Surname Origins, Their Source and Significations (1875)

Waterman,' or 1 Richard Waterbearer,'or 'William le Water-leder' busy enough by the waterside.' The latter term, however, was far the commonest in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. I have already mentioned the sense of ' lead ' at this time, that of carrying. Piers Plowman, to quote but one more instance, says in one place

With Lumbardes letters

I ladde gold to Rome,

And took it by tale there.

In the York Pageant of 1415 we find two separate detachments of these water-leaders in procession, one in conjunction with the bakers, the other with the cooks. It. would be doubtless these two classes of shopkeepers their duties of carrying stores, especially flour, to and from the different vessels would bring them in contact with most. Our 'Leaders,' 'Leeders,'

Leders,' and 'Loders' are either the more general carrier or an abbreviated form of the above.;' Gager,'though rarely met with now, is a descendant of

1 'Richard Drawater' (A.) would be a nickname.

2 This word 'lead' is worthy of some extended notice. We still speak of a path leading our steps to a place, but we scarcely now would say that we lead our steps to it. Shakespeare, however, does so, where Richard III addresses Elizabeth

'Dorset your son, that with a fearful soul

Leads discontented steps in foreign soil.'

Several commentators on Shakespeare have proposed 'treads' in the place of 'leads,' not knowing, seemingly, how familiar was this sense of carrying or bearing in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A century earlier the Malvern Dreamer says

'And maketh of Lyere a lang cart

To leden all these othere

while just before he writes

'And cart-saddle the commissarie,

Oure cart shall he lede

And fecchen us vitailles.'

In North Yorkshire to this very day they do very little carting. They all but invariably ' lead hay,' 'leadcorn,' etc. An old form of 'lead' was 'lode.' We still talk of a 'lode-stone. 'This explains such an entry as 'Emmale Lodere' or 'Agnes le Lodere.' They were both doubtless 'leaders' or 'carriers,' that is, wandering hucksters.

SURNAMES OF OCCUPATION (TOWN).

'William le Gageour,' or 'Alexander le Gauger,' or 'Henry le Gaugeour,' of many a mediaeval record. His office was to attend to the King's revenue at our seaports, and though not strictly so confined, yet his duties were all but entirely concerned in the measurement of liquids, such as oil, wine, honey.1 The tun, the pipe, the tierce, the puncheon, casks and barrels of a specified size — these came under his immediate supervision, and the royal fee was accordingly. Such a name as 'Josceus le Peisur,' now found as 'Poyser' or 'Henry le Waiur,' that is, 'Weigher,'2 met with now also in the form of 'Weightman,' represented the passage of more solid merchandise. The old form of ' poise ' was ' peise.' Piers Plowman makes Covetousness to confess

I lerned among Lumbardes And Jewes a lesson,

To weye pens with a peis, And pare the heaviest.

1 'Item, that all wines, red and white, which shall come unto the said realm shall be well and lawfully gauged by the King's Gaugers, or their deputies' ('bien et loialment gaugez par le gaujeour le Rol, ou son deputé.'). (Stat. of Realm, vol. i. p. 331.)

2 An epitaph in St. Anthony's, London, dated 1400, says of the deceased that he was

'The King's weigher more than yeres twentie,

Simon Street, callyd in my place.'
(Maitland, ii. 375.)