Surname Origins, Their Source and Significations (1875)

token of servitude, is simply absurd, the fact being that the same custom prevailed over the whole of Western Europe, as a mere precaution against fire at a time when our towns were mainly constructed of wood. A crushed people will always misinterpret such ordinances. Prejudice of this kind is perfectly pardonable. William then, I say, was not inclined to uproot Saxon institutions. The national council still remained. The ancient tribunals with their various motes, the whole system of law which guided the administration of justice, all was well-nigh as it had been heretofore. But the language which was the medium of all this was generally changed. The old laws were indeed used, but in a translated form — old officerships still existed, but in a new dialect — the oldpolicy was mainly upheld, but new terms of police were introduced. It was not till Edward III.'s reign that pleadings in the various courts were again carried onin the English tongue — it was not till Henry VI.'s reign the proceedings in Parliament were recorded in the people's dialect — not till Richard III.'s day its statutes and ordinances ceased to be indited in Norman-French. This at once shows the difficulty of any officership, however Saxon, retaining its original title. The office was maintained, but the name was changed. This was the more certain to ensue, so far as the Church was concerned, from the fact that for a considerable period all ecclesiastic vacancies were filled up from abroad. Bishops and abbots were removed on pretexts of one sort or another, and their places supplied from the Conqueror's chaplains. The monasteries were hived with Normans; the clergy generally were of foreign descent. It was the same,

SURNAMES OF OFFICE.

or nearly the same, with regard to civil government. The lesser courts of judicature were ruled by foreigners and the foreign tongue. The Barons, as they retired into the provinces and to the estates allotted them, naturally bore with them a Norman retinue. All their surroundings became quickly the same. Thus the French language was used not merely in their common conversation — that of course — but so far as their power, undoubtedly large, existed, in the provincial courts also.

Such entries as 'Thomas le Shirreve' and 'Lena le Shireve' remind us not merely of our present existing ' Sheriffs,' 'Sherrifs,' and 'Shreeves,' but how firmly this Saxon word has maintained its hold through the many fluctuations of English government. The Norman 'Judge,' though it is firmly established in our courts of law, has not made any very great impress upon our nomenclature. 'Justice,' a relic of

William' or 'Eva le Justice,' t is more commonly met with. Our 'Corners,' when not descendants of the local ' de la Corners ' of the thirteenth century, are but corruptions of many a 'John le Coroner' or 'Henry le Corouner' of the same period. It is even found in the abbreviated form ofCorner,' in 'John le Corner' and

1 The Ordinary was any ecclesiastic judge, the bishop himself, or his deputy. Thus, in a statute of Edward HI., dated 1341, it is said:--' Item, it is accorded and assented that the king and his heirs shal have the conisance of the usurers dead, and that the Ordinaries of Holy Church — les Ordinares de Seinte Esglise — have the conisance of usurers in life, as to them appertaineth, to make compulsion by the censures of Holy Church for the sin,' &c. (Stat. Realm, vol. i. p. 296.) We still call the gaol chaplain the ordinary who conducts the condemned prisoner to the scaffold and reads the appointed service. The Parliamentary Writs give us a 'John Ordeiner' and a 'Stephen Ordinar.'