Surname Origins, Their Source and Significations (1875)

the Hundred Rolls. He was evidently but a school-master also. The verb 'to lesson,' i.e. to teach, is still in use in various parts of the country, and we find even Shakespeare using it. Clarence says to his murderer

Bid Gloster think of this, and he will weep;

to which the murderer replies

Ay, millstones; as he lessoned us to weep.
(Richard III., act. i. sc. iii.)

In looking over the pages of our early Anglo-Norman history we are at once struck by the fact of the absence of any middle class; that important branch of our community which in after and more civilised ages has done so much for English liberty and English strength. The whole genius of the feudal constitution was opposed to this. There was indeed a graduating scale of feudal tenure which bound together and connected each community; but there was of equal surety in the chain of these independent links of society a certain ring where all alliance ceased save that of service, and which separated each provincial society into two widely-sundered classes. On the one side were the baron and his nearer feudatories and retainers; and below this, on the other, came under one common standard the villein, the peasant, and the boor, looked upon by their superiors with contemptuous indifference, and barely endured as necessary to the administration of their luxury and pleasure. We have already mentioned many of those who gave the baron support. Of other his vassals we may cite 'le Vavasour,' or 'Valvasor,'a kind of middle-class landowner. The lower orders

SURNAMES OF OFFICE.

of chivalry have left us in our many 'Knights' 1 and 'Bachelors' or 'Backlers ' a plentiful token of former importance. Our 'Squiers,' 'Squires,' 'Swiers,' or

Swires ' 2 carry us, as does the now meaningless Esquire, to the time when the sons of those 'Knights' bore, as the name implies, their shields. By the time of Henry VI., however, it had become adopted by the heirs of the higher gentry, and now it is used indiscriminately enough. Those who are so surnamed may comfort themselves at any rate with the reflection that they are lineally descended from those who bore the name when it was an honourable and distinctive title. 'Armiger,'the form in which the word was oftentimes recorded in our Latin rolls, still survives, though barely, in our 'Armingers,' this corrupted form being in perfect harmony with all similar instances, as we shall see almost immediately. One of our mediaeval rhymes speaks of

Ten thousand knights stout and fers,

Withouten hobelers and squyers.

These hobelers are far from being uninteresting. When we talk of riding a hobby, we little think what a history is concealed beneath the term. A hobiler 3

1 The Hundred Rolls contain 'Geoffrey Halve Knit' and 'Nicholas Halve Knycht.'They would seem to have arrived at some half stage toward chivalric rank.

2 Swyan, in Morte Arthure, slays Child-Chatelain, and

'The swyers swyre-bane (neck-bone) he swappes in sondre.'

3 An ordinance of Edward 1H.declares that 'men of arms, hoblers' and archers (gentz darmes, hobelers et archers) chosen to go in the king's service out of England, shall be at the king's wages from the day that they depart out of the counties where they were chosen, till their return.' (Stat. Realm, vol. i. p. 301.) Of the hobby itself, too, we have mention.