Surname Origins, Their Source and Significations (1875)

were at this time at the very height of their popularity. The Romish Church fed this desire. Thus, for instance, take Epiphany. In well-nigh every parish the visit of the Magi, always accounted to have been royal personages, was regularly celebrated. Though the manner varied in different places, the custom was more or less the same. There was a great feast, and one of the company was always elected king, the rest being, according to the lots they drew, either ministers of state or maids of honour. Thus Herrick says

For sports, for pageantrie, and playes,

Thou hast thy eves and holidayes:

Thy wakes, thy quintels, here thou hast,

Thy Maypoles, too, with garlandes graced:

Thy mummeries, thy twelfe-tide kings

And queens, thy Christmas revellings.1

1 In the Hundred Rolls we find a 'Will Litleking.' This sobriquet would readily attach to one such feast-appointed monarch whose diminutive stature would but impart additional merriment to the occasion. ' Roger Wyteking' ( Testa de Neville) would owe his nom de plume to the dress he wore. It is to such an institution as this, again, we must ascribe the origin of such names as 'Reginald Kyngessone,'and per-chance ' Richard Kyngesman,' both found in the Hundred Rolls also. That our 'Kings' are but a memorial of the festivities of our forefathers, is an undoubted fact. Every great nobleman had not merely a professed ' fool,' but at particular seasons a 'King of Misrule.' This 'king' initiated and conducted the merry doings of Christmastide, and was a proper officer. Besides the 'King of Misrule,' there were also the 'King' and ' Queen' of each village enthroned on May morning, who would be sure to keep their regal title through the year at least. Thus, among the twenty or thirty families that comprised the manor of Ashton-under-Lyne in 1422, we find 'Hobbe the King,' while a festivalto be held there in that year is to be under the supervision of ' Margaret, widow of Hobbe the King, Hobbe Adamson, Jenkin of the Wood, Robert Somayster (Sum-master), etc.' (Three Lancashire Documents. Cheth. Soc.) 'We, Adam Backhous and Harry Nycol, hath made account for the Kenggam (King-game), that same tym don William Kempe, Kenge, and Joan Whytebrede, Quen, and all costs de-ducted, 41. 5s. 0d. (Ch. wardens'Accounts: Kingston-upon-Thames. Lyson.)

SURNAMES OF OFFICE.

I need scarcely say that as popular nicknames these titles would be sure to cling to the persons upon whom they had fallen, and that they should even pass on to their descendants is no more unnatural than in the case of a hundred other sobriquets we shall have occasion to recount.

Of the rest, however, and, as I have said, maybe in some of the cases I have mentioned, the surname was but truly indicative of the office or dignity held. The Saxon has suffered here. And yet to some this may seem somewhat strange when we remember how little change really took place in the institutions of the Kingdom by the Conquest. The Normans and Saxons, after all, were but propagations from the same original stock, and however distant the period of their separation, however affected by difference of clime and association, still their customs bore a sufficient affinity to make coalescence by no means a difficult task. William was not given to great changes. He was vindictive, but not destructive. His most cruel acts were retributive, done by way of reprisal after sudden disaffection. If a conqueror must establish his power, deeds of this kind are inevitable. And even these are exaggerated. The story of the depopulation of the New Forest, it is now pretty generally agreed, is impossible — its present condition forbids of any such act to have been practicable — and the notion frequently conveyed in our smaller books of English history, that the curfew was a badge and