Surname Origins, Their Source and Significations (1875)

'Cobbler' ('Richard le Cobeler,' A ), though it has existed as a name of occupation fully as long as any of the above, has, I believe, never been able so far to overcome the dislike to the fact of its being a mere mending or patchwork trade as to obtain for itself an hereditary place in our nomenclature. 'Cosier' has fared better, as have 'Clouter' and 'Cloutman,' relics of the old 'John' or 'Stephen le Clutere,' why I do not know. We all remember how the inhabitants of Gibeon 'did work wilily, and went and made as if they had been ambassadors, and took old sacks upon their asses, and wine bottles, old and rent, and bound up, and old shoes and clouted upon their feet, and old garments upon them.' Another name we may notice here is that of 'Patten-maker,' a 'James Patynmakere' being found enrolled in a Norwich guild of 1385. Cocke Lorelle mentions among others:

Alys Easy a gay tale-teller,

Also Peter Patynmaker.1

A patten seems in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to have been very similar to our clog, only that the former was more easily put on and off. It was of a wooden sole, rimmed with iron. We find in 1464

1 'Another form of the name and occupation is met with in the Corp. Christi Guild, York, in the case of ' Robert Patener, et Marionauxor ejus' (W. ii.).

SURNAMES OF OCCUPATION (TOWN).

the Patynmakers of London presenting a grievance in that the fletchers alone were allowed to use aspen-wood, whereas it was the ' lightest tymbre to make of patyns or clogges.' (Rot. Parl. iv. 567.) Mr. Way, in his Notes to the 'Promptorium Parvulorum,' says they were worn much by ecclesiastics to protect the feet from chill when treading the cold bare pavements of the churches, and he quotes a Harleian MS. dated 1390 regarding an archiepiscopal visitation at York: 'Item, omnes ministri ecclesie pro majore parte utuntur in ecclesiâ et in processione patens et clogges contra honestatem ecclesie, et antiquam consuetudenem capituli.' The patten-maker was evidently of some importance at this time.'

Perhaps fashion never went to such an absurd extreme as it did in the fourteenth century with respect to wearing peaked shoes. An old poem entitled the 'Complaint of the Ploughman,' says of the friars, and alluding to their inconsistencies, that they wear

Cutted clothes to shewe their hewe,
With long pikes on their shoon:

Our Goddes Gospell is not trewe
Either they serve the devill or none.

Piers Plowman, too, speaks of a knight coming to be dubbed

To geten him gilte spurs

Or galoches y-couped.

This last reminds us that they were commonly styled 'copped shoon.' Such a sobriquet as 'Hugh le Coppede ' or 'John le Copede' would seem to refer to this. Probably the owner had carried on the practice to an even more extravagant length than his neighbours, and

1 'John Rykedon, patynmaker,'occurs in the Patent Rolls (R.R.. 1).