Surname Origins, Their Source and Significations (1875)

Orfevre ' or 'Peter le Orfeure,' and these lingered on in a more or less full form till the seventeenth century. Their memorial, too, still survives in our 'Offers' and 'Offors.'1 Ivory was much used, too, andour 'Turners' here also were doubtless very busy. A pretty little cketof this material, called a 'forcer,' small and delicately carved, used in general for storing away jewellery and other precious gems, was decidedly popular among the richer ranks of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In an old poem, sometimes set down to Chaucer, it is said

Fortune by strength the forcer hath unshete,

Wherein was sperde all my worldly richesse.

Our present 'Forcers' and early 'Nicholas le Forcers' and 'Henry le Forcers' represent this. Our use of ivory tablets is not yet obsolete, though of late years the wondrous cheapness of paper and the issue of pocketbooks and annuals have threatened to absorb their existence. Of somewhat larger size were the 'tables' of this time. Chaucer, in portraying the Limitour, speaks of him as followed by an attendant, bearing

A pair of tables all of ivory,

And a pointel, ypolished fetisly,

And wrote alway the names, as he stood,

Of alle folk that gave them any good.

It is in a yet larger sense of this same word our early translators introduced the phrase ' tables of stone, found in the Mosaic record — not, however, that the smaller 'tablet' was unknown. Apart from such a

1 'William William le Orbater' (goldbeater) isalso found in the Hundred Rolls.

SURNAMES OF OCCUPATION (TOWN).

registration as 'Bartholomew le Tabler,' found in the London Rolls (1320), we have mentioned as living in Cambridge in 1322 one 'Richard le Tableter.'1We can readily understand how useful would be his occupation to the students, who were thus provided with a writing material capable of erasure, at a time when paper was infinitely too expensive to be simply scribbled upon.2The pointel, or pencil, mentioned above, seems to have required also a separate manufacture, as we find the surnames 'Roger Poyntel' and 'John Poyntel' occurring in 1315 and 1319, the latter the same date within a year as the 'Tabler' just referred to. These tablets, I need not say, were, whether the framework were ivory, or box, or cyprus, overlaid with smeared wax, the pointel being, as its name more literally implies, the stile with which the characters were impressed. The pointel was a.common ornament and hung pendent from the neck.

Two surnames far from being uninteresting must be mentioned here. They are those of 'Walter Orlogyr'3 and 'Thomas Clokmaker,'the one being found in the 'Guild of St. George, Norwich' (1385), the other in the 'Proceedings and Ordinances of the

1 A 'Bartholomew le Tableter' is also found in the 'Memorials of London' (Riley). The date being the same or nearly the same as that of 'Bartholomew le Tabler' inscribed in the Parliamentary Writs for the capital, we may feel assured both are one and the same person.

2 'And thei bikenyden to his fadir, that he wolde that he were clepid. And he axinge a poyntel wrote seiynge Jon is his name.' (Luke i. 63. Wicklyffe.)

3 I have since discovered another instance of this name —
To Bartholomew le Orologius, after the arrival of William de Pikewell, 23 gallons.' 1286 (Domesday Book, St. Paul's, Cam. Soc.).