from the way in which it is spelt in documents of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Tidulf-hide and Theodulf-hide, seems to be the designation of a manor containing a hide belonging at one time to an owner named Theodulf.

51. Again, any Wiltshire man knows what is meant by a linch, or, as sometimes we have it in a diminutive form, linchet. It is the Anglo-Saxon hline, which signifies a ridge of land, and is applied in Wilts to the boundary ridges thrown up for the purpose of separating one property or parish from another. Hence Junius defines it, "agger limitaneus parochias dividens." It is applied to such ridges, or balks, of varying extent. The place now called Trafalgar, in memory of the great Lord Nelson, was previously termed STANLINCH. This is evidently the Anglo-Saxon stán-hlinc, i.e., the "stony linch" (Andrews and Dury in their map give the name as Ston-ley). Not far from this place, and in the same parish of Downton, you have a place called RED-LINCH. This, it is conjectured, refers to the red, perhaps gravelly soil of the "linch," from which it derives its name.

Two more instances may be given under this class of names. The Anglo-Saxon word hivisc means a "small estate." Hence the word HUISH or HEWISH, which is but another form of the original term. Near Chippenham you have it in a compound word. HARDENHUISH neans Harding's-estate. In the Domesday record, though he did not possess at that time this particular manor on which has been imprinted the name of his family, HARDING is recorded to have held, in the time of Edward the Confessor, property in its immediate neighbourhood. In fact one of the Titheringtons belonged to

him.

III.-Names of places derived from those of owners or occupiers of the land.

52. We have in the various ancient charters a large list of personal names. In the Wilts Domesday we have an account of the names of numerous tenants both before and after the Conquest. Moreover Wassenberg has collected together, in his Philological contributions to the Frisian language, a list of old

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Names from those of ancient Owners or Occupiers. Frisic personal names, which without doubt serve to interpret many local names in Wilts.

An example or two shall be given, first of all, from some of the Anglo-Saxon charters.

There is a place in All Cannings which is now called ST. ANNE'S HILL, but, as it has been shown in the pages of this Magazine, (vol. xi., p. 9,) it is really a memorial of an ancient owner of the name of Anne, the occurrence of such names as these-Anan stán (= Anne's stone) Anne's thorn-Anne's crundell-in the charter of Stanton Berners, the immediately adjoining parish, clearly proving it.1 Again, in the charter relating to Dauntsey, we have named among the points of boundary, Strenges buryeles ( = Streng's burialplace), a name now only to be recognized in Stranger's Farm. So in the Hyde Chartulary, in the land-limits of Collingbourn Kingston, we have Guthredes-berg (= Guthred's barrow), a name now changed into GODSBURY.3

Two

Of those, for the interpretation of which we may look to Domesday Book, an account has already been given in this Magazine. may be referred to by way of illustration. The place now called Fittleton is in Domesday (p. 113) called VITELETOE, and the owner in the days of the Confessor was one VITEL, and it is no stretch of imagination to believe that from this early owner, or some namesake

1See Cod. Dipl. 483. We have similar instances of this tendency to see memorials of Saints in local names in designations given to other parishes in Wilts. STANTON BERNERS has been transformed into Stanton St. Bernard, whilst STRATFORD TONY, so called from Alice de Toni, Countess of Warwick, has been gravely intrepreted as Stratford St. Anthony. In like manner. MARTIN, near Bedwyn, supposed to be called from an old chapel presumably dedicated to St. Martin, is simply mær-tún (=boundary village), and was formally spelt Marton or Merton. In the Inq. p.m. 17 Edw. I, the name occurs as Mar-thorn, as though it were so called from some boundary thorn planted there. Anyhow the name has nothing to do with any medieval Saint.

Cod. Dipl. 263.

3 Hyde Chartulary, (Rolls Series) p. 107.

• Wilts Magazine, xiii., 42.

5 In a charter relating to Enford, an immediately adjoining parish, we have a boundary-point described as "Fitelan sládes crundel" i.e., the "crundel by Fitel's slade." Cod. Dipl. 1110.

VOL. XV.NO. XLIII.

M

of his, the village derived its name. Again, ELSTON, a tithing in the parish of Orcheston St. George, belonged, at the time of Domesday, to Osbern Giffard (W. Domesd., p. 117). In the thirteenth century it belonged to one of his descendants, Elias Giffard (Test. de Nev., 142). The form in which the name was then spelt, Elys-ton seems to prove that its meaning is the town or village of Elias (Giffard).

53. Drawing conclusions from analogy, I have little doubt that many names, which now puzzle us, contain in them abbreviated and often corrupt forms of the names of some ancient owner. Certainly the lists that we have among the subscriptions to the Anglo-Saxon charters, as well as that of Frisian names which Wassenberg has compiled, seem to throw much light on this subject, though we cannot directly connect many of the personal names with those of the places which they nevertheless seem to interpret. Thus we find the name of HUNLAF, an abbot, appended to a Saxon charter of the date of 854: is it unlikely that one so called gave the name to HUNLAVIN-TONE (= Hunlaf's town) ?-certainly WOOLAVINGTON, in in Sussex, was originally Wulfláfing-tún (= the tún, or village of Wulfláf. So too with what is now called ROLLESTONE: in Domesday it is accounted for under WINTERBURNE (W. Domesd., p. 41), and in the Nom. Vill. it appears as ABBODESTON, so called from belonging to the Abbey of St. Peter's, Winchester; but its present designation I believe to be derived from some old owner bearing a name which in old Frisian appears as ROLLE, and in Dutch as ROEL, and which, Wassenberg tells us, is a contraction of Rudolf, or Radulf, (now better known in its shortened form of Ralph or Rolf,) of by no means infrequent occurrence in Domesday Book. A form of the name which we meet with in sundry records viz., Roluestone (= Rolvestone) certainly confirms this view.

54. It will have been observed that some of our illustrations have been from instances in which a personal name occurs in connection

1Cod. Dipl. 270. We meet with Húnláfing-ham in a charter from Cod. Winton, (C.D. 1231,) but I do not know where the place so designated may be ; it does not seem to be in Wilts.

2 Saxons in England, i., 60.

Names from those of ancient Owners or Occupiers.

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with the sepulchral tumuli, to which reference is so constantly made in the charters, and which are still to be seen in such numbers on our downs. The present mode of burial in cemeteries set apart for the purpose, and then attached to churches, was not usual till nearly the end of the ninth century. At certain periods they observed the custom of solitary burial, under a mound or barrow, in the open and uncultivated ground which separated the possessions of different communities or settlers. Hence the very frequent reference to such mounds on the borders of ancient manors,-sacred land-marks they became, the work of man indeed, but intended for his home, when, after his days of toil, he folds his hands and lays him down to rest. Perhaps in our zeal to interpret the past we are in danger of some irreverence in peering into these ancient sepulchres. It would be well for us, if, when engaged in what to some is the exciting chase of "barrow-digging," we bore in mind more frequently that in that "dust and ashes" are the germs of immortality. The old charters deal with a time when the names of a few past generations had not quite faded from men's memories. In going through these records a feeling often comes over you, like that which, after a residence of many years in a village, you feel as you walk through the churchyard, and can tell, one by one, whose memorials the little turf-heaps are, and who sleeps beneath them. Frequent allusions are often found to older "barrows: a common expression found is "oð ða hæðenan byrgelsas," i.e., to the "heathen burial-places: "moreover the way in which mention is made of persons being placed in these "heathen barrows" seems to imply that the earliest Christians buried where the pagans had previously deposited the burnt remains of their dead.

1

55. A few names selected from charters relating to Wiltshire may be interesting: possibly an intimate knowledge of the localities to which they refer may enable some of my readers to discover the name still remaining in our county.

1 Kemble well observes that the Anglo-Saxon verb byrgian does not mean simply what we call burial, but has the more extended meaning of covering and so does not exclude the idea of cremation. It corresponds to the Latin sepelire, which is applied to the urn containing the ashes, quite as correctly as to the burial of the unburnt body. See above, § 40.

WURES-BYRGYLSE. This name, which means simply "Wur's burialplace," occurs in a charter which seems to relate to Fifield, near Everley. Cod. Dipl., 592. I do not remember the name in Wilts, simply or in composition, as that of a person or place. An old Bishop of Lichfield (721-731) is called by Simeon of Durham, Aldwine alias Wor. The latter was his birth-name and is evidently of Celtic origin, the former was his assumed name, when, like some of his imitators of other ages, rising in the social scale, he adopted one taken from the language of the ruling class. Such an expression as Wures-leage might well account for the name Wors-ley.

HOCES-BYRGELS. This expression is found in the boundaries of Bedwin (Cod. Dipl., 1266). In those for Witney, in Oxfordshire (Cod. Dipl., 775), we have Hóces-lów, that is, the low of Hóce. It may be that the personal name Hook is a modern form of this ancient name, and possibly HUX-LEY may be the same in composition. Kemble suggests (Arch. Journ., xiv., 127) that Hóce may possibly be a mythical personage, probably the heros eponymus of the Frisian tribe, who figures in Beowulf and the episode of whose cremation is one of its finest passages. Still, he adds-and in this I am quite inclined to agree with him,-" it may be the name of a private individual.”

56. Other personal names are in like manner prefixed to hlow (= low), which means a mound, either natural or artificial, and often of a sepulchral character. Thus Cwichelmeshlaw (Cod. Dipl., 693), is the well-known tumulus now called CUCKHAMSLOW, near Wantage, in Berks. In Wiltshire, we have amongst others the following:

'Mon. H. B. 659. The name WUR or WOR (it occurs also in the Saxon Chronicle-Anno 800-as WORR, in the name of an ealdorman of Wessex), may, as a learned friend suggests to me, be connected with the Welsh gwer (that which is superior, or uppermost). Thus VORTIGERN is the Welsh gwrtheyrn (or teyrn), and means simply the "eminent prince" or chieftain. The good Bishop need not have been ashamed of his birth-name, Celtic though it might be. See Philol. Transact, (1857,) p. 57.