned, there had
been to a certain extent a _system_ of nomenclature. The Reformation
abrogated that system, but did not intentionally adopt a new one.
Puritanism deliberately supplied a well-weighed and revised scheme, beyond
which no adopted child of God must dare to trespass. Previous to the
Reformation, the priest, with the assent of the gossip, gave the babe the
name of the saint who was to be its patron, or on whose day the birth or
baptism occurred. If the saint was a male, and the infant a female, the
difficulty was overcome by giving the name a feminine form. Thus Theobald
become Theobalda; and hence Tib and Tibot became so common among girls,
that finally they ceased to represent boys at all. If it were one of the
great holy days, the day or season itself furnished the name. Thus it was
Simon, or Nicholas, or Cecilia, or Austen, or Pentecost, or Ursula, or
Dorothy, became so familiar. From the reign of Elizabeth the clergy, and
Englishmen generally, gave up this practice. Saints who could not boast
apostolic honours were rejected, and holy men of lesser prestige, together
with a large batch of virgins and martyrs of the Agnes, Catharine, and
Ursula type, who belonged to Church history, received but scant
attention. As a matter of course their names lapsed. But the nation stood
by the old English names not thus popishly tainted. Against Geoffrey,
Richard, Robert, and William, they had no prejudice: nay, they clung to
them. The Puritan rejected both classes. He was ever trotting out his two
big "P's,"--Pagan and Popish. Under the first he placed every name that
could not be found in the Scriptures, and under the latter every title in
the same Scriptures, and the Church system founded on them, that had been
employed previous, say, to the coronation day of Edward VI. Of this there
is the clearest proof. In a "Directory of Church Government," found among
the papers of Cartwright, and written as early as 1565, there is the
following order regarding and regulating baptism:--
"They which present unto baptism, ought to be persuaded not to give
those that are baptized the names of God, or of Christ, or of angels,
or of holy offices, as of baptist, evangelist, etc., nor such as
savour of paganism or popery: but chiefly such whereof there are
examples, in the Holy Scriptures, in the names of those who are
reported in them to have been godly and virtuous."--Neale, vol. v.
Appendix, p. 15.
Nothing can be more precise than this. To the strict Puritan to reject the
Richards, Mileses, and Henrys of the Teutonic, and the Bartholomews,
Simons, Peters, and Nicholases of the ecclesiastic class, was to remove
the Canaanite out of the land.
How early this "article of religion" was obeyed, one or two quotations
will show. Take the first four baptismal entries in the Canterbury
Cathedral register:
"1564, Dec. 3. Abdias, the sonne of Robert Pownoll.
"1567, April 26. Barnabas, the sonne of Robert Pownoll.
"1569, June 1. Ezeckiell, the sonne of Robert Pownoll.
"1572, Feb. 10. Posthumus, the sonne of Robert Pownoll."
Another son seems to have been Philemon:
"1623, April 27. John, the sonne of Philemon Pownoll."
A daughter "Repentance" must be added:
"1583, Dec. 8. Married William Arnolde and Repentance Pownoll."
Take another instance, a little later, from the baptisms of St. Peter's,
Cornhill:
"1589, Nov. 2. Bezaleell, sonne of Michaell Nichollson, cordwayner.
"1599, Sep. 23. Aholiab, sonne of Michaell Nicholson, cordwainer.
"1595, May 18. Sara, daughter of Michaell Nichollson, cobler.
"1599, Nov. 1. Buried Rebecca, daughter of Michaell Nicholson,
cordwainer, 13 yeares."
Rebecca, therefore, would be baptized in 1586. Sara and Aholiab died of
the plague in 1603. Both old Robert Pownoll and the cobler must have been
Puritans of a pronounced type.
The Presbyterian clergy were careful to set an example of right
name-giving:
"1613, July 28. Baptized Jaell, daughter of Roger Mainwaring,
preacher."--St. Helen, Bishopsgate.
"1617, Jan. 25. Baptized Ezekyell, sonne of Mr. Richard Culverwell,
minister."--St. Peter, Cornhill.
"1582, ----. Buried Zachary, sonne of Thomas Newton,
minister."--Barking, Essex.
A still more interesting proof comes from Northampton. As an example of
bigotry it is truly marvellous. On July 16, 1590, Archbishop Whitgift
furnished the Lord Treasurer with the following, amongst many articles
against Edmond Snape, curate of St. Peter's, in that town:
"Item: Christopher Hodgekinson obteyned a promise of the said Snape
that he would baptize his child; but Snape added, saying, 'You must
then give it a christian name allowed in the Scriptures.' Then
Hodgekinson told him that his wife's father, whose name was Richard,
desired to have the giving of that name."
At the time of service Snape proceeded till they came to the place of
naming: they said "Richard;"
"But hearing them calling it Richard, and that they would not give it
any other name, he stayed there, and would not in any case baptize the
child. And so it was carried away thence, and was baptized the week
following at Allhallows Churche, and called Richard."--Strype's
"Whitgift," ii. 9.
This may be an extreme case, but I doubt not the majority of the
Presbyterian clergy did their best to uproot the old English names, so far
as their power of persuasion could go.
Even the pulpit was used in behalf of the new doctrine. William Jenkin,
the afterwards ejected minister, in his "Expositions of Jude," delivered
in Christ Church, London, said, while commenting on the first verse, "Our
baptismal names ought to be such as may prove remembrances of duty." He
then instances Leah, Alpheus, and Hannah as aware of parental obligations
in this respect, and adds--
"'Tis good to impose such names as expresse our baptismal promise. A
good name is as a thread tyed about the finger, to make us mindful of
the errand we came into the world to do for our Master."--Edition
1652, p. 7.
As a general rule, the New Testament names spread the most rapidly,
especially girl-names of the Priscilla, Dorcas, Tabitha, and Martha type.
They were the property of the Reformation. Damaris bothered the clerks
much, and is found indifferently as Tamaris, Damris, Dammeris, Dampris,
and Dameris. By James I.'s day it had become a fashionable name:
"1617, April 13. Christened Damaris, d. of Doctor Masters.
"----, May 29. Christened Damaris, d. of Doctor Kingsley."--Canterbury
Cathedral.
Martha, which sprang into instant popularity, is registered at the outset:
"1563, July 25. Christened Martha Wattam."--St. Peter, Cornhill.
Phebe had a great run. The first I have seen is--
"1568, Oct. 24. Christened Phebe, d. of Harry Cut."--St. Peter,
Cornhill.
Dorcas was, perhaps, the prime favourite, often styled and entered Darcas.
Every register has it, and every page. A political ballad says--
"Come, Dorcas and Cloe,
With Lois and Zoe,
Young Lettice, and Beterice, and Jane;
Phill, Dorothy, Maud,
Come troop it abroad,
For now is our time to reign."
Persis, Tryphena, and Tryphosa were also largely used. The earliest Persis
I know is--
"1579, Maye 3. Christened Persis, d. of William Hopkinson, minister
heare."--Salehurst.
Some of these names--as, for instance, Priscilla, Damaris, Dorcas, and
Phebe--stood in James's reign almost at the head of girls' names in
England. Indeed, alike in London and the provinces, the list of girl-names
at Elizabeth's death was a perfect contrast to that when she ascended the
throne. Then the great national names of Isabella, Matilda, Emma, and
Cecilia ruled supreme. Then the four heroines Anna, Judith, Susan, and
Hester, one or two of whom were in the Apocryphal narrative, had stamped
themselves on our registers in what appeared indelible lines, although
they were of much more recent popularity than the others. They lost
prestige, but did not die out. Many Puritans had a sneaking fondness for
them, finding in their histories a parallel to their own troubles, and
perchance they had a private and more godly rendering of the popular
ballad of their day:
"In Ninivie old Toby dwelt,
An aged man, and blind was he:
And much affliction he had felt,
Which brought him unto poverty:
He had by Anna, his true wife,
One only sonne, and eke no more."
Esther[13] is still popular in our villages, so is Susan. Hannah has her
admirers, and only Judith may be said to be forgotten. But their glory was
from 1450 to 1550. After that they became secondary personages. Throughout
the south of England, especially in the counties that surrounded London,
the Bible had been ransacked from nook to corner. The zealots early dived
into the innermost recesses of Scripture. They made themselves as familiar
with chapters devoted solely to genealogical tables, as to those which
they quoted to defend their doctrinal creed. The eighth chapter of Romans
was not more studied by them than the thirty-sixth of Genesis, and the
dukes of Edom classified in the one were laid under frequent contribution
to witness to the adoption treated of in the other. Thus names unheard of
in 1558 were "household words" in 1603.
The slowest to take up the new custom were the northern counties. They
were out of the current; and Lancashire, besides being inaccessible, had
stuck to the old faith. Names lingered on in the Palatinate that had been
dead nearly a hundred years in the south. Gawin figures in all northern
registers till a century ago, and Thurston[14] was yet popular in the
Fylde district, when it had become forgotten in the Fens. Scotland was
never touched at all. The General Assembly of 1645 makes no hint on the
subject, although it dwelt on nearly every other topic. Nothing
demonstrates the clannish feeling of North Britain as this does. At this
moment Scotland has scarcely any Bible names.
In Yorkshire, however, Puritanism made early stand, though its effects on
nomenclature were not immediately visible. It was like the fire that
smoulders among the underwood before it catches flame; it spreads the more
rapidly afterwards. The Genevan Bible crept into the dales and farmsteads,
and their own primitive life seemed to be but reflected in its pages. The
patriarchs lived as graziers, and so did they. There was a good deal about
sheep and kine in its chapters, and their own lives were spent among the
milk-pails and wool shears. The women of the Old Testament baked cakes,
and knew what good butter was. So did the dales' folk. By slow degrees
Cecilia, Isabella, and Emma lapsed from their pedestal, and the little
babes were turned into Sarahs, Rebeccas, and Deborahs. As the seventeenth
century progressed the state of things became still more changed. There
had been villages in Sussex and Kent previous to Elizabeth's death, where
the Presbyterian rector, by his personal influence at the time of baptism,
had turned the new generation into a Hebrew colony. The same thing
occurred in Yorkshire only half a century later. As nonconformity gained
ground, Guy, and Miles, and Peter, and Philip became forgotten. The lads
were no sooner ushered into existence than they were transformed into
duplicates of Joel, and Amos, and Obediah. The measles still ran through
the family, but it was Phineas and Caleb, not Robert and Roger, that
underwent the infliction. Chosen leaders of Israel passed through the
critical stages of teething. As for the twelve sons of Jacob, they could
all have answered to their names in the dames' schools, through their
little apple-cheeked representatives, who lined the rude benches. On the
village green, every prophet from Isaiah to Malachi might be seen of an
evening playing leap-frog: unless, indeed, Zephaniah was stealing apples
in the garth.
From Yorkshire, about the close of the seventeenth century, the rage for
Scripture names passed into Lancashire. Nonconformity was making progress;
the new industries were already turning villages into small centres of
population, and the Church of England not providing for the increase,
chapels were built. If we look over the pages of the directories of West
Yorkshire and East Lancashire, and strike out the surnames, we could
imagine we were consulting anciently inscribed registers of Joppa or
Jericho. It would seem as if Canaan and the West Riding had got
inextricably mixed.
What a spectacle meets our eye! Within the limits of ten leaves we have
three Pharoahs, while as many Hephzibahs are to be found on one single
page. Adah and Zillah Pickles, sisters, are milliners. Jehoiada Rhodes
makes saws--not Solomon's sort--and Hariph Crawshaw keeps a farm. Vashni,
from somewhere in the Chronicles, is rescued from oblivion by Vashni
Wilkinson, coal merchant, who very likely goes to Barzillai Williamson, on
the same page, for his joints, Barzillai being a butcher. Jachin, known to
but a few as situated in the Book of Kings, is in the person of Jachin
Firth, a beer retailer, familiar to all his neighbours. Heber Holdsworth
on one page is faced by Er Illingworth on the other. Asa and Joab are
extremely popular, while Abner, Adna, Ashael, Erastus, Eunice, Benaiah,
Aquila, Elihu, and Philemon enjoy a fair amount of patronage. Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego, having been rescued from Chaldaean fire, have been
deluged with baptismal water. How curious it is to contemplate such
entries as Lemuel Wilson, Kelita Wilkinson, Shelah Haggas, Shadrach
Newbold, Neriah Pearce, Jeduthan Jempson, Azariah Griffiths, Naphtali
Matson, Philemon Jakes, Hameth Fell, Eleph Bisat, Malachi Ford, or Shallum
Richardson. As to other parts of the Scriptures, I have lighted upon name
after name that I did not know existed in the Bible at all till I looked
into the Lancashire and Yorkshire directories.
The Bible has decided the nomenclature of the north of England. In towns
like Oldham, Bolton, Ashton, and Blackburn, the clergyman's baptismal
register is but a record of Bible names. A clerical friend of mine
christened twins Cain and Abel, only the other day, much against his own
wishes. Another parson on the Derbyshire border was gravely informed, at
the proper moment, that the name of baptism was Ramoth-Gilead. "Boy or
girl, eh?" he asked in a somewhat agitated voice. The parents had opened
the Bible hap-hazard, according to the village tradition, and selected the
first name the eye fell on. It was but a year ago a little child was
christened Tellno in a town within six miles of Manchester, at the
suggestion of a cotton-spinner, the father, a workman of the name of Lees,
having asked his advice. "I suppose it must be a Scripture name," said his
master. "Oh yes! that's of course." "Suppose you choose _Tellno_," said
his employer. "That'll do," replied the other, who had never heard it
before, and liked it the better on that account. The child is now Tell-no
Lees, the father, too late, finding that he had been hoaxed.[15] "_Sirs_,"
was the answer given to a bewildered curate, after the usual demand to
name the child. He objected, but was informed that it was a Scripture
name, and the verse "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" was triumphantly
appealed to. This reminds one of the Puritan who styled his dog
"_Moreover_" after the dog in the Gospel: "_Moreover_ the dog came and
licked his sores."
There is, again, a story of a clergyman making the customary demand as to
name from a knot of women round the font. "Ax her," said one. Turning to
the woman who appeared to be indicated, he again asked, "What name?" "Ax
her," she replied. The third woman, being questioned, gave the same reply.
At last he discovered the name to be the Scriptural Achsah, Caleb's
daughter--a name, by the way, which was somewhat popular with our
forefathers. No wonder this mistake arose, when Achsah used to be entered
in some such manner as this:
"1743-4, Jan. 3. Baptized Axar Starrs (a woman of ripe years), of
Stockport.
"1743-4, Jan. 3. Married Warren Davenport, of Stockport, Esq., and
Axar Starrs, aforesaid, spinster."--Marple, Cheshire.
Axar's father was Caleb Starrs. The scriptural relationship was thus
preserved. Achsah crossed the Atlantic with the Pilgrim Fathers, and has
prospered there ever since. It is still popular in Devonshire and the
south-west of England. All these stories serve to show the quarry whence
modern names are hewn.
I have mentioned the north because I have studied its Post-Office
Directories carefully. But if any one will visit the shires of Dorset, and
Devon, and Hampshire, he will find the same result. The Hebrew has won the
day. Just as in England, north of Trent, we can still measure off the
ravages of the Dane by striking a line through all local names lying
westward ending in "by," so we have but to count up the baptismal names of
the peasantry of these southern counties to see that they have become the
bondsmen of an Eastern despot. In fact, go where and when we will from the
reign of Elizabeth, we find the same influence at work. Take a few places
and people at random.
Looking at our testamentary records, we find the will of Kerenhappuch
Benett proved in 1762, while Kerenhappuch Horrocks figures in the
Manchester Directory for 1877. Onesiphorus Luffe appears on a halfpenny
token of 1666; Habakkuk Leyman, 1650; Euodias Inman, 1650; Melchisedek
Fritter, 1650; Elnathan Brock, 1654; and Abdiah Martin, 1664 ("Tokens of
Seventeenth Century"). Shallum Stent was married in 1681 (Racton,
Sussex); Gershom Baylie was constable of Lewes in 1619, Araunah Verrall
fulfilling the same office in 1784. Captain Epenetus Crosse presented a
petition to Privy Council in 1660 (C. S. P. Colonial); Erastus Johnson was
defendant in 1724, and Cressens Boote twenty years earlier. Barjonah Dove
was Vicar of Croxton in 1694. Tryphena Monger was buried in Putney
Churchyard in 1702, and Tryphosa Saunders at St. Peter's, Worcester, in
1770. Mahaliel Payne, Azarias Phesant, and Pelatiah Barnard are recorded
in State Papers, 1650-1663 (C. S. P.), and Aminadab Henley was dwelling in
Kent in 1640 ("Proceedings in Kent." Camden Society). Shadrack Pride is a
collector of hearth-money in 1699, and Gamaliel Chase is communicated with
in 1635 (C. S. P.). Onesiphorus Albin proposes a better plan of collecting
the alien duty in 1692 (C. S. P.), while Mordecai Abbott is appointed
deputy-paymaster of the forces in 1697 (C. S. P.). Eliakim Palmer is
married at Somerset House Chapel in 1740; Dalilah White is buried at
Cowley in 1791, and Keziah Simmons is christened there in 1850. Selah
Collins is baptized at Dyrham, Gloucestershire, in 1752, and Keturah Jones
is interred at Clifton in 1778. Eli-lama-Sabachthani Pressnail was
existing in 1862 (_Notes and Queries_), and the _Times_ recorded a
Talitha-Cumi People about the same time. The will of Mahershalalhashbaz
Christmas was proved not very long ago. Mrs. Mahershalalhashbaz Bradford
was dwelling in Ringwood, Hampshire, in 1863; and on January 31, 1802, the
register of Beccles Church received the entry, "Mahershalalhashbaz, son of
Henry and Sarah Clarke, baptized," the same being followed, October 14,
1804, by the baptismal entry of "Zaphnaphpaaneah," another son of the same
couple. A grant of administration in the estate of Acts-Apostles Pegden
was made in 1865. His four brothers, older than himself, were of course
the four Evangelists, and had there been a sixth I dare say his name would
have been "Romans." An older member of this family, many years one of the
kennel-keepers of Tickham fox-hounds, was Pontius Pilate Pegden. At a
confirmation at Faversham in 1847, the incumbent of Dunkirk presented to
the amazed archbishop a boy named "Acts-Apostles." These are, of course,
mere eccentricities, but eccentricities follow a beaten path, and have
their use in calculations of the nature we are considering. Eccentricities
in dress are proverbially but exaggerations of the prevailing fashion.
II. POPULARITY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
The affection felt by the Puritans for the Old Testament has been observed
by all writers upon the period, and of the period. Cleveland's remark,
quoted by Hume, is, of course, an exaggeration.
"Cromwell," he says, "hath beat up his drums cleane through the Old
Testament--you may learne the genealogy of our Saviour by the names in
his regiment. The muster-master uses no other list than the first
chapter of Matthew."
Lord Macaulay puts it much more faithfully in his first chapter, speaking,
too, of an earlier period than the Commonwealth:
"In such a history (_i.e._ Old Testament) it was not difficult for
fierce and gloomy spirits to find much that might be distorted to suit
their wishes. The extreme Puritans, therefore, began to feel for the
Old Testament a preference which, perhaps, they did not distinctly
avow even to themselves, but which showed itself in all their
sentiments and habits. They paid to the Hebrew language a respect
which they refused to that tongue in which the discourses of Jesus and
the Epistles of Paul have come down to us. They baptized their
children by the names, not of Christian saints, but of Hebrew
patriarchs and warriors."
The Presbyterian clergy had another objection to the New Testament names.
The possessors were all saints, and in the saints' calendar. The apostolic
title was as a red rag to his blood-shot eye.
"Upon Saint Peter, Paul, John, Jude, and James,
They will not put the 'saint' unto their names,"
says the Water-poet in execrable verse. Its _local_ use was still more
trying, as no man could pass through a single quarter of London without
seeing half a dozen churches, or lanes, or taverns dedicated to Saint
somebody or other.
"Others to make all things recant
The christian and surname of saint,
Would force all churches, streets, and towns
The holy title to renounce."
To avoid any saintly taint, the Puritan avoided the saints themselves.
But the discontented party in the Church had, as Macaulay says, a decided
hankering after the Old Testament on other grounds than this. They paid
the Hebrew language an almost superstitious reverence.[16] Ananias, the
deacon, in the "Alchemist," published in 1610, says--
"Heathen Greek, I take it.
_Subtle._ How! heathen Greek?
_Ananias._ All's heathen but the Hebrew."[17]
Bishop Corbet, in his "Distracted Puritan," has a lance to point at the
same weakness:
"In the holy tongue of Canaan
I placed my chiefest pleasure,
Till I pricked my foot
With an Hebrew root,
That I bled beyond all measure."
In the "City Match," written by Mayne in 1639, Bannsright says--
"Mistress Dorcas,
If you'll be usher to that holy, learned woman,
That can heal broken shins, scald heads, and th' itch,
Your schoolmistress: that can expound, and teaches
To knit in Chaldee, and work Hebrew samplers,
I'll help you back again."
The Puritan was ever nicknamed after some Old Testament worthy. I could
quote many instances, but let two from the author of the "London Diurnall"
suffice. Addressing Prince Rupert, he says--
"Let the zeal-twanging nose, that wants a ridge,
Snuffling devoutly, drop his silver bridge:
Yes, and the gossip's spoon augment the summe,
Altho' poor _Caleb_ lose his christendome."
More racy is his attack on Pembroke, as a member of the Mixed Assembly:
"Forbeare, good Pembroke, be not over-daring:
Such company may chance to spoil thy swearing;
And these drum-major oaths of bulk unruly
May dwindle to a feeble 'by my truly.'
He that the noble Percy's blood inherits,
Will he strike up a Hotspur of the spirits?
He'll fright the _Obediahs_ out of tune,
With his uncircumcis-ed Algernoon:
A name so stubborne, 'tis not to be scanned
By him in Gath with the six fingered hand."
If a Bible quotation was put into the zealot's mouth, his cynical foe took
care that it should come from the older Scriptures. In George Chapman's
"An Humorous Day's Work," after Lemot has suggested a "full test of
experiment" to prove her virtue, Florilla the Puritan cries--
"O husband, this is perfect trial indeed."
To which the gruff Labervele replies--
"And you will try all this now, will you not?
_Florilla._ Yes, my good head: for it is written, we must pass to
perfection through all temptation: Abacuk the fourth.
_Labervele._ Abacuk! cuck me no cucks: in a-doors, I say: thieves,
Puritans, murderers! in a-doors, I say!"
In the same facetious strain, Taylor, the Water-poet, addresses a child
thus:
"To learne thy duty reade no more than this:
Paul's nineteenth chapter unto Genesis."
This certainly tallies with the charge in "Hudibras," that they
"Corrupted the Old Testament
To serve the New as precedent."
This affection for the older Scriptures had its effect upon our
nomenclature. No book, no story, especially if gloomy in its outline and
melancholy in its issues, escaped the more morbid Puritan's notice. Every
minister of the Lord's vengeance, every stern witness against natural
abomination, the prophet that prophesied ill--these were the names that
were in favour. And he that was least bitter in his maledictions was most
at a discount. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were in every-day request,
Shadrach and Abednego being the favourites. Mordecai, too, was daily
commemorated; while Jeremiah attained a popularity, as Jeremy, he can
never altogether lose. "Lamentations" was so melancholy, that it must
needs be personified, don a Puritanical habit, and stand at the font as
godfather--I mean witness--to some wretched infant who had done nothing to
merit such a fate. "Lamentations Chapman" appeared as defendant in a suit
in Chancery about 1590. The exact date is not to be found, but the case
was tried towards the close of Elizabeth's reign ("Chancery Suits,
Elizabeth").
It is really hard to say why names of melancholy import became so common.
Perhaps it was a spirit morbidly brooding on the religious oppressions of
the times; perhaps it was bile. Any way, Camden says "Dust" and "Ashes"
were names in use in the days of Elizabeth and James. These, no doubt,
were translations of the Hebrew "Aphrah" into the "vulgar tongue," the
name having become exceedingly common. Micah, in one of the most mournful
prophecies of the Old Testament, says--
"Declare ye it not at Gath, weep ye not at all: in the house of Aphrah
roll thyself in the dust."
Literally: "in the house of dust roll thyself in the dust." The name was
quickly seized upon:
"Sept., 1599. Baptized Affray, d. of Richard Manne of
Lymehus."--Stepney.
"May 15, 1576. Wedding of William Brickhead and Affera Lawrence."--St.
Peter's, Cornhill.
This last entry proves how early the name had arisen. In Kent it had
become very common. The registers of Canterbury Cathedral teem with it:
"1601, June 5. Christened Afra, the daughter of William Warriner.
"1614, Oct. 30. Christened Aphora, the daughter of Mr. Merrewether.
"1635, July 20. Robert Fuller maryed Apherie Pitt."
In these instances we see at a glance the origin of the licentious Aphra
Behn's name, which looks so like a _nom-de-plume_, and has puzzled many.
She was born at Canterbury, with the surname of Johnson, baptized Aphra,
and married a Dutch merchant named Behn. When acting as a Government spy
at Antwerp in 1666, she signs a letter "Aphara Behn" (C. S. P.), which is
nearer the Biblical form than many others. It is just possible her father
might have rolled himself several times in the dust had he lived to read
some of his daughter's writings. Their tone is not Puritanic. The name
has become obsolete; indeed, it scarcely survived the seventeenth century,
dying out within a hundred years of its rise. But it was very popular in
its day.
Rachel, in her dying pains, had styled, under deep depression, her babe
Benoni ("son of my sorrow"); but his father turned it into the more
cheerful Benjamin ("son of the right hand"). Of course, Puritanism sided
with the mother, and the Benonis flourished at a ratio of six to one over
the Benjamins:
"1607. Christened Benony, sonne of Beniamyn Ruthin,
mariner."--Stepney.
"1661, Dec. 20. Christened Margrett, d. of Bennoni Wallington,
goldsmith."--St. Dionis Backchurch.
"1637, May 6. Order to transmit Benoni Bucke to England from
Virginia."--"C. S. P. Colonial."
"1656, March 25. Petition of Benoni Honeywood."--"C. S. P. Colonial."
I don't think, however, all these mothers died in childbed. It would speak
badly for the chirurgic skill of the seventeenth century if they did. It
was the Church of Christ that was in travail.
_Ichabod_ was equally common. There was something hard and unrelenting in
Jael (already mentioned) that naturally suited the temper of every
fanatic:
"1613, July 28. Christened Jaell, d. of Roger Manwaryng,
preacher."--St. Helen, Bishopsgate.
Mehetabell had something in it, probably its length, that made it popular
among the Puritan faction. It lasted well, too:
"1680, March 24. Married Philip Penn and Mehittabela Hilder."--Cant.
Cath.
"1693, May 21. Baptized Mehetabell, d. of Jeremiah Hart,
apothecary."--St. Dionis Backchurch.
But while Deborah, an especial pet of the fanatics, Sara, Rebecca, Rachel,
Zipporah, and Leah were in high favour as Old Testament heroines, none had
such a run as Abigail:
"1573, Oct. Abigoll Cumberford, christened."--Stepney.
"1617, Oct. 15. Christened Abbigale, d. of John Webb, shoemaker."--St.
Peter, Cornhill.
"1635, Jan. 19. Married Jarrett Birkhead and Abigaile
Whitehead."--Ditto.
"May 30, 1721. Married Robert Elles and Abigail Six."--Cant. Cath.
Few Scripture names made themselves so popular as this. At the conclusion
of the sixteenth century it was beginning its career, and by Queen Anne's
day had reached its zenith. When the Cavalier was drinking at the
alehouse, he would waggishly chant through his nose, with eye upturned--
"Come, sisters, and sing
An hymne to our king,
Who sitteth on high degree.
The men at Whitehall,
And the wicked, shall fall,
And hey, then, up go we!
'A match,' quoth my sister Joice,
'Contented,' quoth Rachel, too;
Quoth Abigaile, 'Yea,' and Faith, 'Verily,'
And Charity, 'Let it be so.'"
A curious error has been propagated by writers who ought to have known
better. It is customarily asserted that abigail, as a cant term for a
waiting-maid, only arose after Abigail Hill, the Duchess of Marlborough's
cousin, became waiting-woman to the queen, and supplanted her kinswoman.
Certainly we find both Swift and Fielding using the term after this event.
But there is good reason for believing that the sobriquet is as old as
Charles I.'s reign. Indeed, there can be no reasonable doubt but that we
owe the term to the enormous popularity of Beaumont's comedy, "The
Scornful Ladie," written about 1613, and played in 1616. The chief part
falls to the lot of "Abigal, a waiting-gentlewoman," as the _dramatis
personae_ styles her, the playwright associating the name and employment
after the scriptural narrative. But Beaumont knew his Bible well.
That Abigail at once became a cant term is proved by "The Parson's
Wedding," written by Killigrew some time between 1645 and 1650. Wanton
addresses the Parson:
"Was she deaf to your report?
_Parson._ Yes, yes.
_Wanton._ And Ugly, her abigail, she had her say, too?
_Parson._ Yes, yes."
That this sentence would never have been written but for Beaumont's play,
there can be no reasonable doubt. It was performed so late as 1783. In
1673, after yearly performances, it was published as a droll, and entitled
"The False Heir." In 1742 it appears again under the title of "The Feigned
Shipwreck." Samuel Pepys, in his Diary, records his visits to the
playhouse to see "The Scornful Lady" at least four times, viz. 1661, 1662,
1665, and 1667. Writing December 27, 1665, he says--
"By coach to the King's Playhouse, and there saw 'The Scornful Lady'
well acted: Doll Common doing Abigail most excellently."
Abigail passed out of favour about the middle of the last century, but
Mrs. Masham's artifices had little to do with it. The comedy had done its
work, and Abigail coming into use, like Malkin two centuries before, as
the cant term for a kitchen drab, or common serving wench, as is
sufficiently proved by the literature of the day, the name lost caste with
all classes, and was compelled to bid adieu to public favour.
This affection for the Old Testament has never died out among the
Nonconformists. The large batch of names I have already quoted from modern
directories is almost wholly from the earlier Testament. Wherever Dissent
is strong, there will be found a large proportion of these names. Amongst
the passengers who went out to New England in James and Charles's reigns
will be found such names as Ebed-meleck Gastrell, Oziell Lane, Ephraim
Howe, Ezechell Clement, Jeremy Clement, Zachary Cripps, Noah Fletcher,
Enoch Gould, Zebulon Cunninghame, Seth Smith, Peleg Bucke, Gercyon Bucke
(Gershom), Rachell Saunders, Lea Saunders, Calebb Carr, Jonathan Franklin,
Boaz Sharpe, Esau del a Ware, Pharaoh Flinton, Othniell Haggat, Mordecay
Knight, Obediah Hawes, Gamaliell Ellis, Esaias Raughton, Azarias Pinney,
Elisha Mallowes, Malachi Mallock, Jonadab Illett, Joshua Long, Enecha
Fitch (seemingly a feminine of Enoch), and Job Perridge. Occasionally an
Epenetus Olney, or Nathaniell Patient, or Epaphroditus Haughton, or
Cornelius Conway, or Feleaman Dickerson (Philemon), or Theophilus Lucas,
or Annanias Mann is met with; but these are few, and were evidently
selected for their size, the temptation to poach on apostolic preserves
being too great when such big game was to be obtained. Besides, they were
not in the calendar! These names went to Virginia, and they are not
forgotten.
III. OBJECTIONABLE SCRIPTURE NAMES.
Camden says--
"In times of Christianity, the names of most holy and vertuous
persons, and of their most worthy progenitors, were given to stirre up
men to the imitation of them, whose names they bare. But succeeding
ages, little regarding St. Chrysostome's admonition to the contrary,
have recalled prophane names, so as now Diana, Cassandra, Hyppolitus,
Venus, Lais, names of unhappy disastre, are as rife somewhere, as ever
they were in Paganisme."--"Remaines," p. 43.
The most cursory survey of our registers proves this. Captain Hercules
Huncks and Ensign Neptune Howard fought under the Earl of Northumberland
in 1640 (Peacock's "Army List of Roundheads and Cavaliers"). Both were
Royalists.
"1643, Feb. 6. Buried Paris, son of William and Margaret Lee."--St.
Michael, Spurriergate, York.
"1670, March 13. Baptized Cassandra, d. of James Smyth."--Banbury.
"1679, July 2. Buried Cassandra, ye wife of Edward Williams."--St.
Michael, Barbados, (Hotten).
"1631, May 26. Married John Cotton and Venus[18] Levat."--St. Peter,
Cornhill.
Cartwright, the great Puritan, attacked these names in 1575, as "savouring
of paganism" (Neal, v. p. xv. Appendix). It was a pity he did not include
some names in the list of his co-religionists, for surely Tamar and Dinah
were just as objectionable as Venus or Lais. The doctrine of a fallen
nature could be upheld, and the blessed state of self-abasement
maintained, without a daily reminder in the shape of a Bible name of evil
repute. Bishop Corbett brought it as a distinct charge against the
Puritans, that they loved to select the most unsavoury stories of Old
Testament history for their converse. In the "Maypole" he makes a zealot
minister say--
"To challenge liberty and recreation,
Let it be done in holy contemplation.
Brothers and sisters in the fields may walk,
Beginning of the Holy Word to talk:
Of David and Uria's lovely wife,
Of Tamar and her lustful brother's strife."
One thing is certain, these names became popular:
"1610, March. Baptized Bathsheba, d. of John Hamond, of
Ratcliffe."--Stepney.
"1672, Feb. 23. Buried Bathsheba, wife of Richard Brinley,
hosier."--St. Denis Backchurch.
The alternate form of Bath-shua (1 Chron. iii. 5) was used, although the
clerks did not always know how to spell it:
"1609, July 1. Baptized Bathshira and Tabitha, daughters of Sir
Antonie Dering, Knight.
"1609, July 5. Buried Bathshira and Tabitha, ds. of Sir Antonie
Dering, Knight, being twines."--Pluckley, Kent.
"1601, Jan. Baptized Thamar, d. of Henry Reynold."--Stepney.
"1691, Nov. 20. Baptized Tamar, d. of Francis and Tamar Lee."--St.
Dionis Backchurch.
"1698, April 10. Buried Tamar, wife of Richard Robinson, of
Fell-foot."--Cartmel.
As for Dinah, she became a great favourite from her first introduction;
every register contains her name before Elizabeth's death:
"1585, Aug. 15. Christening of Dina, d. of John Lister, barbor.
"1591, Aug. 21. Buried Mrs. Dina Walthall, a vertuous yong woman, 30
years."--St. Peter, Cornhill.
Crossing the Atlantic with the Pilgrim Fathers, she settled down at length
as the typical negress; yet Puritan writers admitted that when she "went
out to see the daughters of the land," she meant to be seen of the sons
also!
Taylor, the Water-poet, seems to imply that Goliath was registered at
baptism by the Puritan:
"Quoth he, 'what might the child baptized be?
Was it a male She, or a female He?'--
'I know not what, but 'tis a Son,' she said.--
'Nay then,' quoth he, 'a wager may be laid
It had some Scripture name.'--'Yes, so it had,'
Said she: 'but my weak memory's so bad,
I have forgot it: 'twas a godly name,
Tho' out of my remembrance be the same:
'Twas one of the small prophets verily:
'Twas not Esaias, nor yet Jeremy,
Ezekiel, Daniel, nor good Obadiah,
Ah, now I do remember, 'twas Goliah!'"
Pharaoh occurs, and went out to Virginia, where it has ever since
remained. It is, as already shown, familiar enough in Yorkshire.
Of New Testament names, whose associations are of evil repute, we may
mention Ananias, Sapphira, and Antipas. Ananias had become so closely
connected with Puritanism, that not only did Dryden poke fun at the
relationship in the "Alchemist," but _Ananias Dulman_ became the cant term
for a long-winded zealot preacher. So says Neal.
"1603, Sep. 12. Buried Ananias, sonne of George Warren, 17
years."--St. Peter, Cornhill.
"1621, Sep. Baptized Ananias, son of Ananias Jarratt,
glassmaker."--Stepney.
_Sapphira_ occurs in Bunhill Fields:
"Here lyeth the body of Mrs. Sapphira Lightmaker, wife of Mr. Edward
Lightmaker, of Broadhurst, in Sussex, gent. She died in the Lorde,
Dec. 20, 1704, aged 81 years."
She was therefore born in 1633. Her brother (they were brought up
Presbyterians) was Robert Leighton, who died Archbishop of Glasgow.
_Drusilla_, again, was objectionable, but perchance her character was less
historically known then:
"1622. Baptized Drusilla, d. of Thomas Davis."--Ludlow.
_Antipas_, curiously enough, was almost popular, although a murderer and
an adulterer:
"1633, Feb. 28. Baptized Antipas, sonne of Robert Barnes, of
Shadwell."--Stepney.
"1662. Petition of Antipas Charrington."--"Cal. St. P. Dom."
"1650. Antipas Swinnerton, Tedbury, wollman."--"Tokens of Seventeenth
Century."
Dr. Increase Mather, the eminent Puritan, in his work entitled "Remarkable
Providences," published at Boston, U.S.A., in 1684, has a story of an
interposition in behalf of his friend Antipas Newman.
Of other instances, somewhat later, _Sehon_ Stace, who lived in Warding in
1707 ("Suss. Arch. Coll.," xii. 254), commemorates the King of the
Amorites, _Milcom_ Groat ("Cal. St. P.," 1660) representing on English
soil "the abomination of the children of Ammon." Dr. Pusey and Mr.
Spurgeon might be excused a little astonishment at such a conversion by
baptism.
_Barrabas_ cannot be considered a happy choice:
"Buried, 1713, Oct. 18, Barabas, sonne of Barabas
Bowen."--All-Hallows, Barking.
Mr. Maskell draws attention to the name in his history of that church.
There is something so emphatic about "now Barrabas was a robber," that
thoughts of theft seem proper to the very name. We should have locked up
the spoons, we feel sure, had father or son called upon us. The father who
called his son "Judas-not-Iscariot" scarcely cleared the name of its evil
associations, nor would it quite meet the difficulty suggested by the
remark in "Tristram Shandy:"
"Your Billy, sir--would you for the world have called him Judas?...
Would you, sir, if a Jew of a godfather had proposed the name of your
child, and offered you his purse along with it--would you have
consented to such a desecration of him?"
We have all heard the story of Beelzebub. If the child had been
inadvertently so baptized, a remedy might have been found in former days
by changing the name at confirmation. Until 1552, the bishop confirmed by
name. Archbishop Peccham laid down a rule:
"The minister shall take care not to permit wanton names, which being
pronounced do sound to lasciviousness, to be given to children
baptized, especially of the female sex: and if otherwise it be done,
the same shall be changed by the bishop at confirmation."
That this law had been carelessly followed after the Reformation is clear,
else Venus Levat, already quoted, would not have been married in 1631
under that name. Certainly Dinah and Tamar come under the ban of this
injunction.
Curiously enough, the change of name was sanctioned in the case of
orthodox names, for Lord Coke says--
"If a man be baptized by the name of Thomas, and after, at his
confirmation by the Bishop, he is named John, his name of confirmation
shall stand."
He then quotes the case of Sir Francis Gawdie, Chief Justice of the Court
of Common Pleas, whose name by baptism was Thomas, Thomas being changed to
Francis at confirmation. He holds that Francis shall stand ("Institutes,"
1. iii.). This practice manifestly arose out of Peccham's rule, but it is
strange that wanton instances should be left unchanged, and the orthodox
allowed to be altered.
Arising out of the Puritan error of permitting names like Tamar and Dinah
to stand, modern eccentricity has gone very far, and it would be
satisfactory to see many names in use at present forbidden. I need not
quote the Venuses of our directories. Emanuel is of an opposite character,
and should be considered blasphemy. We have not adopted Christ yet, as Dr.
Doran reminded us they have done in Germany, but my copy of the London
Directory shows at least one German, bearing the baptismal name of Christ,
at present dwelling in the metropolis. Puritan eccentricity is a trifle to
this.
IV. LOSSES.
(_a._) _The Destruction of Pet Forms._
But let us now notice some of the more disastrous effects of the great
Hebrew invasion. The most important were the partial destruction of the
nick forms, and the suppression of diminutives. The English pet names
disappeared, never more to return. Desinences in "cock," "kin," "elot,"
"ot," "et," "in," and "on," are no more found in current literature, nor
in the clerk's register. Why should this be so? An important reason
strikes us at once. The ecclesiastic names on which the enclytics had
grown had become unpopular well-nigh throughout England. It was an
English, not a Puritan prejudice. With the suppression of the names proper
went the desinences attached to them. The tree being felled, the parasite
decayed. Another reason was this: the names introduced from the Scriptures
did not seem to compound comfortably with these terminatives. The Hebrew
name would first have to be turned into a nick form before the diminutive
was appended. The English peasantry had added "_in_," "_ot_," "_kin_," and
"_cock_" only to the _nickname_, never to the baptismal form. It was
Wat-kin, not Walterkin; Bat-kin, not Bartholomewkin; Wilcock, not
Williamcock; Colin, not Nicholas-in; Philpot, not Philipot. But the
popular feeling for a century was against turning the new Scripture names
into curt nick forms. As it would have been an absurdity to have appended
diminutives to sesquipedalian names, national wit, rather than deliberate
plan, prevented it. If it was irreverent, too, to curtail Scripture names,
it was equally irreverent to give them the diminutive dress. To prove the
absolute truth of my statement, I have only to remind the reader that,
saving "Nat-kin," not one single Bible name introduced by the Reformation
and the English Bible has become conjoined with a diminutive.[19]
The immediate consequence was this; the diminutive forms became obsolete.
Emmott lingered on till the end of the seventeenth century; nay, got into
the eighteenth:
"Emmit, d. of Edward and Ann Buck, died 24 April, 1726, aged 6
years."--Hawling, Gloucester.
But it was only where it was not known as a form of Emma, and possibly
both might exist in the same household. I have already furnished instances
of Hamlet. Here is another:
"The Rev. Hamlet Marshall, D.D., died in the Close, Lincoln, in 1652.
With him dwelt his nephew, Hamlet Joyce. He bequeaths legacies in his
will to Hamlet Pickerin and Hamlet Duncalf, and his executor was his
son, Hamlet Marshall."--_Notes and Queries_, February 14, 1880.
It lasted till the eighteenth century. But nobody knew by that time that
it was a pet name of Hamon, or Hamond; nay, few knew that the surname of
Hammond had ever been a baptismal name at all:
"1620, Jan. 3. Buried Hamlet Rigby, Mr. Askew's man."--St. Peter,
Cornhill.
"1620. Petition of Hamond Franklin."--"Cal. S. P. Dom.," 1619-1623.
It is curious to notice that Mr. Hovenden, in his "Canterbury Register,"
published 1878, for the Harleian Society, has the following entries:--
"1627, Aprill 3. Christened Ham'on, the sonn of Richard Struggle."
"1634. Jan. 18. Christened Damaris, daughter of Mr. Ham'on Leucknor."
Turning to the index, the editor has styled them _Hamilton_ Struggle and
_Hamilton_ Leucknor. Ham'on, of course, is Hammon, or Hammond. I may add
that some ecclesiastic, a critic of my book on "English Surnames," in the
_Guardian_, rebuked me for supposing that Emmot could be from Emma, and
calmly put it down as a form of Aymot! What can prove the effect of the
Reformation on old English names as do such incidents as these?
An English monarch styled his favourite Peter Gaveston as "Piers," a form
that was sufficiently familiar to readers of history; but when an
antiquary, some few years ago, found this same Gaveston described as
"Perot," it became a difficulty to not a few. The Perrots or Parratts of
our London Directory might have told them of the old-fashioned diminutive
that had been knocked on the head with a Hebrew Bible.
Collet, from Nicholas, used as a feminine name, died out also. The last
instance I know of is--
"1629, Jan. 15. Married Thomas Woollard and Collatt Hargrave."--St.
Peter, Cornhill.
Colin, the other pet form, having got into our pastoral poetry, lingered
longer, and may be said to be still alive:
"1728. Married Colin Foster and Beulah Digby."--Somerset House Chapel.
The last Wilmot I have discovered is a certain Wilmote Adams, a defendant
in a Chancery suit at the end of Elizabeth's reign ("Chancery Suits:
Elizabeth"), and the last Philpot is dated 1575:
"1575, Aug. 26. Christened Philpott, a chylde that was laide at Mr
Alderman Osberne's gatt."--St. Dionis Backchurch.
All the others perished by the time James I. was king. Guy, or Wyatt,
succumbed entirely, and the same may be said of the rest. Did we require
further confirmation of this, I need only inquire: Would any Yorkshireman
now, as he reads over shop-fronts in towns like Leeds or Bradford, or in
the secluded villages of Wensleydale or Swaledale, the surnames of Tillot
and Tillotson, Emmett and Emmotson, Ibbott, Ibbet, Ibbs, and Ibbotson,
know that, twenty years before the introduction of our English Bible,
these were not merely the familiar pet names of Matilda, Emma, and
Isabella, but that as a trio they stood absolutely first in the scale of
frequency? Nay, they comprised more than forty-five per cent. of the
female population.
The last registered Ibbot or Issot I have seen is in the Chancery suits at
the close of Queen Bess's reign, wherein Ibote Babyngton and Izott Barne
figure in some legal squabbles ("Chancery Suits: Elizabeth," vol. ii.). As
for Sissot, or Drewet, or Doucet, or Fawcett, or Hewet, or Philcock, or
Jeffcock, or Batkin, or Phippin, or Lambin, or Perrin, they have passed
away--their place knoweth them no more. What a remarkable revolution is
this, and so speedy!
Failing our registers, the question may arise whether or not in familiar
converse the old pet forms were still used. Our ballads and plays preserve
many of the nick forms, but scarcely a pet form is to be seen later than
1590. In 1550 Nicholas Udall wrote "Ralph Roister Doister," in the very
commencement of which Matthew Merrygreek "says or sings"--
"Sometime Lewis Loiterer biddeth me come near:
Somewhiles _Watkin_ Waster maketh us good cheer."
Amongst the _dramatis personae_ are _Dobinet_ Doughty, Sim Suresby, Madge
Mumblecrust, _Tibet_ Talkapace, and _Annot_ Aliface. A few years later
came "Gammer Gurton's Needle." Both _Diccon_ and Hodge figure in it: two
rustics of the most bucolic type. Hodge, after relating how Gib the cat
had licked the milk-pan clean, adds--
"Gog's souls, _Diccon_, Gib our cat had eat the bacon too."
Immediately after this, again, in 1568 was printed "Like will to Like."
The chief characters are Tom Tosspot, _Hankin_ Hangman, Pierce Pickpurse,
and Nichol Newfangle. Wat Waghalter is also introduced. But here may be
said to end this homely and contemporary class of play-names. 'Tis true,
in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Beggar's Bush," Higgen (_Higgin_) is one of
the "three knavish beggars," but the scene is laid in Flanders.
Judging by our songs and comedies, the diminutive forms went down with
terrible rapidity, and were practically obsolete before Elizabeth's death.
But this result was more the work of the Reformation at large than
Puritanism.
(_b._) _The Decrease of Nick Forms._
This was not all. The nick forms saw themselves reduced to straits. The
new godly names, I have said, were not to be turned into irreverent cant
terms. From the earliest day of the Reformation every man who gave his
child a Bible name stuck to it unaltered. Ebenezer at baptism was Ebenezer
among the turnips, Ebenezer with the milk-pail, and Ebenezer in courtship;
while Deborah, who did not become Deb till Charles I.'s reign, would
Ebenezer him till the last day she had done scolding him, and put
"Ebenezer" carefully on his grave, to prove how happily they had lived
together!
As for the zealot who gradually forged his way to the front, he gave his
brother and sister in the Lord the full benefit of his or her title,
whether it was five syllables or seven. There can be no doubt that these
Hebrew names did not readily adapt themselves to ordinary converse with
the world. Melchisedek and Ebedmelech were all right elbowing their way
into the conventicle, but Melchisedek dispensing half-pounds of butter
over the counter, or Ebedmelech carrying milk-pails from door to door,
gave people a kind of shock. These grand assumptions suggested knavery.
One feels certain that our great-grandmothers had a suspicion of tallow in
the butter, and Jupiter Pluvius in the pail.
Nor did these excavated names harmonize with the surnames to which they
were yoked. Adoniram was quaint enough without Byfield, but both (as
Butler, in "Hudibras," knew) suggested something slightly ludicrous. Byron
took a mean advantage of this when he attacked poor Cottle, the bookseller
and would-be writer:
"O Amos Cottle! Phoebus! what a name
To fill the speaking trump of future fame!
O Amos Cottle! for a moment think
What meagre profits spring from pen and ink."
Amos is odd, but Amos united to Cottle makes a smile irresistible.
Who does not agree with Wilkes, who, when speaking to Johnson of Dryden's
would-be rival, the city poet, says--
"Elkanah Settle sounds so queer, who can expect much from that name?
We should have no hesitation to give it for John Dryden, in preference
to Elkanah Settle, from the names only, without knowing their
different merits"?
And Sterne, as the elder Disraeli reminds us, in one of his multitudinous
digressions from the life of "Tristram Shandy," makes the progenitor of
that young gentleman turn absolutely melancholy, as he conjures up a
vision of all the men who
"might have done exceeding well in the world, had not their characters
and spirits been totally depressed, and Nicodemas'd into nothing."
Even Oliver Goldsmith cannot resist styling the knavish seller of green
spectacles by a conjunction of Hebrew and English titles as Ephraim
Jenkinson; and his servant, who acts the part of a Job Trotter (another
Old Testament worthy, again) to his master, is, of course, Abraham!
But, oddly as such combinations strike upon the modern tympanum, what must
not the effect have been in a day when a nickname was popular according as
it was curt? How would men rub their eyes in sheer amazement, when such
conjunctions as Ebedmelech Gastrell, or Epaphroditus Haughton, or
Onesiphorus Dixey, were introduced to their notice, pronounced with all
sesquipedalian fulness, following upon the very heels of a long epoch of
traditional one-syllabled Ralphs, Hodges, Hicks, Wats, Phips, Bates, and
Balls (Baldwin). Conceive the amazement at such registrations as these:
"1599, Sep. 23. Christened Aholiab, sonne of Michaell Nicolson,
cordwainer."--St. Peter, Cornhill.
"1569, June 1. Christened Ezekiell, sonne of Robert Pownall."--Cant.
Cath.
"1582, April 1. Christened Melchisadeck, sonne of Melchizadeck Bennet,
poulter."--St. Peter, Cornhill.
"1590, Dec. 20. Christened Abacucke, sonne of John Tailer."--Ditto.
"1595, Nov. Christened Zabulon, sonne of John Griffin."--Stepney.
"1603, Sep. 15. Buried Melchesideck King."--Cant. Cath.
"1645, July 19. Buried Edward, sonne of Mephibosheth Robins."--St.
Peter, Cornhill.
"1660, Nov. 5. Buried Jehostiaphat (_sic_) Star."--Cant. Cath.
"1611, Oct. 21. Baptized Zipporah, d. of Richard Beere, of
Wapping."--Stepney.
The "Chancery Suits" of Elizabeth contain a large batch of such names; and
I have already enumerated a list of "Pilgrim Fathers" of James's reign,
whose baptisms would be recorded in the previous century.
But compare this with the fact that the leading men in England at this
very time were recognized only by the curtest of abbreviated names. In
that very quaint poem of Heywood's, "The Hierarchie of Blessed Angels,"
the author actually makes it the ground of an affected remonstrance:
"Marlowe, renowned for his rare art and wit,
Could ne'er attain beyond the name of _Kit_,
Although his _Hero and Leander_ did
Merit addition rather. Famous Kid
Was called but _Tom_. _Tom_ Watson, though he wrote
Able to make Apollo's self to dote
Upon his muse, for all that he could strive,
Yet never could to his full name arrive.
_Tom_ Nash, in his time of no small esteem,
Could not a second syllable redeem.
* * * * *
Mellifluous Shakespeare, whose enchanting quill
Commanded mirth or passion, was but _Will_:
And famous Jonson, though his learned pen
Be dipped in Castaly, is still but _Ben_."
However, in the end, he attributes the familiarity to the right cause:
"I, for my part,
Think others what they please, accept that heart
That courts my love in most familiar phrase;
And that it takes not from my pains or praise,
If any one to me so bluntly come:
I hold he loves me best that calls me _Tom_."
It is Sir Christopher, the curate, who, in "The Ordinary," rebels against
"Kit:"
"_Andrew._ What may I call your name, most reverend sir?
_Bagshot._ His name's Sir Kit.
_Christopher._ My name is not so short:
'Tis a trisyllable, an't please your worship;
But vulgar tongues have made bold to profane it
With the short sound of that unhallowed idol
They call a kit. Boy, learn more reverence!
_Bagshot._ Yes, to my betters."
We need not wonder, therefore, that the comedists took their fun out of
the new custom, especially in relation to their length and pronunciation
in full. In Cowley's "Cutter of Colman Street," Cutter turns Puritan, and
thus addresses the colonel's widow, Tabitha:
"Sister Barebottle, I must not be called Cutter any more: that is a
name of Cavalier's darkness; the Devil was a Cutter from the
beginning: my name is now Abednego: I had a vision which whispered to
me through a key-hole, 'Go, call thyself Abednego.'"
In his epilogue to this same comedy, Cutter is supposed to address the
audience as a "congregation of the elect," the playhouse is a conventicle,
and he is a "pious cushion-thumper." Gazing about the theatre, he
says--through his nose, no doubt--
"But yet I wonder much not to espy a
Brother in all this court called Zephaniah."
This is a better rhyme even than Butler's
"Their dispensations had been stifled
But for our Adoniram Byfield."
In Brome's "Covent Garden Weeded," the arrival at the vintner's door is
thus described:
"_Rooksbill._ Sure you mistake him, sir.
_Vintner._ You are welcome, gentlemen: Will, Harry, Zachary!
_Gabriel._ Zachary is a good name.
_Vintner._ Where are you? Shew up into the Phoenix."--Act. ii. sc. 2.
The contrast between Will or Harry, the nick forms, and Zachary,[20] the
full name, is intentionally drawn, and Gabriel instantly rails at it.
In "Bartholomew Fair," half the laughter that convulsed Charles II., his
courtiers, and courtezans, was at the mention of _Ezekiel_, the cut-purse,
or _Zeal-of-the-land_, the baker, who saw visions; while the veriest
noodle in the pit saw the point of Squire Cokes' perpetually addressing
his body-man Humphrey in some such style as this:
"O, Numps! are you here, Numps? Look where I am, Numps, and Mistress
Grace, too! Nay, do not look so angrily, Numps: my sister is here and
all, I do not come without her."
How the audience would laugh and cheer at a sally that was simply
manufactured of a repetition of the good old-fashioned name for Humphrey;
and thus a passage that reads as very dull fun indeed to the ears of the
nineteenth century, would seem to be brimful of sarcastic allusion to the
popular audience of the seventeenth, especially when spoken by such lips
as Wintersels.
The same effect was attempted and attained in the "Alchemist." Subtle
addresses the deacon:
"What's your name?
_Ananias._ My name is Ananias.
_Subtle._ Out, the varlet
That cozened the Apostles! Hence away!
Flee, mischief! had your holy consistory
No name to send me, of another sound,
Than wicked Ananias? Send your elders
Hither, to make atonement for you, quickly,
And give me satisfaction: or out goes
The fire ...
If they stay threescore minutes; the aqueity,
Terreity, and sulphureity
Shall run together again, and all be annulled,
Thou wicked Ananias!"
Exit Ananias, and no wonder. Of course, the pit would roar at the expense
of Ananias. But Abel, the tobacco-man, who immediately appears in his
place, is addressed familiarly as "Nab:"
"_Face._ Abel, thou art made.
_Abel._ Sir, I do thank his worship.
_Face._ Six o' thy legs more will not do it, Nab.
He has brought you a pipe of tobacco, doctor.
_Abel._ Yes, sir; I have another thing I would impart----
_Face._ Out with it, Nab.
_Abel._ Sir, there is lodged hard by me
A rich young widow."
To some readers there will be little point in this. They will say "Abel,"
as an Old Testament name, should neither have been given to an
un-puritanic character, nor ought it to have been turned into a nickname.
This would never have occurred to the audience. Abel, or Nab, had been one
of the most popular of English names for at least three centuries before
the Reformation. Hence it was _never_ used by the Puritans, and was, as a
matter of course, the undisturbed property of their enemies. Three
centuries of bad company had ruined Nab's morals. The zealot would none of
it.[21]
But from all this it will be seen that a much better fight was made in
behalf of the old nick forms than of the diminutives. By a timely rally,
Tom, Jack, Dick, and Harry were carried, against all hindrances, into the
Restoration period, and from that time they were safe. Wat, Phip, Hodge,
Bat or Bate, and Cole lost their position, but so had the fuller Philip,
Roger, Bartholomew, and Nicholas, But the opponents of Puritanism carried
the war into the enemy's camp in revenge for this, and Priscilla, Deborah,
Jeremiah, and Nathaniel, although they were rather of the Reformation than
Puritanic introductions, were turned by the time of Charles I. into the
familiar nick forms of Pris, Deb, Jerry, and Nat. The licentious Richard
Brome, in "The New Academy," even attempts a curtailment of Nehemiah:
"_Lady Nestlecock._ Negh, Negh!
_Nehemiah._ Hark! my mother comes.
_Lady N._ Where are you, childe? Negh!
_Nehemiah._ I hear her _neighing_ after me."
Act iv. sc. 1. (1658).
It was never tried out of doors, however, and the experiment was not
repeated. Brome was still more scant in reverence to Damaris. In "Covent
Garden Weeded" Madge begins "the dismal story:"
"This gentlewoman whose name is Damaris----
_Nich._ Damyris, stay: her nickname then is Dammy: so we may call her
when we grow familiar; and to begin that familiarity--Dammy, here's to
you. (_Drinks._)"
After this she is Dammy in the mouth of Nicholas throughout the play.
This, too, was a failure. Indeed, it demonstrates a remarkable reverence
for their Bible on the part of the English race, that every attempt to
turn one of its names into a nick form (saving in some three or four
instances) has ignominiously failed. We mean, of course, since the
Reformation.
The Restoration was a great restoration of nick forms. Such names as had
survived were again for a while in full favour, and the reader has only
to turn to the often coarse ballads and songs contained in such
collections as Tom d'Urfey's "Pills to Purge Melancholy" to see how Nan,
Sis, Sib, Kate, and Doll had been brought back to popular favour. It was
but a spurt, however, in the main. As the lascivious reaction from the
Puritanic strait-lacedness in some degree spent itself, so did the newly
restored fashion, and when the eighteenth century brought in a fresh
innovation, viz. the _classic_ forms, such as Beatrix, Maria, Laetitia,
Carolina, Louisa, Amelia, Georgina, Dorothea, Prudentia, Honora--an
innovation that for forty years ran like an epidemic through every class
of society, and was sarcastically alluded to by Goldsmith in Miss Carolina
Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs, and the sisters Olivia and Sophia--the old nick
forms once more bade adieu to English society, and now enjoy but a partial
favour. But Bill, Tom, Dick, and Harry still hold on like grim death. Long
may they continue to do so!
(_c._) _The Decay of Saint and Festival Names._
There were some serious losses in hagiology. Names that had figured in the
calendar for centuries fared badly; Simon, Peter, Nicholas, Bartholomew,
Philip, and Matthew, from being first favourites, lapsed into comparative
oblivion. Some virgins and martyrs of extra-Biblical repute, like Agnes,
Ursula, Catharine, Cecilia, or Blaze, crept into the registers of
Charles's reign, but they had then become but shadows of their former
selves.
'Sis' is often found in D'Urfey's ballads, but it only proves the songs
themselves were old ones, or at any rate the choruses, for Cecilia was
practically obsolete:
"1574, Oct. 8. Buried Cisly Weanewright, ye carter's wife."--St.
Peter, Cornhill.
"1578, June 1. Buried Cissellye, wife of Gilles Lambe."--St. Dionis
Backchurch.
"1547, Dec. 26. Married Thomas Bodnam and Urcylaye Watsworth."--Ditto.
"1654, Sep. 20. Buried Ursley, d. of John Fife."--St. Peter, Cornhill.
It was now that Awdry gave way:
"1576, Sept. 7. Buryed Awdry, the widow of -- Seward."--St. Peter,
Cornhill.
"1610, May 27. Baptized Awdrey, d. of John Cooke, butcher."--St.
Dionis Backchurch.
St. Blaze,[22] the patron saint of wool-combers and the _nom-de-plume_ of
Gil Blas, has only a church or two to recall his memory to us now. But he
lived into Charles's reign:
"Blaze Winter was master of Stodmarsh Hospital, when it was
surrendered to Queen Elizabeth, 1575."--Hasted's "History of Kent."
"1550, May 23. Baptized Blaze, daughter of -- Goodwinne."--St. Peter,
Cornhill.
"1555, Julie 21. Wedding of Blase Sawlter and Collis Smith."--Ditto.
"1662, May 6. Blase Whyte, one of ye minor cannons, to Mrs. Susanna
Wright, widow."--Cant. Cath.
This is the last instance I have seen. Hillary shared the same fate:
"1547, Jan. 30. Married Hillarye Finch and Jane Whyte."--St. Dionis
Backchurch.
"1557, June 27. Wedding of Hillary Wapolle and Jane Garret."--St.
Peter, Cornhill.
"1593, Jan. 20. Christening of Hillary, sonne of Hillary Turner,
draper."--Ditto.
Bride is rarely found in England now:
"1556, May 22. Baptized Bryde, daughter of -- Stoakes.
"1553, Nov. 27. Baptized Bryde, daughter of -- Faunt."--St. Peter,
Cornhill.
Benedict, which for three hundred years had been known as Bennet, as
several London churches can testify, became well-nigh extinct; but the
feminine Benedicta, with Bennet for its shortened form, suddenly arose on
its ashes, and flourished for a time:
"1517, Jan. 28. Wedding of William Stiche and Bennet Bennet,
widow."--St. Peter, Cornhill.
"1653, Sep. 29. Married Richard Moone to Benedicta Rolfe."--Cant.
Cath.
"1575, Jan. 25. Baptized Bennett, son of John Langdon."--St. Columb
Major.
These feminines are sometimes bothering. Look, for instance, at this:
"1596, Feb. 6. Wedding of William Bromley and Mathew Barnet, maiden,
of this parish."--St. Peter, Cornhill.
"1655, Sep. 24. Married Thomas Budd, miller, and Mathew Larkin,
spinster."--Ditto.
The true spelling should have been Mathea, which, previous to the
Reformation, had been given to girls born on St. Matthew's Day.[23] The
nick form _Mat_ changed sexes. In "Englishmen for my Money" Walgrave
says--
"Nay, stare not, look you here: no monster I, But even plain Ned, and
here stands Mat my wife."
Appoline, all of whose teeth were extracted at her martyrdom with pincers,
was a favourite saint for appeal against toothache. In the Homily "Against
the Perils of Idolatry," it is said--
"All diseases have their special saints, as gods, the curers of them:
the toothache, St. Appoline."[24]
Scarcely any name for girls was more common than this for a time; up to
the Commonwealth period it contrived to exist. Take St. Peter, Cornhill,
alone:
"1593, Jan. 13. Christened Apeline, d. of John Moris, clothworker.
"1609, M{ch}. 11. Christened Apoline, d. of Will{m}. Burton, marchant.
"1617, June 29. Buried Appelyna, d. of Thomas Church."
Names from the great Church festivals fared as badly as those from the
hagiology. The high day of the ecclesiastical calendar is Easter. We have
more relics of this festival than any other. Pasche Oland or Pascoe Kerne
figure in the Chancery suits of Elizabeth. Long before this the Hundred
Rolls had given us a _Huge fil. Pasche_, and a contemporary record
contained an _Antony Pascheson_. The different forms lingered till the
Commonwealth:
"1553, M{ch}. 23. Baptized Pascall, son of John Davye."--St. Dionis
Backchurch.
"1651, M{ch}. 18. Married Thomas Strato and Paskey Prideaux."--St.
Peter's, Cornhill.
"1747, May 4. Baptized Rebekah, d. of Pasko and Sarah Crocker."--St.
Dionis Backchurch.
"1582, June 14. Baptized Pascow, son-in-law of Pascowe John."--St.
Columb Major.
Pascha Turner, widow, was sister of Henry Parr, Bishop of Worcester.
The more English "Easter" had a longer survival, but this arose from its
having become confounded with Esther. To this mistake it owes the fact
that it lived till the commencement of the present century:
"April, 1505. Christened Easter, daughter of Thomas Coxe, of
Wapping."--Stepney.
"May 27, 1764. Buried Easter Lewis, aged 56 years."--Lidney, Glouc.
"July 27, 1654. Married Thomas Burton, marriner, and Easter
Taylor."--St. Peter, Cornhill.
_Epiphany_, or _Theophania_ (shortened to Tiffany), was popular with both
sexes, but the ladies got the chief hold of it.
"Megge Merrywedyr, and Sabyn Sprynge,
Tiffany Twynkeler, fayle for no thynge,"
says one of our old mysteries. This form succumbed at the Reformation.
Tyffanie Seamor appears as defendant about 1590, however ("Chancery Suits:
Eliz."), and in Cornwall the name reached the seventeenth century:
"1594, Nov. 7. Baptized Typhenie, daughter of Sampson Bray.
"1600, June 21. Baptized Tiffeny, daughter of Harry Hake."--St. Columb
Major.
The following is from Banbury register:
"1586, Jan. 9. Baptized Epiphane, ye sonne of Ambrose Bentley."[25]
Epiphany Howarth records his name also about 1590 ("Chancery Suits:
Eliz."), and a few years later he is once more met with in a State paper
(C. S. P. 1623-25):
"1623, June. Account of monies paid by Epiphan Haworth, of
Herefordshire, recusant, since Nov. 11, 1611, L6 10 0."
This Epiphan is valuable as showing the transition state between Epiphania
and Ephin, the latter being the form that ousted all others:
"1563, March 14. Christening of Ephin King, d. of -- King.
"1564, June 30. Christening of Effam, d. of John Adlington.
"1620, March 30. Frauncis, sonne of Alexander Brounescome, and Effym,
his wife, brought a bead at Mr. Vowell's house.
"1635, Jan. 28. Buried Epham Vowell, widow."--St. Peter, Cornhill.
But Ephin was not a long liver, and by the time of the Restoration had
wholly succumbed. The last entry I have seen is in the Westminster Abbey
register:
"1692, Jan. 25. Buried Eppifania Cakewood, an almsman's wife."
Pentecost was more sparely used. In the "Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum in
Turri Londonensi" occur both Pentecost de London (1221) and Pentecost
Servicus, and a servitor of Henry III. bore the only name of "Pentecost"
("Inquis., 13 Edw. I.," No. 13). This name was all but obsolete soon after
the Reformation set in, but it lingered on till the end of the seventeenth
century.
"1577, May 25. Baptized Pentecost, daughter of Robert Rosegan."--St.
Columb Major.
"1610, May 27. Baptized Pentecost, d. of William Tremain."--Ditto.
"August 7, 1696. Pentecost, daughter of Mr. Ezekel and Pentecost Hall,
merchant, born and baptized."--St. Dionis Backchurch.
Noel shared the same fate. The Hundred Rolls furnish a Noel de Aubianis,
while the "Materials for a History of Henry VII." (p. 503) mentions a
Nowell Harper:
"1486, July 16. General pardon to Nowell Harper, late of Boyleston,
co. Derby, gent."
"1545, Dec. 20. Baptized Nowell, son of William Mayhowe."--St. Columb
Major.
"1580, March 1. Baptized James, son of Nowell Mathew."--Ditto.
"1627. Petition of Nowell Warner."--"C. S. P. Domestic," 1627-8.
Noel still struggled gamely, and died hard, seeing the eighteenth century
well in:
"1706, April 23. Noell Whiteing, son of Noell and Ann Whiteing,
linendraper, baptized."--St. Dionis Backchurch.
Again the Reformation, apart from Puritanism, had much to do with the
decay of these names.
(_d._) _The Last of some Old Favourites._
There were some old English favourites that the Reformation and the
English Bible did not immediately crush. Thousands of men were youths when
the Hebrew invasion set in, and lived unto James's reign. Their names crop
up, of course, in the burial registers. Others were inclined to be
tenacious over family favourites. We must be content, in the records of
Elizabeth's and even James's reign, to find some old friends standing side
by side with the new. The majority of them were extra-Biblical, and
therefore did not meet with the same opposition as those that savoured of
the old ecclesiasticism. Nevertheless, this new fashion was telling on
them, and of most we may say, "Their places know them no more."
Looking from now back to then, we see this the more clearly. We turn to
the "Calendar of State Papers," and we find a grant, dated November 5,
1607, to _Fulk_ Reade to travel four years. Shortly afterwards (July 15,
1609), we come across a warrant to John Carse, of the benefit of the
recusancy of _Drew_ Lovett, of the county of Middlesex. Casting our eye
backwards we speedily reach a grant or warrant in 1603, wherein
_Gavin_[26] Harvey is mentioned. In 1604 comes _Ingram_ Fyser. One after
another these names occur within the space of five years--names then,
although it was well in James's reign, known of all men, and borne
reputably by many. But who will say that Drew, or Fulk, or Gavin, or
Ingram are alive now? How they were to be elbowed out of existence these
very same records tell us; for within the same half-decade we may see
warrants or grants relating to _Matathias_ Mason (April 7, 1610) or
_Gersome_ Holmes (January 23, 1608). _Jethro_ Forstall obtains licence,
November 12, 1604, to dwell in one of the alms-rooms of Canterbury
Cathedral; while _Melchizedec_ Bradwood receives sole privilege, February
18, 1608, of printing Jewel's "Defence of the Apology of the English
Church." The enemy was already within the bastion, and the call for
surrender was about to be made.
Take another specimen a few years earlier. In the Chancery suits at the
close of Elizabeth's reign, we find a plaintiff named Goddard Freeman,
another styled Anketill Brasbridge, a defendant bearing the good old title
of Frideswide Heysham, while a fourth endeavours to secure his title to
some property under the signature of Avery Howlatt. Hamlett Holcrofte and
Hammett Hyde are to be met with (but we have spoken of them), and such
other personages as Ellice Heye, Morrice Cowles, and Gervase Hatfield.
Within a few pages' limit we come across Dogory Garry, Digory Greenfield,
Digory Harrit, and Degory Hollman. These names of Goddard, Anketill,
Frideswide, Avery, Hamlet, Ellice, Morrice, Gervase, and Digory were on
everybody's lips when Henry VIII. was king. Who can say that they exist
now? Only Maurice and Gervase enjoy a precarious existence. A breath of
popular disregard would blow them out. Avery held out, but in vain:
"Avery Terrill, cooke at ye Falcon, Lothbury, 1650."--"Tokens of
Seventeenth Century."
But what else do we see in these same registers? We are confronted with
pages bearing such names as Esaye Freeman (Isaiah), or Elizar Audly
(Eliezer), or Seth Awcocke, or Urias Babington, or Ezekias Brent,--and
this not forty years after the Reformation. These men must have been
baptized in the very throes of the great contest.
Another "Calendar of State Papers," bearing dates between 1590 and 1605,
contains the names of Colet Carey (1580) and Amice Carteret (1599),
alongside of whom stands Aquila Wyke (1603). Here once more we are
reminded of two pretty baptismal names that have gone the way of the
others. It makes one quite sad to think of these national losses. Amice,
previous to the Reformation, was a household favourite, and Colet a
perfect pet. Won't somebody come to the rescue? Why on earth should the
fact that the Bible has been translated out of Latin into English strip us
of these treasures?
Turn once more to our church registers. Few will recognize Thurstan as a
baptismal name:
"1544, May 11. Married Thryston Hogkyn and Letyce Knight."--St. Dionis
Backchurch.
"1573, Nov. 15. Wedding of Thrustone Bufford and Annes Agnes
Dyckson."--St. Peter, Cornhill.
Drew and Fulk are again found:
"1583, April 16. Buried Drew Hewat, sonne of Nicholas Hewat.
"1583, March 8. Buried Foulke Phillip, sonne of Thomas Phillip,
grocer."--St. Peter, Cornhill.
Take the following, dropped upon hap-hazard as I turn the pages of St.
Dionis Backchurch:
"1540, Oct. 25. Buried Jacomyn Swallowe.
"1543, Aug. 3. Buried Awdrye Hykman.
"1543, June 12. Married Bonyface Meorys and Jackamyn Kelderly.
"1546, Nov. 23. Christened Grizill, daughter of--Deyne.
"1557, Nov. 8. Buried Austin Clarke.
"1567, April 22. Married Richard Staper and Dennis Hewyt.
"1573, Sep. 25. Married John Carrington and Gyllian Lovelake.
"1574, Oct. 23. Buried Joyce, d. of John Bray.
"1594, Nov. 1. Married Gawyn Browne and Sibbell Halfhed."
So they run. How quaint and pretty they sound to modern ears! Amongst the
above I have mentioned some girl-names. The change is strongly marked
here. It was Elizabeth's reign saw the end of Joan. Jane Grey set the
fashionable Jane going; Joan was relegated to the milkmaid, and very soon
even the kitchen wench would none of it. Joan is obsolete; Jane is showing
signs of dissolution.[27]
It was Elizabeth's reign saw the end of Jill, or Gill, which had been the
pet name of Juliana for three centuries:
"1586, Feb. 5. Christening of Gillian Jones, daughter of Thomas Jones,
grocer."--St. Peter, Cornhill.
"1573, Sep. 25. Married John Carrington, Cheape, and Gillian
Lovelake."--St. Dionis Backchurch.
In one of our earlier mysteries Noah's wife had refused to enter the ark.
To Noah she had said--
"Sir, for Jak nor for Gille
Wille I turne my face,
Tille I have on this hille
Spun a space."
It lingered on till the close of James's reign. In 1619 we find in
"Satyricall Epigrams"--
"Wille squabbled in a tavern very sore,
Because one brought a _gill_ of wine--no more:
'Fill me a quart,' quoth he, 'I'm called Will;
The proverb is, each _Jacke_ shall have his _Gill_.'"
But Jill had become a term for a common street jade, like Parnel and Nan.
All these disappeared at this period, and must have sunk into disuse,
Bible or no Bible. A nanny-house, or simple "nanny," was well known to the
loose and dissolute of either sex at the close of the sixteenth century.
Hence, in the ballad "The Two Angrie Women of Abington," Nan Lawson is a
wanton; while, in "Slippery Will," the hero's inclination for Nan is
anything but complimentary:
"Long have I lived a bachelor's life,
And had no mind to marry;
But now I faine would have a wife,
Either Doll, Kate, Sis, or Mary.
These four did love me very well,
I had my choice of Mary;
But one did all the rest excell,
And that was pretty Nanny.
"Sweet Nan did love me deare indeed," etc.
Respectable people, still liking the name, changed it to Nancy, and in
that form it still lives.
Parnel, the once favourite Petronilla, fell under the same blight as
Peter, and shared his fate; but her character also ruined her. In the
registers of St. Peter, Cornhill, we find the following entries:--
"1539, May 20. Christened Petronilla, ignoti cognominis."
"1594, Sep. 15. Christening of Parnell Griphin, d. of John Griphin,
felt-maker."
"1586, April 17. Christening of Parnell Averell, d. of William
Averell, merchant tailor."
Two other examples may be furnished:--
"1553, Nov. 15. Peternoll, daughter of William Agar, baptized."--St.
Columb Major.
"1590, April. Pernell, d. of Antony Barton, of Poplar."--Stepney,
London.
The Restoration did not restore Parnel, and the name is gone.
Sibyl had a tremendous run in her day, and narrowly escaped a second epoch
of favour in the second Charles's reign. Tib and Sib were always placed
side by side. Burton, speaking of "love melancholy," says--
"One grows too fat, another too lean: modest Matilda, pretty pleasing
Peg, sweet singing Susan, mincing merry Moll, dainty dancing Doll,
neat Nancy, jolly Joan, nimble Nell, kissing Kate, bouncing Bess with
black eyes, fair Phillis with fine white hands, fiddling Frank, tall
Tib, slender Sib, will quickly lose their grace, grow fulsome, stale,
sad, heavy, dull, sour, and all at last out of fashion."
The "Psalm of Mercie," too, has it:
"'So, so,' quoth my sister Bab,
And 'Kill 'um,' quoth Margerie;
'Spare none,' cry's old Tib; 'No quarter,' says Sib,
'And, hey, for our monachie.'"
In "Cocke Lorelle's Bote," one of the personages introduced is--
"Sibby Sole, mylke wyfe of Islynton."
"Sibb Smith, near Westgate, Canterbury, 1650."--"Half-penny Tokens of
Seventeenth Century."
"1590, Aug. 30. Christening of Cibell Overton, d. of Lawrence Overton,
bowyer."
Three names practically disappeared in this same century--Olive, Jacomyn
or Jacolin, and Grissel:
"1581, Feb. 17. Baptized Olyff, daughter of Degorie Stubbs."--St.
Columb Major.
"1550, Dec. 11. Christning of Grysell, daughter of -- Plummer."--St.
Peter, Cornhill.
"1598, March 15. Buried Jacolyn Backley, widow."--St. Dionis
Backchurch.
Olive was a great favourite in the west of England, and was restored by a
caprice of fashion as Olivia in the eighteenth century. It was the
property of both sexes, and is often found in the dress of "Olliph,"
"Olyffe," and "Olif." From being a household pet, Dorothy, as Doll, almost
disappeared for a while. Doll and Dolly came back in the eighteenth
century, under the patronage of the royal and stately Dorothea. What a run
it again had! Dolly is one of the few instances of a really double
existence. It was the rage from 1450 to 1570; it was overwhelmed with
favour from 1750 to 1820. Dr. Syntax in his travels meets with three
Dollys. Napoleon is besought in the rhymes of the day to
"quit his folly,
Settle in England, and marry Dolly."
Once more Dolly, saving for Dora, has made her bow and exit. I suppose she
may turn up again about 1990, and all the little girls will be wearing
Dolly Vardens.
_Barbara_, with its pet Bab, is now of rarest use. _Dowse_, the pretty
Douce of earlier days, is defunct, and with it the fuller Dowsabel:
"1565, Sep. 9. Buried Dowse, wife of John Thomas."--St. Dionis
Backchurch.
_Joyce_ fought hard, but it was useless:
"1563, Sep. 8. Buried Joyce, wife of Thomas Armstrong."--St. Dionis
Backchurch.
"1575, April 5. Baptized Joyes, daughter of John Lyttacott."--St.
Columb Major.
"1652, Aug. 18. Married Joseph Sumner and Joyce Stallowhace."--St.
Peter, Cornhill.
_Lettice_ disappeared, to come back as Laetitia in the eighteenth century:
"1587, June 19. Married Richard Evannes and Lettis Warren."--St.
Peter, Cornhill.
_Amery_, or _Emery_, the property of either sex, lost place:
"1584, April 9. Buried Amery Martin, widow, of Wilsdon."--St. Peter,
Cornhill.
"1668. Emerre Bradley, baker, Hartford."--"Tokens of Seventeenth
Century."
_Avice_ shared the same fate:
"Avis Kingston and Amary Clerke, widow, applied for arrears of pay due
to their husbands, May 13, 1656."--C. S. P.
"1590-1, Jan. Christened Avis, d. of Philip Cliff."--Stepney.
"1600, Feb. 6. Baptized Avice, daughter of Thomas Bennett."--St.
Columb Major.
"1623, August 5. Christened Thomas, the sonne of James Jennets, and
Avice his wife."--St. Peter, Cornhill.
Thomasine requires a brief notice. Coming into use as a fancy name about
1450, it seems to have met with no opposition, and for a century and a
half was a decided success. It became familiar to every district in
England, north or south, and is found in the registers of out-of-the-way
villages in Derbyshire, as plentifully as in those of the metropolitan
churches:
"1538, Nov. 30. Married Edward Bashe and Thomeson Agar."--St. Dionis
Backchurch.
"1582, Nov. 1. Baptized Tamson, daughter of Richard Hodge."--St.
Columb Major.
"1622, Jan. 19. Christened Thomas, the sonne of Henery Thomson,
haberdasher, and of Thomazine his wife."--St. Peter, Cornhill.
"1620, Jan. 21. Baptized Johanna, fil. Tamsin Smith,
adulterina."--Minster.
"1640, Jan. 31. Buried Thomasing, filia William Sympson."--Wirksworth,
Derbyshire.
In other registers such forms as Thomasena, Thomesin, Thomazin, Tomasin,
and Thomasin occur. In Cowley's "Chronicle," too, the name is found:
"Then Jone and Jane and Audria,
And then a pretty Thomasine,
And then another Katharine,
And then a long et caetera."
V. THE GENERAL CONFUSION.
But what a state of confusion does all this reveal! By the time of the
Commonwealth, there was the choice of three methods of selection open to
the English householder in this matter of names. He might copy the zealot
faction, and select his names from the Scriptures or the category of
Christian graces; he might rally by the old English gentleman, who at this
time was generally a Cavalier, and Dick, Tom, Harry, or Dolly, his
children; or he might be careless about the whole matter, and mix the two,
according to his caprice or fancy. That Royalist had no bad conception of
the state of society in 1648, when he turned off verses such as these:
"And Greenwich shall be for tenements free
For saints to possess Pell-Mell,
And where all the sport is at Hampton Court
Shall be for ourselves to dwell.
_Chorus._ ''Tis blessed,' quoth Bathsheba,
And Clemence, 'We're all agreed.'
''Tis right,' quoth Gertrude, 'And fit,' says sweet Jude,
And Thomasine, 'Yea, indeed.'
"What though the king proclaims
Our meetings no more shall be;
In private we may hold forth the right way,
And be, as we should be, free.
_Chorus._ 'O very well said,' quoth Con;
'And so will I do,' says Franck;
And Mercy cries, 'Aye,' and Mat, 'Really,'
'And I'm o' that mind,' quoth Thank."
As we shall show in our next chapter, "Thank" was no imaginary name,
coined to meet the exigencies of rhyme. Thanks, however, to the good sense
of the nation, an effort was made in behalf of such old favourites as
John, William, Richard, Robert, and Thomas. So early as 1643, Thomas
Adams, Puritan as he was, had delivered himself in a London pulpit to the
effect that "he knew 'Williams' and 'Richards' who, though they bore names
not found in sacred story, but familiar to the country, were as gracious
saints" as any who bore names found in it ("Meditations upon the Creed").
The Cavalier, we know, had deliberately stuck by the old names. A
political skit, already referred to, after running through a list of all
the new-fangled names introduced by the fanatics, concludes:
"They're just like the Gadaren's swine,
Which the devils did drive and bewitch:
An herd set on evill
Will run to the de-vill
And his dam when their tailes do itch.
'Then let 'em run on!'
Says Ned, Tom, and John.
'Ay, let 'um be hanged!' quoth Mun:
'They're mine,' quoth old Nick,
'And take 'um,' says Dick,
'And welcome!' quoth worshipful Dun.
'And God blesse King Charles!' quoth George,
'And save him,' says Simon and Sill;
'Aye, aye,' quoth old Cole and each loyall soul,
'And Amen, and Amen!' cries Will."
Another ballad, lively and free as the other, published in 1648, and
styled "The Anarchie, or the Blest Reformation," after railing at the
confusion of things in general, and names in particular, concludes with
the customary jolly old English flourish:
"'A health to King Charles!' says Tom;
'Up with it,' says Ralph like a man;
'God bless him,' says Moll, 'And raise him,' says Doll,
'And send him his owne,' says Nan."
The Restoration practically ended the conflict, but it was a truce; for
both sides, so far as nomenclature is concerned, retained trophies of
victory, and, on the whole, the Hebrew was the gainer. At the start he had
little to lose, and he has filled the land with titles that had lain in
abeyance for four thousand years. The old English yeoman has lost many of
his most honoured cognomens, but he can still, at least, boast one thing.
The two names that were foremost before the middle of the twelfth century
stand at this moment in the same position. Out of every hundred children
baptized in England, thirteen are entered in the register as John or
William. The Cavalier, too, can boast that "Charles,"[28] although there
were not more of that name throughout the length and breadth of England at
the beginning of Elizabeth's reign than could be counted on the fingers of
one hand, now occupies the sixth place among male baptismal names.
Several names, now predominant, were for various reasons lifted above the
contest. George holds the fourth position among boys; Mary and Elizabeth,
the first and second among girls. George dates all his popularity from the
last century, and Mary was in danger of becoming obsolete at the close of
Elizabeth's reign, so hateful had it become to Englishmen, whether
Churchmen or Presbyterians. It was at this time Philip, too, lost a place
it can never recover. But the fates came to the rescue of Mary, when the
Prince of Orange landed at Torbay, and sate with James's daughter on
England's throne. It has been first favourite ever since. As for
Elizabeth, a chapter might be written upon it. Just known, and no more, at
the beginning of the sixteenth century, it was speedily popularized in the
"daughter of the Reformation." The Puritans, in spite of persecution and
other provocations, were ever true to "Good Queen Bess." The name, too,
was scriptural, and had not been mixed up with centuries of Romish
superstition. Elizabeth ruled supreme, and was contorted and twisted into
every conceivable shape that ingenuity could devise. It narrowly escaped
the diminutive desinence, for Ezot and Ezota occur to my knowledge four
times in records between 1500 and 1530. But Bess and Bessie took up the
running, and, a century later, Bett and Betty. It will surprise almost all
my readers, I suspect, to know that the "Lady Bettys" of the early part of
last century were never, or rarely ever, christened Elizabeth. Queen
Anne's reign, even William and Mary's reign, saw the fashionable rage for
Latinized forms, already referred to, setting in. Elizabeth was turned
into Bethia and Betha:
"1707, Jan. 2. Married Will{m}. Simonds and Bethia Ligbourne."--St.
Dionis Backchurch.
"1721. Married Charles Bawden to Bethia Thornton."--Somerset House
Chapel.
"1748. Married Adam Allyn to Bethia Lee."[29]--Ditto.
The familiar form of this was Betty:
"Betty Trevor, wife of the Hon. John Trevor, eldest d. of Sir Thomas
Frankland, of Thirkleby, in the county of York, Baronet, ob. Dec. 28,
1742, aetat. 25."--"Suss. Arch. Coll.," xvii. 148.
Bess was forgotten, and it was not till the present century that, Betty
having become the property of the lower orders, who had soon learnt to
copy their betters, the higher classes fell back once more on the Bessie
of Reformation days.
Meanwhile other freaks of fancy had a turn. Bessie and Betty were dropped
into a mill, and ground out as Betsy. This, after a while, was relegated
to the peasantry and artisans north of Trent. Then Tetty and Tetsy had an
innings. Dr. Johnson always called his wife Tetty. Writing March 28, 1753,
he says--
"I kept this day as the anniversary of my Tetty's death, with prayer
and tears in the morning."
Eliza arose before Elizabeth died; was popular in the seventeenth, much
resorted to in the eighteenth, and is still familiar in the nineteenth
century. Thomas Nash, in "Summer's Last Will and Testament," has the
audacity to speak of the queen as--
"that Eliza, England's beauteous queen,
On whom all seasons prosperously attend."
Dr. Johnson, in an epigram anent Colley Cibber and George II., says--
"Augustus still survives in Maro's strain,
And Spenser's verse prolongs Eliza's reign."
But by the lexicographer's day, the poorer classes had ceased to
recognize that Eliza and Betty were parts of one single name. They took up
each on her own account, as a separate name, and thus Betty and Eliza were
commonly met with in the same household. This is still frequently seen.
The _Spectator_, the other day, furnished a list of our commonest font
names, wherein Elizabeth is placed fourth, with 4610 representatives in
every 100,000 of the population. Looking lower down, we find "Eliza"
ranked in the twenty-first place with 1507. This is scarcely fair. The two
ought to be added together; at least, it perpetuates a misconception.
CHAPTER II.
PURITAN ECCENTRICITIES.
"And we have known Williams and Richards, names not found in sacred
story, but familiar to our country, prove as gracious saints as any
Safe-deliverance, Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith, or such like, which
have been rather descriptions than names."--THOMAS ADAMS, _Meditations
upon the Creed_, 1629.
"In giving names to children, it was their opinion that _heathenish
names_ should be avoided, as not so fit for Christians; and also the
names of God, and Christ, and angels, and the peculiar offices of the
Mediator,"--NEAL, _History of the Puritans_, vol. 1, ch. v. 1565.
I. INTRODUCTORY.
There are still many people who are sceptical about the stories told
against the Puritans in the matter of name-giving. Of these some are
Nonconformists, who do not like the slights thus cast upon their spiritual
ancestry; unaware that while this curious phase was at its climax,
Puritanism was yet within the pale of the Church of England. Others,
having searched through the lists of the Protector's Parliaments,
Commissioners, and army officers, and having found but a handful of odd
baptismal names, declare, without hesitation, that these stories are
wicked calumnies. Mr. Peacock, whose book on the "Army Lists of Roundheads
and Cavaliers" is well worth study, says, in one of the numbers of _Notes
and Queries_--
"I know modern writers have repeated the same thing over and over
again; but I do not remember any trustworthy evidence of the
Commonwealth time, or that of Charles II., that would lead us to
believe that strange christian names were more common in those days
than now. What passages have we on this subject in the works of the
Restoration playwrights?"
This is an old mistake. If Mr. Peacock had looked at our registers from
1580 to 1640, instead of from 1640 to 1680, he would never have written
the above. There is the most distinct evidence that during the latter
portion of Elizabeth's reign, the whole of James's reign, and great part
of Charles's reign, in a district roughly comprising England south of the
Trent, and having, say, Banbury for its centre, there prevailed, amongst a
certain class of English religionists, a practice of baptizing children by
scriptural phrases, pious ejaculations, or godly admonitions. It was a
practice instituted of deliberate purpose, as conducive to vital religion,
and as intending to separate the truly godly and renewed portion of the
community from the world at large. The Reformation epoch had seen the
English middle and lower classes generally adopting the proper names of
Scripture. Thus, the sterner Puritan had found a list of Bible names that
he would gladly have monopolized, shared in by half the English
population. That a father should style his child Nehemiah, or Abacuck, or
Tabitha, or Dorcas, he discovered with dismay, did not prove that that
particular parent was under any deep conviction of sin. This began to
trouble the minds and consciences of the elect. Fresh limits must be
created. As Richard and Roger had given way to Nathaniel and Zerrubabel,
so Nathaniel and Zerrubabel must now give way to _Learn-wisdom_ and
_Hate-evil_. Who inaugurated the movement, with what success, and how it
slowly waned, this chapter will show.
There can be no doubt that it is entirely owing to Praise-God Barebone,
and the Parliament that went by his name,[30] the impression got abroad in
after days that the Commonwealth period was the heyday of these
eccentricities, and that these remarkable names were merely adopted after
conversion, and were not entered in the vestry-books as baptismal names at
all.
The existence of these names could not escape the attention of Lord
Macaulay and Sir Walter Scott. The Whig historian has referred to
Tribulation Wholesome and Zeal-of-the-land Busy almost as frequently as to
that fourth-form boy for whose average (!) abilities to the very end of
his literary life he entertained such a profound respect. Two quotations
will suffice. In his "Comic Dramatists of the Restoration" he says,
speaking of the Commonwealth--
"To know whether a man was really godly was impossible. But it was
easy to know whether he had a plain dress, lank hair, no starch in his
linen, no gay furniture in his house; whether he talked through his
nose, and showed the whites of his eyes; whether he named his children
_Assurance_, _Tribulation_, and _Maher-shalal-hash-baz_."
Again, in his Essay on Croker's "Boswell's Life of Johnson," he declares--
"Johnson could easily see that a Roundhead who named all his children
after Solomon's singers, and talked in the House of Commons about
seeking the Lord, might be an unprincipled villain, whose religious
mummeries only aggravated his fault."
In "Woodstock," Scott has such characters as _Zerrubabel_ Robins and
_Merciful_ Strickalthrow, both soldiers of Oliver Cromwell; while the
zealot ranter is one _Nehemiah_ Holdenough. Mr. Peacock most certainly has
grounds for complaint here, but not as to facts, only dates.
II. ORIGINATED BY THE PRESBYTERIAN CLERGY.
In Strype's "Life of Whitgift" (i. 255) we find the following statement:--
"I find yet again another company of these fault-finders with the Book
of Common Prayer, in another diocese, namely, that of Chichester,
whose names and livings were these: William Hopkinson, vicar of
Salehurst; Samuel Norden, parson of Hamsey; Antony Hobson, vicar of
Leominster; Thomas Underdown, parson of St. Mary's in Lewes; John
Bingham, preacher of Hodeleigh; Thomas Heley, preacher of Warbleton;
John German, vicar of Burienam; and Richard Whiteaker, vicar of
Ambreley."
I follow up the history of but two of these ministers, Hopkinson of
Salehurst, and Heley of Warbleton. Suspended by the commissary, they were
summoned to Canterbury, December 6, 1583, and subscribed. Both being
married men, with young families, we may note their action in regard to
name-giving. The following are to be found in the register at Salehurst:
"Maye 3, 1579, was baptized Persis (Rom. xvi. 12), the daughter of
William Hopkinson, minister heare.
"June 18, 1587, was baptized Stedfast, the sonne of Mr. William Bell,
minister.
"Nov. 3, 1588, was baptized Renewed, the doughter of William
Hopkinson, minister.
"Feb. 28, 1591, was baptized Safe-on-Highe, the sonne of Will{m}.
Hopkinson, minister of the Lord's Worde there.[31]
"Oct. 29, 1596. Constant, filia Thomae Lorde, baptisata fuit.
"March, 1621. Rejoyce, filia Thomae Lorde, baptisata fuit die 10, et
sepulta die 23.
"November, 1646. Bethshua, doughter of Mr. John Lorde, minister of
Salehurst, bapt. 22 die."
These entries are of the utmost importance; they begin at the very date
when the new custom arose, and are patronized by three ministers in
succession--possibly four, if Thomas Lorde was also a clergyman.
Heley's case is yet more curious. He had been prescribing grace-names for
his flock shortly before the birth of his first child. He thus practises
upon his own offspring:
"Nov. 7, 1585. Muche-merceye, the sonne of Thomas Hellye, minyster.
"March 26, 1587. Increased, the dather of Thomas Helly, minister.
"Maye 5, 1588. Sin-denie, the dather of Thomas Helly, minister.
"Maye 25, 1589. Fear-not, the sonne of Thomas Helly, minister."
Under rectorial pressure the villagers followed suit; and for half a
century Warbleton was, in the names of its parishioners, a complete
exegesis of justification by faith without the deeds of the law.
_Sorry-for-sin_ Coupard was a peripatetic exhortation to repentance, and
_No-merit_ Vynall was a standing denunciation of works. No register in
England is better worth a pilgrimage to-day than Warbleton.[32]
Still confining our attention to Sussex and Kent, we come to Berwick:
"1594, Dec. 22. Baptized Continent, daughter of Hugh Walker, vicar.
"1602, Dec. 12. Baptized Christophilus, son of Hugh Walker."--Berwick,
Sussex.
I think the father ought to be whipped most incontinently in the open
market who would inflict such a name on an infant daughter. They did not
think so then. The point, however, is that the father was incumbent of the
parish.
A more historic instance may be given. John Frewen, Puritan rector of
Northiam, Sussex, from 1583 to 1628, and author of "Grounds and Principles
of the Christian Religion," had two sons, at least, baptized in his
church. The dates tally exactly with the new custom:
"1588, May 26. Baptized Accepted, sonne of John Frewen.
"1591, Sep. 5. Baptized Thankful, sonne of John Frewen."--Northiam,
Sussex.
_Accepted_[33] died Archbishop of York, being prebend designate of
Canterbury so early as 1620:
"1620, Sep. 8. Grant in reversion to Accepted Frewen of a prebend in
Canterbury Cathedral."--"C. S. P. Dom."
One more instance before we pass on. In two separate wills, dated 1602
and 1604 (folio 25, Montagu, "Prerog. Ct. of Cant.," and folio 25, Harte,
ditto), will be found references to "More-fruite and Faint-not, children
of Dudley Fenner, minister of the Word of God" at Marden, in Kent.
Now, this Dudley Fenner was a thoroughly worthy man, but a fanatic of most
intolerant type. In 1583 we find him at Cranbrook, in Kent. An account of
his sayings and doings was forwarded, says Strype, to Lord Burghley, who
himself marked the following passage:--
"Ye shall pray also that God would strike through the sides of all
such as go about to take away from the ministers of the Gospel the
liberty which is granted them by the Word of God."
But a curious note occurs alongside this passage in Lord Burghley's hand:
"Names given in baptism by Dudley Fenner: Joy-againe, From-above,
More-fruit, Dust."--Whitgift, i. p. 247.
Two of these names were given to his own children, as Cranbrook register
shows to this day:
"1583, Dec. 22. Baptized More-fruit, son of Mr. Dudley Fenner."
"1585, June 6. Baptized Faint-not, fil. Mr. Dudley Fenner, concional
digniss."
Soon after this Dudley Fenner again got into trouble through his sturdy
spirit of nonconformity. After an imprisonment of twelve months, he fled
to Middleborough, in Holland, and died there about 1589.
The above incident from Strype is interesting, for here manifestly is the
source whence Camden derived his information upon the subject. In his
quaint "Remaines," published thirty years later (1614), after alluding to
the Latin names then in vogue, he adds:
"As little will be thought of the new names, Free-Gift, Reformation,
Earth, Dust, Ashes, Delivery, More-fruit, Tribulation,
The-Lord-is-near, More-triale, Discipline, Joy-againe, From-above,
which have lately been given by some to their children, with no evill
meaning, but upon some singular and precise conceite."
Very likely Lord Burghley gave Fenner's selection to the great antiquary.
Coming into London, the following case occurs. John Press was incumbent of
St. Matthew, Friday Street, from 1573 to 1612:
"1584. Baptized Purifie, son of Mr. John Presse, parson."
John Bunyan's great character name of _Hopeful_ is to be seen in Banbury
Church register. But such an eccentricity is to be expected in the parish
over which Wheatley presided, the head-quarters, too, of extravagant
Puritanism. We all remember drunken Barnaby:
"To Banbury came I, O prophane one!
Where I saw a Puritane one,
Hanging of his cat on Monday
For killing of a mouse on Sunday."
But the point I want to emphasize is that this _Hopeful_ was Wheatley's
own daughter:
"1604, Dec. 21. Baptized Hope-full, daughter of William Wheatlye."
Take a run from Banbury into Leicestershire. A stern Puritan was Antony
Grey, "parson and patron" of Burbach; and he continued "a constant and
faithfull preacher of the Gospell of Jesus Christ, even to his extreame
old age, and for some yeares after he was Earle of Kent," as his tombstone
tells us. He had twelve children, and their baptismal entries are worth
recording:
"1593, April 29. Grace, daughter of Mr. Anthonie Grey.
"1594, Nov. 28. Henry, son of ditto.
"1596, Nov. 16. Magdalen, daughter of ditto.
"1598, May 8. Christian, daughter of ditto.
"1600, Feb. 2. Faith-my-joy, daughter of ditto.[34]
"1603, April 3. John, son of ditto.
"1604, Feb. 23. Patience, daughter of Myster Anthonie Grey, preacher.
"1606, Oct. 5. Jobe, son of ditto.
"1608, May 1. Theophilus, son of ditto.
"1609, March 14. Priscilla, daughter of ditto (died).
"1613, Sept. 19. Nathaniel, son of ditto.
"1615, May 7. Presela, daughter of ditto."
Why old Antony was persuaded of the devil to christen his second child by
the ungodly agnomen of Henry, we are not informed. It must have given him
many a twinge of conscience afterwards.
Had the Puritan clergy confined these vagaries to their own nurseries, it
would not have mattered much. But there can be no doubt they used their
influence to bias the minds of godparents and witnesses in the same
direction. We have only to pitch upon a minister who came under the
archbishop's or Lord Treasurer's notice as disaffected, seek out the
church over which he presided, scan the register of baptisms during the
years of his incumbency, and a batch of extravagant names will at once be
unearthed. In the villages of Sussex and Kent, where the personal
influence of the recalcitrant clergy seems to have been greatest, the
parochial records teem with them.
Thus was the final stage of fanaticism reached, the year 1580 being as
nearly as possible the exact date of its development. Thus were English
people being prepared for the influx of a large batch of names which had
never been seen before, nor will be again. The purely Biblical names,
those that commemorated Bible worthies, swept over the whole country, and
left ineffaceable impressions. The second stage of Puritan excess, names
that savour of eccentricity and fanaticism combined, scarcely reached
England north of Trent, and, for lack of volume, have left but the
faintest traces. They lasted long enough to cover what may be fairly
called an epoch, and extended just far enough to embrace a province. The
epoch was a hundred years, and the province was from Kent to Hereford,
making a small arc northwards, so as to take in Bedfordshire,
Leicestershire, Buckinghamshire, and Oxfordshire. The practice, so far as
the bolder examples is concerned, was a _deliberate scheme_ on the part of
the Presbyterian clergy. On this point the evidence is in all respects
conclusive.
III. CURIOUS NAMES NOT PURITAN.
Several names found in the registers at this time, though commonly
ascribed to the zealots, must be placed under a different category. For
instance, original sin and the Ninth Article would seem to be commemorated
in such a name as Original. We may reject Camden's theory:
"Originall may seem to be deducted from the Greek _origines_, that is,
borne in good time,"
inasmuch as he does not appear to have believed in it himself. The name,
as a matter of fact, was given in the early part of the sixteenth century,
in certain families of position, to the eldest son and heir, denoting that
in him was carried on the original stock. The Bellamys of Lambcote Grange,
Stainton, are a case in point. The eldest son for three generations bore
the name; viz. _Original_ Bellamy, buried at Stainton, September 12,
1619, aged 80; _Original_, his son and heir, the record of whose death I
cannot find; and _Original_, his son and heir, who was baptized December
29, 1606. The first of these must have been born in 1539, far too early a
date for the name to be fathered upon the Puritans. _Original_ was in use
in the family of Babington, of Rampton. Original Babington, son and heir
of John Babington, was a contemporary of the first Original Bellamy
(Nicholl's "Gen. et Top.," viii.).
Another instance occurs later on:
"1635, May 21. These under-written names are to be transported to St.
Christopher's, imbarqued in the _Matthew_ of London, Richard Goodladd,
master, per warrant from ye Earle of Carlisle:
"Originall Lowis, 28 yeres," etc.--Hotten's "Emigrants," p. 81.
_Sense_, a common name in Elizabeth and James's reigns, looks closely
connected with some of the abstract virtues, such as Prudence and
Temperance. The learned compiler of the "Calendar of State Papers"
(1637-38) seems to have been much bothered with the name:
"1638, April 23. Petition of Seuce Whitley, widow of Thomas Whitley,
citizen, and grocer."
The suggestion from the editorial pen is that this Seuce (as he prints it)
is a bewildered spelling of Susey, from Susan! The fact is, Seuce is a
bewildered misreading on the compiler's part of Sense, and Sense is an
English dress of the foreign Senchia, or Sancho, still familiar to us in
Sancho Panza. Several of the following entries will prove that Sense was
too early an inmate of our registers to be a Puritan agnomen:
"1564, Oct. 15. Baptized Saints, d. of Francis Muschamp.
"1565, Nov. 25. Buried Sence, d. of ditto.
"1559, June 13. Married Matthew Draper and Sence Blackwell.
"1570-1, Jan. 15. Baptized Sence, d. of John Bowyer."--Camberwell
Church.
"1651. Zanchy Harvyn, Grocer's Arms, Abbey Milton."--"Tokens of
Seventeenth Century."
"1661, June. Petition of Mrs. Zanchy Mark."--C. S. P.
That it was familiar to Camden in 1614 is clear:
"Sanchia, from Sancta, that is, Holy."--"Remaines," p. 88.
The name became obsolete by the close of the seventeenth century, and,
being a saintly title, was sufficiently odious to the Presbyterians to be
carefully rejected by them in the sixteenth century. Men who refused the
Apostles their saintly title were not likely to stamp the same for life on
weak flesh.[35]
Nor can _Emanuel_, or _Angel_, be brought as charges against the Puritans.
Both flatly contradicted Cartwright's canon; yet both, and especially the
former, have been attributed to the zealots. No names could have been
more offensive to them than these. Even Adams, in his "Meditations upon
the Creed," while attacking his friends on their eccentricity in
preferring "Safe-deliverance" to "Richard," takes care to rebuke those on
the other side, who would introduce _Emanuel_, or even _Gabriel_ or
_Michael_, into their nurseries:
"Some call their sons _Emanuel_: this is too bold. The name is proper
to Christ, therefore not to be communicated to any creature."
_Emanuel_ was imported from the Continent about 1500:
"1545, March 19. Baptized Humphrey, son of Emanuell Roger."--St.
Columb Major.
The same conclusion must be drawn regarding _Angel_. Adams continues:
"Yea, it seems to me not fit for Christian humility to call a man
_Gabriel_ or _Michael_, giving the names of angels to the sons of
mortality."
If the Puritans objected, as they did to a man, to the use of Gabriel and
Michael as angelic names, the generic term itself would be still more
objectionable:
"1645, Nov. 13. Buried Miss Angela Boyce."--Cant. Cath.
"1682, April 11. Baptized Angel, d. of Sir Nicholas Butler,
K{nt}."--St. Helen, Bishopgate.
"Weymouth, March 20, 1635. Embarked for New England: Angell Holland,
aged 21 years."--Hotten's "Emigrants," p. 285.
In this case we may presume the son, and not the father, had turned
Puritan.
A curious custom, which terminated soon after Protestantism was
established in England, gave rise to several names which read oddly enough
to modern eyes. These were titles like Vitalis or Creature--names
applicable to either sex. Mr. Maskell, without furnishing instances, says
Creature occurs in the registers of All-Hallows, Barking ("Hist.
All-Hallows," p. 62). In the vestry-books of Staplehurst, Kent, are
registered:
"1 Edward VI. Apryle xxvii., there were borne ii. childre of Alex'nder
Beeryl: the one christened at home, and so deceased, called Creature;
the other christened at church, called John."--Burns, "History of
Parish Registers," p. 81.
"1550, Nov. 5. Buried Creature, daughter of Agnes Mathews, syngle
woman, the seconde childe.
"1579, July 19. Married John Haffynden and Creature Cheseman, yong
folke."--Staplehurst, Kent.
One instance of _Vitalis_ may be given:
"Vitalis, son of Richard Engaine, and Sara his wife, released his
manor of Dagworth in 1217 to Margery de Cressi."--Blomefield's
"Norfolk," vi. 382, 383.
These are not Puritan names. The dates are against the theory. They belong
to a pre-Reformation practice, being names given to _quick children before
birth_, in cases when it was feared, from the condition of the mother,
they might not be delivered alive. Being christened before the sex could
be known, it was necessary to affix a neutral name, and Vitalis or
Creature answered the purpose. The old Romish rubric ran thus:
"Nemo in utero matris clausus baptizari debet, sed si infans caput
emiserit, et periculum mortis immineat, baptizetur in capite, nec
postea si vivus evaserit, erit iterum baptizandus. At si aliud membrum
emiserit, quod vitalem indicet motum in illo, si periculum pendeat
baptizetur," etc.
Vitalis Engaine and Creature Cheeseman, in the above instances, both
lived, but, by the law just quoted, retained the names given to them, and
underwent no second baptism. If the sex of the yet breathing child was
discovered, but death certain, the name of baptism ran thus:
"1563, July 17. Baptizata fuit in aedibus Mri Humfrey filia ejus quae
nominata fuit Creatura Christi."--St. Peter in the East, Oxford.
"1563, July 17. Creatura Christi, filia Laurentii Humfredi
sepulta."--Ditto.
An English form occurs earlier:
"1561, June 30. The Chylde-of-God, filius Ric. Stacey."--Ditto.
Without entering into controversy, I will only say that if the clergy, up
to the time of the alteration in our Article on Baptism, truly believed
that "insomuch as infants, and children dying in their infancy, shall
undoubtedly be saved thereby (_i.e._ baptism), _and else not_," it was
natural that such a delicate ceremonial as I have hinted at should have
suggested itself to their minds. After the Reformation, the practice as to
unborn children fell into desuetude, and the names with it.
IV. INSTANCES.
(_a._) _Latin Names._
The elder Disraeli reminded us, in his "Curiosities of Literature," that
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it was common for our more
learned pundits to re-style themselves in their own studies by Greek and
Latin names. Some of these--as, for instance, Erasmus[36] and
Melancthon--are only known to the world at large by their adopted titles.
The Reformation had not become an accomplished fact before this custom
began to prevail in England, only it was transferred from the study to the
font, and from scholars to babies. Renovata, Renatus, Donatus, and Beata
began to grow common. Camden, writing in 1614, speaks of still stranger
names--
"If that any among us have named their children Remedium, Amoris,
'Imago-saeculi,' or with such-like names, I know some will think it
more than a vanity."--"Remaines," p. 44.
While, however, the Presbyterian clergy did not object to some of these
Latin sobriquets, as being identical with the names of early believers of
the Primitive Church, stamped in not a few instances with the honours of
martyrdom, they preferred to translate them into English. Many of my
examples of eccentricity will be found to be nothing more than literal
translations of names that had been in common vogue among Christians
twelve and thirteen hundred years before. To the majority of the Puritan
clergy, to change the Latin dress for an English equivalent would be as
natural and imperative as the adoption of Tyndale's or the Genevan Bible
in the place of the Latin Vulgate.
A curious, though somewhat later, proof of this statement is met with in a
will from the Probate Court of Peterborough. The testator was one Theodore
Closland, senior fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. The date is June
24, 1665:
"Item: to What-God-will Crosland, forty shillings, and tenn shillings
to his wife. And to his sonne What-God-will, six pound, thirteen
shillings, fourpence."
This is a manifest translation of the early Christian "Quod-vult-deus."
Grainger, in his "History of England" (iii. 360, fifth edition), says--
"In Montfaucon's 'Diarium Italicum' (p. 270), is a sepulchral
inscription of the year 396, upon Quod-vult-deus, a Christian, to
which is a note: 'Hoc aevo non pauci erant qui piis sententiolis nomina
propria concinnarent, _v.g._ Quod-vult-deus, Deogratias, Habet-deum,
Adeodatus.'"
Closland, or Crosland, the grandfather, was evidently a Puritan, with a
horror of the Latin Vulgate, Latin Pope, and Latin everything. Hence the
translation.
Nevertheless, the Puritans seem to have favoured Latin names at first. It
was a break between the familiar sound of the old and the oddity of the
new. Redemptus was less grotesque than Redeemed, and Renata than Renewed.
The English equivalents soon ruled supreme, but for a generation or two,
and in some cases for a century, the Latin names went side by side with
them.
Take Renatus, for instance:
"1616, Sep. 29. Baptized Renatus, son of Renatus Byllett, gent."--St.
Columb Major.
"1637-8, Jan. 12. Order of Council to Renatus Edwards, girdler, to
shut up his shop in Lombard Street, because he is not a goldsmith.
"1690, April 10. Petition of Renatus Palmer, who prays to be appointed
surveyor in the port of Dartmouth."--C. S. P.
"1659, Nov. 11. Baptized Renovata, the daughter of John
Durance."--Cant. Cath.
It was Renatus Harris who built the organ in All-Hallows, Barking, in 1675
("Hist. All-Hallows, Barking," Maskell). Renatus and Rediviva occur in St.
Matthew, Friday Street, circa 1590. Rediviva lingered into the eighteenth
century:
"1735, ----. Buried Rediviva Mathews."--Banbury.
Desiderata and Desiderius were being used at the close of Elizabeth's
reign, and survived the restoration of Charles II.:
"1671, May 26. Baptized Desiderius Dionys, a poor child found in Lyme
Street."--St. Dionis Backchurch.
Donatus and Deodatus, also, were Latin names on English soil before the
seventeenth century came in:
"1616, Jan. 29. Baptized Donate, vel Deonata, daughter of Martyn
Donnacombe."--St. Columb Major.
Desire and Given,[37] the equivalents, both crossed the Atlantic with the
Pilgrim Fathers.
_Love_ was popular. Side by side with it went _Amor_. George Fox, in his
"Journal," writing in 1670, says--
"When I was come to Enfield, I went first to visit Amor Stoddart, who
lay very weak and almost speechless. Within a few days Amor
died."--Ed. 1836, ii. 129.
In Ripon Cathedral may be seen:
"Amor Oxley, died Nov. 23, 1773, aged 74."
The name still exists in Yorkshire, but no other county, I imagine.
Other instances could be mentioned.[38] I place a few in order:
"1594, Aug. 3. Baptized Relictus Dunstane, a childe found in this
parisshe."--St. Dunstan.
"1613, Nov. 7. Baptized Beata, d. of Mr. John Briggs,
minister."--Witherley, Leic.
"1653, Sep. 29. Married Richard Moone to Benedicta Rolfe."--Cant.
Cath.
"1661, May 25. Married Edward Clayton and Melior[39] Billinge."--St.
Dionis, Backchurch.
"1706. Beata Meetkirke, born Nov. 2, 1705; died Sep. 10,
1706."--Rushden, Hereford.
(_b._) _Grace Names._
In furnishing instances, we naturally begin with those grace names, in all
cases culled from the registers of the period, which belong to what we may
style the first stage. They were, one by one, but taken from the lists
found in the New Testament, and were probably suggested at the outset by
the moralities or interludes. The morality went between the old
miracle-play, or mystery, and the regular drama. In "Every Man," written
in the reign of Henry VIII., it is made a vehicle for retaining the love
of the people for the old ways, the old worship, and the old
superstitions. From the time of Edward VI. to the middle of Elizabeth's
reign, there issued a cluster of interludes of this same moral type and
cast; only all breathed of the new religion, and more or less assaulted
the dogmas of Rome.
These moralities were popular, and were frequently rendered in public,
until the Elizabethan drama was well established. All were allegorical,
and required personal representatives of the abstract graces, and
doctrines of which they treated. The _dramatis personae_ in "Hickscorner"
are Freewill, Perseverance, Pity, Contemplation, and Imagination, and in
"The Interlude of Youth," Humility, Pride, Charity, and Lechery.
It is just possible, therefore, that several of these grace names were
originated under the shadow of the pre-Reformation Church. The following
are early, considering they are found in Cornwall, the county most likely
to be the last to take up a new custom:
"1549, July 1. Baptized Patience, d. of Will{m}. Haygar."--
"1553, May 29. Baptized Honour, d. of Robert Sexton."--St. Columb
Major.
However this may be, we only find the cardinal virtues at the beginning of
the movement--those which are popular in some places to this day, and
still maintain a firm hold in America, borne thither by the Puritan
emigrants.
The three Graces, and Grace itself, took root almost immediately as
favourites. Shakespeare seems to have been aware of it, for Hermione
says--
"My last good deed was to entreat his stay:
What was my first? It has an elder sister,
Or I mistake you--O would her name were Grace!"
"Winter's Tale," Act i. sc. 2.
"1565, March 19. Christening of Grace, daughter of -- Hilles."--St.
Peter, Cornhill.
"1574, Jan. 29. Baptized Grace, daughter of John Russell."--St. Columb
Major.
"1588, Aug. 1. Married Thomas Wood and Faythe Wilson."--St. Dionis
Backchurch.
"1565, ----. Baptized Faith, daughter of Thomas and Agnes
Blomefield."--Rushall, Norfolk.
"1567, Aprill 17. Christening of Charity, daughter of Randoll
Burchenshaw."--St. Peter, Cornhill.
"1571, ----. Baptized Charity, daughter of Thomas
Blomefield."--Rushall, Norfolk.
"1598, Nov. 19. Baptized Hope, d. of John Mainwaringe."--Cant. Cath.
"1636, Nov. 25. Buried Hope, d. of Thomas Alford, aged 23."--Drayton,
Leicester.
The registers of the sixteenth and seventeenth century teem with these;
sometimes boys received them. The Rev. Hope Sherhard was a minister in
Providence Isle in 1632 ("Cal. S. P. Colonial," 1632).
We may note that the still common custom of christening trine-born
children by these names dates from the period of their rise:[40]
"1639, Sep. 7. Baptized Faith, Hope, and Charity, daughters of George
Lamb, and Alice his wife."--Hillingdon.
"1666, Feb. 22. -- Finch, wife of -- Finch, being delivered of three
children, two of them were baptized, one called Faith, and the other
Hope; and the third was intended to be called Charity, but died
unbaptized."--Cranford. _Vide_ Lyson's "Middlesex," p. 30.
Mr. Lower says ("Essays on English Surnames," ii. 159)--
"At Charlton, Kent, three female children produced at one birth
received the names of Faith, Hope, and Charity."
Thomas Adams, in his sermon on the "Three Divine Sisters," says--
"They shall not want prosperity,
That keep faith, hope, and charity."
Perhaps some of these parents remembered this.
Faith and Charity are both mentioned as distinctly Puritan sobriquets in
the "Psalm of Mercie," a political poem:
"'A match,' quoth my sister Joyce,
'Contented,' quoth Rachel, too:
Quoth Abigaile, 'Yea,' and Faith, 'Verily,'
And Charity, 'Let it be so.'"
_Love_, as the synonym of Charity, was also a favourite. Love Atkinson
went out to Virginia with the early refugees (Hotten, "Emigrants," p. 68).
"1631-2, Jan. 31. Buried Love, daughter of William Ballard."--Berwick,
Sussex.
"1740, April 30. Buried Love Arundell."--Racton, Sussex.
"1749, May 31. Love Luckett admitted a freeman by
birthright."--"History of Town and Port of Rye," p. 237.
"1662, May 7. Baptized Love, d. of Mr. Richard Appletree."--Banbury.
Besides Love and Charity, other variations were Humanity and Clemency:
"1637, March 8. Bond of William Shaw, junior, and Thomas Snelling,
citizens and turners, to Humanity Mayo, of St. Martin-in-the-Fields,
in L100 0 0."--C. S. P.
"1625, Aug. 27. Buried Clemency Chawncey."--St. Dionis Backchurch.
Clemency was pretty, and deserved to live; but Mercy seems to have
monopolized the honours, and, by the aid of John Bunyan's heroine in the
"Pilgrim's Progress," still has her admirers. Instances are needless, but
I furnish one or two for form's sake. They shall be late ones:
"1702, Sep. 28. Married Matthias Wallraven and Mercy Waymarke."--St.
Dionis Backchurch.
"1716, May 25. Married Thomas Day and Mercy Parsons, of
Staplehurst."--Cant. Cath.
But there were plenty of virtues left. Prudence had such a run, that she
became Pru in the sixteenth, and Prudentia in the seventeenth century:
"1574, June 30. Buried Prudence, d. of John Mayhew.
"1612, Aug. 2. Married Robert Browne and Prudence Coxe."--St. Dionis
Backchurch.
Justice is hard to separate from the legal title; but here is an instance:
"1660, July 16. Richard Bickley and Justice Willington reported guilty
of embezzling late king's goods."--"Cal. St. P. Dom."
Truth, Constancy, Honour, and Temperance were frequently personified at
the font. Temperance had the shortest life; but, if short, it was merry.
There is scarcely a register, from Gretna Green to St. Michael's, without
it:
"1615, Feb. 25. Baptized Temperance, d. of -- Osberne."--Hawnes,
Bedford.
"1610, Aug. 14. Baptized Temperance, d. of John Goodyer."--Banbury.
"1611, Nov. --. Baptized Temperance, d. of Robert
Carpinter."--Stepney.
"1619, July 22. Married Gyles Rolles to Temperance Blinco."--St.
Peter, Cornhill.
Constance,[41] Constancy, and Constant were common, it will be seen, to
both sexes:
"1593, Sep. 29. Buried Constancy, servant with Mr. Coussin."--St.
Dionis Backchurch.
"1629, Dec. Petition of Captain Constance Ferrar, for losses at Cape
Breton."--"C. S. P. Colonial."
"1665, May 25. Communication from Constance Pley to the Commissioners
in relation to the arrival of a convoy."--C. S. P.
"1665, May 31. Grant to Edward Halshall of L225 0 0, forfeited by
Connistant Cant, of Lynn Regis, for embarking wool to Guernsey not
entered in the Custom House."--Ditto.
"1671, Sep. 2. Buried Constant Sylvester, Esquire."--Brampton, Hunts.
Patience, too, was male as well as female. Sir Patience Warde was Lord
Mayor of London in 1681. Thus the weaker vessels were not allowed to
monopolize the graces. How familiar some of these abstract names had
become, the Cavalier shall tell us in his parody of the sanctimonious
Roundheads' style:
"'Ay, marry,' quoth Agatha,
And Temperance, eke, also:
Quoth Hannah, 'It's just,' and Mary, 'It must,'
'And shall be,' quoth Grace, 'I trow.'"
Several "Truths" occur in the "Chancery Suits" of Elizabeth, and the Greek
Alathea arose with it:
"1595, June 27. Faith and Truth, gemini, -- John Johnson,
bapt."--Wath, Ripon.
Alathea lasted till the eighteenth century was well-nigh out:
"1701, Dec. 4. Francis Milles to Alathea Wilton."--West. Abbey.
"1720, Sep. 18. Buried Alydea, wife of Will{m}. Gough, aged 42
years."--Harnhill, Glouc.
"1786, Oct. 6. Died Althea, wife of Thomas Heberden,
prebendary."--Exeter Cath.[42]
Honour, of course, became Honora, in the eighteenth century, and has
retained that form:
"1583, Aug. 24. Baptized Honor, daughter of Thomas Teage."--St. Columb
Major.
"1614, July 4. Baptized Honour, d. of John Baylye, of
Radcliffe."--Stepney.
"1667, Oct. 9. Christened Mary, d. of Sir John and Lady Honour
Huxley."--Hammersmith.
"1722, Oct. 4. Christened Martha, d. of John and Honoria Hart."--St.
Dionis Backchurch.
Sir Thomas Carew, Speaker of the Commons in James's and Charles's reign,
had a wife Temperance, and four daughters, Patience, Temperance, Silence,
and Prudence (Lodge's "Illust.," iii. 37). Possibly, as Speaker, he had
had better opportunity to observe that these were the four cardinal
parliamentary virtues, especially Silence. This last was somewhat popular,
and seems to have got curtailed to "Sill," as Prudence to "Pru," and
Constance to "Con." In the Calendar of "State Papers" (June 21, 1666), a
man named Taylor, writing to another named Williamson, wishes "his brother
Sill would come and reap the sweets of Harwich." Writing again, five days
later, he asks "after his brother, Silence Taylor."
This was one of the names that crossed the Atlantic and became a fixture
in America (Bowditch). It is not, however, to be confounded with Sill,
that is, Sybil, in the old Cavalier chorus:
"'And God blesse King Charles,' quoth George,
'And save him,' says Simon and Sill."
Silence is one of the few Puritan names that found its way into the north
of England:
"1741, Dec. 9. Married Robert Thyer to Silence Leigh."--St. Ann,
Manchester.
The mother of Silence Leigh, who was a widow when she married, was Silence
Beswicke ("Memorials of St. Ann, Manchester," p. 55).[43] The name is
found again in the register of Youlgreave Church, Derbyshire (_Notes and
Queries_, Feb. 17, 1877). Curiously enough, we find Camden omitting
Silence as a female name of his day, but inserting Tace. In his list of
feminine baptismal names, compiled in 1614 ("Remaines," p. 89), he has
"Tace--Be silent--a fit name to admonish that sex of silence."
Here, then, is another instance of a Latin name translated into English. I
have lighted on a case proving the antiquary's veracity:
"Here lieth the body of Tacey, the wife of George Can, of Brockwear,
who departed this life 22 day of Feb., An. Dom. 1715, aged 32
years."--Hewelsfield, Glouc.
Tace must have lasted a century, therefore. Silence may be set down to
some old Puritan stickler for the admonition of Saint Paul: "Let the woman
learn in silence, with all subjection" (1 Tim. ii. 11).
The Epistle to the Romans was a never-failing well-spring to the earnest
Puritan, and one passage was much applied to his present condition:
"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through
our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom also we have access by faith unto this
grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And
not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that
tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and
experience, hope: and hope maketh not ashamed."--v. 1-5.
There is scarcely a word in this passage that is not inscribed on our
registers between 1575 and 1595. Faith, Grace, and Hope have already been
mentioned;[44] Camden testified to the existence of Tribulation in 1614;
Rejoice was very familiar; Patience, of course, was common:
"1592, July 7. Buried Patience Birche."--Cant. Cath.
"1596, Oct. 3. Baptized Pacience, daughter of Martin Tome."--St.
Columb Major.
"1599, April 23. Baptized Patience, d. of John Harmer."--Warbleton.
Even _Experience_ is found--a strange title for an infant.
"The Rev. Experience Mayhew, A.M., born Feb. 5, 1673; died of an
apoplexy, Nov. 9, 1758."
So ran the epitaph of a missionary (_vide_ _Pulpit_, Dec. 6, 1827) to the
Vineyard Island. It had been handed on to him, no doubt, from some
grandfather or grandmother of Elizabeth's closing days.
A late instance of _Diligence_ occurs in St. Peter, Cornhill:
"1724, Nov. 1. Buried Diligence Constant."
Obedience had a good run, and began very early:
"1573, Sep. 20. Bapt. Obedience, dather of Thomas Garding.
"1586, Aug. 28. Bapt. Obedyence, dather of Richard Ellis."--Warbleton.
"1697, April 30. Bapt. Robert, son of James and Obedience Clark."--St.
James, Picadilly.
Obedience Robins is the name of a testator in 1709 (Wills: Archdeaconry of
London), while the following epitaph speaks for itself:
"Obedience Newitt, wife of Thomas Newitt, died in 1617, aged 32.
"Her name and nature did accord,
Obedient was she to her Lord."--Burwash, Sussex.
"Add to your faith, virtue," says the Apostle. As a name this grace was
late in the field:
"1687, May 25. Married Virtue Radford and Susannah Wright."--West.
Abbey.
"1704, Oct. 20. Buried Virtue, wife of John Higgison."--Marshfield,
Glouc.
"1709, May 6. Buried Vertue Page."--Finchley.
Confidence and Victory were evidently favourites:
"1587, Jan. 8. Baptized Confydence, d. of Roger Elliard."--Warbleton.
"1770, Nov. 17, died Confidence, wife of John Thomas, aged 61
years."--Bulley, Glouc.
"1587, Feb. 8. Buryed Vyctorye Buttres."--Elham, Kent.
"1618, Dec. 9. Buryed Victorye Lussendine."--Ditto.
"1696, May 17. Bapt. Victory, d. of Joseph Gibbs."--St. Dionis
Backchurch.
_Perseverance_ went out with the emigrants to New England, but I do not
find any instance in the home registers. _Felicity_ appeared in one of our
law courts last year, so it cannot be said to be extinct; but there is a
touch of irony in the first of the following examples:--
"1604-5, March 15. Baptized Felicity, d. of John Barnes,
vagarant."--Stepney.
"1590, July 5. Baptized Felycyte Harris."--Cranbrook.
_Comfort_ has a pleasant atmosphere about it, and many a parent was
tempted to the use of it. It lingered longer than many of its rivals.
Comfort Farren's epitaph may be seen on the floor of Tewkesbury Abbey:
"Comfort, wife of Abraham Farren, gent., of this Corporation, died
August 24, 1720."
Again, in Dymock Church we find:
"_Comfort_, wife to William Davis, died 14 June, 1775, aged 78 years.
"_Comfort_, their daughter, died 9 Feb., 1760, aged 24 years."
Nearly 150 years before this, however, Comfort Starr was a name not
unknown to the more heated zealots of the Puritan party. He was a native
of Ashford, in Kent, and after various restless shiftings as a minister,
Carlisle being his head-quarters for a time, went to New Plymouth in the
_Mayflower_, in 1620. There he became fellow of Harvard College, but
returned to England eventually, and died at Lewes in his eighty-seventh
year.
Perhaps the most interesting and popular of the grace names was
"Repentance." In a "new interlude" of the Reformation, entitled the "Life
and Repentance of Marie Magdalene," and published in 1567, one of the
chief characters was "Repentance." At the same time Repentance came into
font use, and, odd as it may sound, bade fair to become a permanently
recognized name in England:
"1583, Dec. 8. Married William Arnolde and Repentance Pownoll."--Cant.
Cath.
"1587, Oct. 22. Baptized Repentance, dather of George
Aysherst."--Warbleton.
"1588, June 30. Baptized Repentance Water."--Cranbrook.
"1597, Aug. 4. Baptized Repentance, daughter of Robert Benham, of
Lymhouse."--Stepney.
"1612, March 26. Baptized Repentance Wrathe."--Elham, Kent.
"1688, Dec. 23. Bapt. Repentance, son of Thomas and Mercy
Tompson."--St. James, Piccadilly.
In the "Sussex Archaeological Collections" (xvii. 148) is found recorded
the case of Repentance Hastings, deputy portreeve of Seaford, who in 1643
was convicted of hiding some wreckage:
"Repentance Hastings, 1 load, 1 cask, 2 pieces of royals."
Evidently his repentance began too early in life to be lasting; but infant
piety could not be expected to resist the hardening influence of such a
name as this.[45]
_Humiliation_ was a big word, and that alone must have been in its favour:
"1629, Jan. 24. Married Humiliation Hinde and Elizabeth Phillips by
banes."--St. Peter, Cornhill.
Humiliation, being proud of his name, determined to retain it in the
family--for he had one--but as he had began to worship at St. Dionis
Backchurch, the entries of baptism lie there, the spelling of his surname
being slightly altered:
"1630, Nov. 18. Baptized Humiliation, son of Humiliation Hyne."
This son died March 11, 1631-2. Humiliation _pere_, however, did not
sorrow without hope, for in a few years he again brings a son to the
parson:
"1637-8, Jan. 21. Baptized Humiliation, son of Humiliation Hinde."
Humility is preferable to Humiliation. Humility Cooper was one of a
freight of passengers in the _Mayflower_, who, in 1620, sought a home in
the West. A few years afterwards Humility Hobbs followed him (Hotten,
"Emigrants," p. 426):
"1596, March 13. Baptized Humilitye, sonne of Wylliam
Jones."--Warbleton.
"1688, May 5. Buried Humility, wife of Humphey Paget."--Peckleton,
Leic.
Had it not been for Charles Dickens, Humble would not have appeared
objectionable:
"1666-1667, Jan. 29. Petition of Dame Frances, wife of Humble Ward,
Lord Ward, Baron, of Birmingham."[46]--C. S. P.
All Saints, Leicester, records another saintly grace:
"Here lieth the body of Abstinence Pougher, Esq., who died Sept. 5,
1741, aged 62 years."
In some cases we find the infant represented, not by a grace-name, but as
in a state of grace. Every register contains one or two Godlies:
"1579, July 24. Baptized Godlye, d. of Richard Fauterell."--Warbleton.
"1611, May 1. Baptized Godly, d. of Henry Gray, and Joane his wife.
Joane Standmer and Godly Gotherd, sureties."--South Bersted, Sussex.
"1619, Nov. Baptized Godly, d. of Thomas Edwardes, of
Poplar."--Stepney.
"1632, Oct. 30. Married John Wafforde to Godly Spicer."--Cant. Cath.
Gracious is as objectionable as Godly. Gracious Owen was President of St.
John's College, Oxford, during the decade 1650-1660.
"Oct. 24, 1661. Examination of Gracious Franklin: Joshua Jones,
minister at the Red Lion, Fleet Street, told him that he heard there
were 3000 men about the city maintained by Presbyterian
ministers."--C. S. P.
_Lively_, we may presume, referred to spiritual manifestations. A curious
combination of font name and patronymic is obtained in Lively Moody, D.D.,
of St. John's College, Cambridge, 1682 (Wood's "Fasti Oxonienses").
Exactly one hundred years later the name is met with again:
"1782, July 3. Lively Clarke of this town, sadler, aged
60."--Berkeley, Gloucester.
At Warbleton, where the Puritan Heley ministered, it seems to have been
found wearisome to be continually christening children by the names of
Repent and Repentance, so a variation was made in the form of
"Sorry-for-sin:"
"1589, Jan 25. Baptized Sory-for-sine, the dather of John Coupard."
The following is curious:
"Thomas Luxford, of Windmill Hill, died Feb. 24, 1739, aged 72 years.
He was grandson of Thomas Luxford, of Windmill Hill, by _Changed_
Collins, his wife, daughter of Thomas Collins, of Socknash in this
county, Esq., and eldest son of Richard Luxford, of
Billinghurst."--Wartling Church.
Faithful[47] may close this list:
"1640, Oct. 18. Baptized Benjamin, son of Faithful Bishop."--St.
Columb Major.
Faithful Rouse settled in New England in 1644 (Bowditch). The following
despatch mentions another:
"1666, July 18. Major Beversham and Lieut. Faithful Fortescue are sent
from Ireland to raise men."--C. S. P.
Bunyan evidently liked it, and gave the name to the martyr of Vanity Fair:
"Sing, Faithful, sing, and let thy name survive;
For though they killed thee, thou art yet alive."
Speaking from a nomenclatural point of view, the name did not survive, for
the last instance I have met with is that of Faithful Meakin, curate of
Mobberley, Cheshire, in 1729 (Earwaker, "East Cheshire," p. 99, _n._). It
had had a run of more than a century, however.
The reader will have observed that the majority of these names have become
obsolete. The religious apathy of the early eighteenth century was against
them. They seem to have made their way slowly westward. Certainly their
latest representatives are to be found in the more retired villages of
Gloucestershire and Devonshire. A few like Mercy, Faith, Hope, Charity,
Grace, and Prudence, still survive, and will probably for ever command a
certain amount of patronage; but they are much more popular in our
religious story-books than the church registers. The absence of th
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