Surname Origins, Their Source and Significations (1875)

Richard in 'Richard the III.' finely says

I'll strive, with troubled thoughts, to take a nap,

Lest leaden slumber peise me down to-morrow.
(Act v. scene 3.)

With the above, therefore, we must associate our 'Tollers,' once registered as 'Bartholomew le Tollere' or ' Ralph le Toller,' together with our 'Tolemans' and 'Tolmans,' they who took the King's levy at fair and market — by the roadside and the wharf.' Piers Plowman, in a list of other decent folk, includes

Taillours and tynkers,

And tollers in markettes,

Masons and mynours,

And many other crafts.

Cocke Lorelle is not so complimentary. He says

Then come two false towlers in nexte,

He set them by pykers (thieves) of the beste.'

In concluding this chapter, and our survey of trade generally, it will be necessary to the completion thereof that we should say a word or two about the money trading of four hundred years ago or more. Banks, bank-notes, bills of exchange, drafts to order — all these are as familiar to the tongues of the nineteenth century as if the great car of commerce had ever gone along on such greased and comfortable

1 The local form is found in the case of 'Jeffery Talbothe,' a Norfolk Rector in 1371. (Bromefield). The 'receipt of custom' is with Wickliffe the 'tolbothe.'

2 Skelton seems of the same mind as the author of Cocke Lot-dlr.

'So many lollers,

So few true tollers,

So many pollers,
Saw I never.'

SURNAMES OF OCCUPATION (TOWN).

wheels. But I need not say it is not so. Very little money in the present day is practically coin. Our banks have it all. It was different with our ancestors. As a rule it was stored up in some secret cupboard or chest. Hence it is, as I have shown, the trade of 'le Coffer' and the office of ' le Cofferer' are so much thrust before our notice in surveying mediaeval records. Still, trading in money was largely carried on, so far, at any rate, as loans were concerned. The Jew, true to his national precedents, was then, I need not say, the pawnbroker of Europe, and as his disciple, the Lumbard soon bid fair to outstrip his master. Under the Plantagenet dynasty both found a prosperous field for their peculiar business in England, and, as I have elsewhere said, Lombard Street 1 to this day is a memorial of the settlement of the latter. In such uncertain and changeful times as these, kings, and in their train courtiers and nobles, soon learnt the art, not difficult in initiation, of pawning jewels and lands for coin. The Malvern Dreamer speaks familiarly of this

I have lent lordes

And ladies my chaffare,

And been their brocour after,

And bought it myselve;

Eschaunges and chevysaunces

With such cheffare I dele.

This species of commerce is early marked by such names as 'Henry le Chaunger' or 'Adam le Cheves-

1 I need not remind the majority of my readers of the origin of our term 'lumber room,' that it is but a corruption of lombard-room, or the chamber in which the mediaeval pawnbroker stored up all his pledges. Hence we now speak of any useless cumbrous articles as 'lumber.'