Surname Origins, Their Source and Significations (1875)

I need scarcely say that the city was the chief head-quarters of the Flemish weaving interest at the date we are considering.

Leaving Europe for a moment, a name of peculiar interest is that of 'Sarson,'1 or 'Sarasin,' a sobriquet undoubtedly sprung from the Crusades in the East, and found contemporaneously, or immediately after-wards, in England as 'Sarrasin,' 'Sarrazein,' 'Sarracen,' and in the Latinized form of 'Sarracenus.' The maternal grandfather of Thomas a Becket was a pure-blooded Saracen, settled in England. The 'Saracen's Head,' I need not remind the reader, has been a popular inn sign in our land from the days of Coeur de Lion and Godfrey. It would seem as if they were sufficient objects of public curiosity to be exhibited. In the ' Issues of the Exchequer' of Henry VI.'s reign is the following: — 'To a certain Dutchman, bringing with him a Saracen to the Kingdom of England, in money paid him in part payment of five marks which the Lord the King commanded to be paid him, to have of his gift.' Speaking of the Saracens, however, we are led to say a word or two about the Jews, the greatest money-makers, the greatest merchants, the greatest people, in a commercial point

1 Our 'Sarsons' may be metronymically descended from 'Sare' or 'Sarra.' Skelton, in 'Elynore Rummyng,' speaks of

'Dame Dorothe and lady Besse,

Dame Sare, our pryoresse.'

Nevertheless the same writer, in his 'Poem against Garnesche,' ad-dresses a Saracen thus

'I say, ye solem Sarson, alle blake is your ble.'

Such entries as 'William fil. Sare,' 'John Saresson,' 'Henry Sarrasin' or 'Peter Sarracen,' show both origins to be possible.

LOCAL SURNAMES.

of view at least, the world has known. No amount of obloquy, no extent of cruel odium and persecution, could break the spirit of the old Iraelitish trader. Driven out of one city, he fled to another. Rifled of his savings in one land, he soon found an asylum in another, till a fresh revolution there also caused either the king or the people to vent their passions and refill their coffers at the expense of the despised Jew. 'Jury' would seem to be a corrupted surname taken from the land which our Bible has made so familiar to us. It certainly is derived from this term, but not the Jewry of Palestine. It was that part of any large town which in the Early and Middle Ages was set apart for these people, districts where, if they chose to face contumely and despite, they could live and worship together. Every considerable town in England and the Continent had its Jewish quarters. London with its 'Jewry' is no exceptional case. Winchester, York, Norwich, all our early centres of commerce, had the same. Johan Kaye, in his account of the siege of Rhodes, says: 'All the strete called the Jure by the walles was full of their blood and caren (carrion): Our 'Jurys' 1 are not, however, necessarily Jews, as it is but a local name from residence in such quarters, and doubtless at one time or another during the period of surname establishment Christians may have had habitation there. 'Jew,' on the other hand, as representing such former entries as 'Roger le Jew' or 'Mirabilla Judaeus,' is undoubtedly of purely Israelitish descent. But these are not all.

1 This surname is found uncorrupted so late as 1626. A 'John Jewry' is set down in C. C. Coll. register for that date. (Vide Hist. C.C. Coll.) ' Jewsbury ' has the same origin.