I would venture, at the outset, to describe this as a “pioneer” paper. It neither professes to determine questions nor attempts to exhaust a subject of singular complexity and obscurity. It is only an attempt to approach the problem on independent lines, and to indicate the path by which it may be possible to extend our knowledge in a department of research of which the importance and the interest are universally recognised.

It is the fine saying of a brilliant scholar, I mean Professor Maitland, that “the most wonderful of all palimpsests is the map of England, could we but decipher it.”[10] But the study of place-names has this in common with the study of Domesday Book. The local worker, the man who writes the history of his own parish, is as ready to explain the name it bears as he is to interpret the Domesday formulæ relating to it in the Great Survey, without possessing in either case that knowledge of the subject as a whole which is required for its treatment in detail. On the other hand, the general student, from the very wideness of his field, is deprived of the advantage conferred by the knowledge of a district in its details. In the hope of steering a middle course between these two dangers, I have specially selected two counties, both of them settled by the Saxon folk—Sussex, with which I am connected by birth; and Essex, with which are my chief associations. And further, within these two counties I restrict myself to certain classes of names, in order to confine the field of enquiry to well-defined limits.

The names with which I propose to deal are those which imply human habitation. And here at once I part company with those, like Kemble and other writers, who appear to think it a matter of indifference, so long as a name is formed from what they term a patronymic, whether it ends in-ham or-ton, or in such suffixes as-hurst,-field,-den, or-ford. To them all such names connote village communities; to me they certainly do not. If we glance at the map of Domesday Sussex,[11] we see the northern half of the county practically still “backwoods” eight centuries ago.[12] If we then turn to the Domesday map prefixed to Manning and Bray’s Surrey, we find the southern half of that county similarly devoid of place-names. In short, the famous Andredswald was still, at the time of the Conquest, a belt, some twenty miles in width, of forest, not yet opened up, except in a few scattered spots, for human settlement. The place-names of this district have, even at the present day, a quite distinctive character. The hams and tons of the districts lying to the north and the south of it are here replaced by such suffixes as -hurst, -wood, -ley, and -field, and on the Kentish border by -den. We may then, judging from this example, treat such suffixes as evidence that the districts where they occur were settled at a much later time than those of the hams and tons, and under very different conditions. The suffix -sted, so common in Essex, is comparatively rare in Sussex, and we cannot, therefore, classify it with the same degree of certainty.

Taking, therefore, for our special sphere, the hams, the tons, and the famous ings, let us see if they occur in such a way as to suggest some definite conclusions. The three principles I would keep in view are: (1) the study, within the limits of a county, of that distribution of names which, hitherto, has been studied for the country as a whole; (2) a point to which I attach the very greatest importance, namely, the collection, so far as possible, of all the names belonging to this class, instead of considering only those which happen to be now represented by villages or parishes; (3) the critical treatment of the evidence, by sifting and correcting it in its present form. The adoption of these two latter principles will gravely modify the conclusions at which some have arrived.

There is, as Mr. Seebohm’s work has shown, nothing so effective as a special map for impressing on the mind the distribution of names. Such a map is an argument in itself. But although I have constructed for my own use special maps of Sussex and Essex, they cannot here be reproduced.

I now proceed to apply the first principle of which I spoke, that of examining a single county in the same way as others have examined the maps of England as a whole. I doubt if any county would prove more instructive for the purpose than that of Sussex, of which the settlement was developed in isolation and determined by well-defined geographical conditions. Whatever may be said of other suffixes, Mr. Seebohm has shown us that, even allowing for a large margin of unavoidable error, the terminations -ing and -ham are not distributed at random, but are specially distinctive of that portion of England which was settled by the earliest immigrants and settled the most completely. As a broad, general conclusion, this is virtually established. Now, if we turn to the map of Sussex and ask if this general principle can also be traced in detail, the first point to strike us, I think, is the close connection existing between the hams and the rivers. The people, one might say, who settled the hams were a people who came in boats. Although at first sight the hams may seem to penetrate far inland, we shall find that where they are not actually on the coast, they almost invariably follow the rivers, and follow them as far up as possible; and this is specially the case with the Arun and its tributary the Western Rother. Careful examination reveals the fact that, while to the south, round Chichester Harbour and Selsea Bill, we find several hams, and find them again to the north in the valley of the western Rother, there are none to be found in the space between, which shows that the men who settled them found their way round by the Arun and not overland. I need hardly observe that the rivers of those days were far larger than the modern streams, and their water level higher.

It is anticipating somewhat to point out that the same examination shows us a large group of tons covering this district away from the river, where we find no hams. Evidently these suffixes do not occur at random.

And now let us pass from the extreme west to the extreme east of the county. Here, instead of a group of tons with a notable absence of hams, we find a most remarkable group of hams, absolutely excluding tons. To understand the occurrence of this group on the Rother—the eastern Rother—and its tributaries, it is essential to remember the great change that has here taken place in the coast line. Unfortunately Dr. Guest, who first discussed the settlement of Sussex, entirely ignored this important change, and his followers have done the same. The late Mr. Green, for instance, in his map, follows the coast line given by Dr. Guest. Thus they wholly overlooked that great inlet of the sea, which formed in later ages the harbours of Winchelsea and Rye, and which offered a most suitable and tempting haven for the first Saxon settlers. The result of so doing was that they made the earliest invaders pass by the whole coast of Sussex before finding, at Selsea Bill, one of those marshy inlets of the sea, where they could make themselves at home. Therefore, argued Mr. Grant Allen,[13] “the original colony occupied the western half of the modern county; but the eastern portion still remained in the hands of the Welsh.” The orthodox hypothesis seems to be that the settlers then fought their way step by step eastwards, that is, towards Kent, reaching and capturing Pevensey in 491, fourteen years after their first landing.[14] As against this view, I would suggest that the distribution of Sussex place-names is in favour of vertical not lateral progress, of separate settlements up the rivers. And, in any case, I claim for the group of hams at the extreme east of the county the position of an independent settlement, to the character of which I shall return.

I must not wander too far from what is immediately my point, namely, the grouping of the hams and tons not haphazard but with cause. Even those students who discriminate suffixes, instead of lumping them together, like Kemble and his followers, make no distinction, I gather, between hams and tons. Mr. Seebohm, for instance, classes together “the Saxon ‘hams’ and ‘tuns,’”[15] and so does Professor York Powell, even though his views on the settlement are exceptionally original and advanced.[16] There are, however, various reasons which lead me to advance a different view. In the first place, the wide-spread existence, on the Continent, of ham in its foreign forms proves this suffix to be older than the settlement. ‘Ton,’ on the other hand, as is well known, is virtually absent on the Continent, which implies that it did not come into use till after the settlement in England. And as ham was thus used earlier than ton, so ton, one need hardly add, was used later than ham. The cases in Scotland, and in what is known as “little England beyond Wales,” will at once occur to the reader. Canon Taylor states of the latter that the Flemish names, such as Walterston, “belong to a class of names which we find nowhere else in the kingdom,” formed from “Walter and others common in the 12th century.”[17] But in Herefordshire, for instance, we have a Walterston; and in Dorset a Bardolfston, a Philipston, a Michaelston, and a Walterston, proving that the same practice prevailed within the borders of England. Nor need we travel outside the two counties I am specially concerned with to learn from the ‘Ælfelmston’ of Essex or the Brihtelmston of Sussex that we find ton compounded with names of the later Anglo-Saxon period. A third clue is afforded by the later version, found in the Liber de Hyda, of Alfred’s will. For there we find the ham of the original document rendered by ton. It is clear, therefore, I contend, that ton was a later form than ham. Now the map of England as a whole points to the same conclusion; for ton is by no means distinctive, like ham, of the districts earliest settled. And if we confine ourselves to a particular county, say this of Sussex, we discover, I maintain, an appreciable difference between the distribution of the hams and the tons. While the hams follow the course of the rivers, the scene of the first settlements, the tons are largely found grouped away on the uplands, as if representing a later stage in the settlement of the country. In connection with this I would adduce the “remarkable passage,” as Mr. Seebohm rightly terms it, in one of King Alfred’s treatises, where he contrasts the “permanent freehold ham” with the new and at first temporary ton, formed by ‘timbering’ a forest clearing in a part not previously settled.[18] It is true that Mr. Seebohm, as I have said, recognises no distinction, and even speaks of this example as “the growth of a new ham”; but it seems to me to confirm the view I am here advancing. It is obvious that if such a canon of research as that ham (not ton) was a mark of early settlement could be even provisionally accepted, it would greatly, and at once, advance our knowledge of the settlement of England. Although this is nothing more than a ‘pioneer’ paper, I may say that, after at least glancing at the maps of other counties, I can see nothing to oppose, but everything to confirm, the view that the settlers in the hams ascended the rivers (much as they seem, on a larger scale, to have done in Germany); and a study of the coast of England from the Tweed to the British Channel leads me to believe that, as a maritime people, their settlements began upon the coast.

I now pass to my second point—the insufficient attention which has hitherto been paid to our minor place-names. Kemble, for instance, working, as he did, on a large scale, was dependent, so far as names still existing are concerned, on the nomenclature of present parishes. And such a test, we shall find, is most fallacious. Canon Taylor, it is true, has endeavoured to supplement this deficiency,[19] but the classification of existing names, whether those of modern parishes or not, has not yet, so far as I can find, been even attempted. Hitherto I have mainly spoken of Sussex, because it is in that county that place-names can be best studied; the Essex evidence is chiefly of value for the contrast it presents. The principal contrast, and one to which I invite particular attention, is this: confining ourselves to the names I am concerned with—the ings, hams, and tons—we find that in Essex several parishes have only a single place-name between them, while in Sussex, on the contrary, a single parish may contain several of these place-names, each of them, surely, at one time representing a distinct local unit. This contrast comes out strongly in the maps I have prepared of the two counties, in which the parishes are disregarded, and each place-name separately entered. I do not pretend that the survey is exhaustive, especially in the case of Sussex, as I only attempt to show those which are found on an ordinary county map, together with those, now obsolete, which can safely be supplied from Domesday. But, so far as the contrast I am dealing with is concerned, it is at least not exaggerated.

As the actual names are not shown, I will now adduce a few examples. In Sussex, Burpham is composed of three tythings—Burpham, Wepham, Pippering; Climping comprises Atherington and Ilesham; Offham is included in South Stoke; Rackham in Amberley; Cootham in Storrington; Ashton, Wellingham, and Norlington in Ringmer; Buddington in Steyning; and Bidlington in Bramber.

In Essex, on the other hand, ‘Roothing’ does duty for eight parishes, Colne for four, Hanningfield, Laver, Bardfield, Tolleshunt, and Belchamp for three each, and several more for two. There are, of course, in Sussex also, double parishes to be found, such as North and South Mundham, but they are much scarcer.

We may learn, I think, a good deal from the contrast thus presented. In the first place, it teaches us that parochial divisions are artificial and comparatively modern. The formula that the parish is the township in its ecclesiastical capacity is (if unconsciously adopted) not historically true. Antiquaries familiar with the Norman period, or with the study of local history, must be acquainted with the ruins or the record of churches or chapels (the same building, I may observe in passing, is sometimes called both ecclesia and capella[20]), which formerly gave townships now merged in parishes a separate or quasi-separate ecclesiastical existence. In Sussex the present Angmering comprises what were once three parishes, each with a church of its own. The parish of Cudlow has long been absorbed in that of Climping. Balsham-in-Yapton was formerly a distinct hamlet and chapelry. Conversely, the chapelries of Petworth have for centuries been distinct parishes.

In Essex we have examples of another kind, examples which remind us that the combination or the subdivision of parishes are processes as familiar in comparatively modern as in far distant times. The roofless and deserted church to be seen at Little Birch testifies to the fact that, though now one, Great and Little Birch, till recently, were ecclesiastically distinct. In the adjoining parish of Stanway, the church, similarly roofless and deserted, was still in use in the last century.

Again, the civil unit as well as the ecclesiastical, the village, like the parish, may often prove misleading. It is, indeed, very doubtful whether we have ever sufficiently distinguished the manor and the village. If we construct for ourselves a county map from Domesday, we shall miss the names of several villages, although often of antiquity; but, on the other hand, shall meet with the names of important manors, often extending into several parishes, often suggesting by their forms a name as old as the migration, yet now represented at most by some obscure manor, and perhaps only by a solitary farm, or even, it may be, a field. In Sussex, for instance, the ‘Basingham’ of Domesday cannot now be identified; its ‘Belingeham’ is doubtful; its ‘Clotinga’ is now but a farm, as is ‘Estockingeham.’ ‘Sessingham’ and ‘Wiltingham’ are manors. In Essex ‘Hoosenga’ and ‘Hasingha’ occur together in Domesday, and are unidentified. Nor have I yet succeeded in identifying ‘Plesingho,’ a manor not only mentioned in Domesday, but duly found under Henry III. Morant, followed by Chisenhale-Marsh, identified it wrongly with Pleshy. Such names as these, eclipsed by those of modern villages, require to be disinterred by archæological research.

Another point on which light is thrown by the contrast of Essex and Sussex is the theory tentatively advanced by Mr. Maitland in the ‘Archæological Review,’ that the Hundred and the township may, in the beginning, have been represented by the same unit.[21] Broadly speaking, he adduced in support of this hypothesis the originally large township of Essex, proved by the existence of a group of villages bearing the same name, comparing it with the small Hundreds characteristic of Sussex. But in Sussex, I think, the small Hundreds were coincident with those many small townships; while in Essex the scattered townships are coincident with larger Hundreds. And this leads me to suggest that the Saxon settlements in Sussex lay far thicker on the ground than those found in Essex, and that we possibly find here some explanation of the admitted silence as to the East-Saxon settlement contrasting with the well-known mention of that in Sussex. It seems to me highly probable that Essex, in those remote times, was not only bordered and penetrated by marshes, but largely covered with forest. It is, perhaps, significant that in the district between Westham and Boreham, some twenty-five miles across as the crow flies, there is not a ham to be found.

From this I turn to the opposite extreme, that group of hams on the ‘Rother’ and its tributaries, thirty-seven in number. Isolated alike from ings and tons, and hemmed in by the spurs of the Andredswald, it is, perhaps, unique in character. Nowhere have I lighted on a group of hams so illustrative of the character of these settlements, or affording a test so admirable of the alleged connection between this suffix and the villa of the Roman Empire.

One of the sections of Mr. Seebohm’s work is devoted to what he terms “the connection between the Saxon ‘ham,’ the German ‘heim,’ and the Frankish ‘villa.’” This, indeed, it may fairly be said, is one of the important points in his case, and one to which he has devoted special research and attention. Now, I am not here dealing with the equation of ‘ham’ and ‘villa.’ If I were, I should urge, perhaps, that, as with the ‘Witan’ of the English and the ‘Great Council’ of the Normans, it does not follow that an equation of words involves their absolute identity of meaning. I confine myself to the suffix ‘-ham.’ “Its early geographical distribution,” Mr. Seebohm has suggested, “may have an important significance.” With this, it will be seen, I entirely agree. But, if the distribution is important, let us make sure of our facts; let us} as I urge throughout this volume, test and try our evidence before we advance to our conclusion. When Mr. Seebohm informs us that “the ‘hams’ of England were most numerous in the south-eastern counties, finding their densest centre in Essex,” the statement must startle any one who has the least acquaintance with Essex, where the termination ‘-ham’ is comparatively rare in place-names. On turning to Mr. Seebohm’s map, one is still further surprised to learn that its “local names ending in ‘ham’” attain in Domesday the enormous proportion of 39 per cent. The clue to the mystery is found in a note that “in Essex the h is often dropped, and the suffix becomes am.” For the whole calculation is based on a freak of my old friend, the Domesday scribe. The one to whom we are indebted for the text of the Essex survey displayed his misplaced scholarship in Latinizing the English names so thoroughly, that not only did Oakley, the first on the list, become ‘Accleia,’ but even in the accusative, “Accleiam tenet Robertus.” Thus we need travel no further than the first name on the index to learn how Mr. Seebohm’s error was caused. Elmstead, Bonhunt, Bentley, Coggeshall, Danbury, Dunmow, Alresford, and many other such names, have all by this simple process been converted into ‘hams.’ I hasten to add that my object in correcting this error is not to criticise so brilliant an investigator and so able a scholar as Mr. Seebohm, but to illustrate the practical impossibility of accomplishing any scientific work in this department of research until the place-names of England have been classified and traced to their origin. I am eager to see this urgent work undertaken county by county, on much the same lines as those adopted by the Government in France. It seems to me to be eminently a subject for discussion at the Annual Congress of Archæological Societies.

If it were the case that the English ham represents the Roman villa, this remarkable group on the borders of Kent and Sussex should indicate a dense Roman settlement; but of such settlement there is, I believe, no trace existing. Conversely, we do not find that the sites of Roman villas are denoted by the suffix ham.[22]

From considering this group as a whole, I advance to two settlements on what is known as the Tillingham River, namely, Billingham and Tillingham. One would not easily find names more distinctive of what Kemble insisted on terming the mark system, or what later historians describe as clan settlement. Parenthetically, I may observe that while ham is common in Sussex, the compound ingham is not. This is well seen in the group under consideration. The same may, I think, be said of Essex, while in North Suffolk ingham begins to assert its predominance. The frequent occurrence in Norfolk and Lincolnshire renders it a note of Anglian rather than Saxon settlement.[23] And now for Billingham and Tillingham. Billing is one of the most common of the so-called patronymics; and there is a Tillingham in Essex. Whether we turn to the specialist works of such writers as Stubbs and Green, or to the latest compendia of English history as a whole, we shall virtually always read that such names as these denote original settlement by a clan.[24]

In venturing to question this proposition, I am striking at the root of Kemble’s theory, that overspreading theory of the Mark, which, as it were, has shrunk from its once stately splendour, but in the shadow of which all our historians since his time have written. Even Professor York Powell, although he rejects the mark theory,[25] writes of “the first stage” of settlement: “We know that the land was settled when clans were powerful, for the new villages bear clan names, not personal names.”[26] The whole theory rests on the patronymic ing, which Kemble crudely treated as proving the existence of a mark community, wherever it occurs in place-names.[27]

Now the theory that ing implies a clan, that is, a community united by blood or by the belief in a common descent,[28] may be tested in two distinct ways. We may either trace its actual use as applied to individuals or communities; or we may examine the localities in the names of which it occurs. I propose to do both. The passage usually adduced to prove the ‘clan’ meaning is the well-known genealogy in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: “Cerdic was Elesing, Elesa was Esling, Esla was Gewising,”[29] etc. Even Mr. Seebohm reluctantly admits, on this “evidence of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,” that ing was used as alleged. But it always seemed obvious to me that this passage, so far from proving the ‘clan’ meaning, actually proved the opposite, namely, that the patronymic changed with every generation. Again, if we turn from the Chronicle to the Anglo-Saxon charters, we find inga normally used to denote the dwellers at a certain place, not the descendants of a certain man. It is singular that Kemble, although he was the first to make an exhaustive study of these charters, classed such names with the other ings, from which they were quite distinct.[30] His enthusiasm for the ‘mark’ carried him away. In Sussex, we have, as it seems to me, a very excellent illustration; the name of Angmering, the present form, occupies, as it were, a medial position between the “Angemare” of Domesday and the “Angmeringatun” of Alfred’s will. Here, surely, the Angmeringas were those who dwelt at Angmer, not a ‘clan’ descended from a man bearing that name.

I will not, however, dwell on this side of the argument, more especially as I would rather lay stress on the other line of attack. For this is my distinctive point: I contend that, in studying the place-names into which ing enters, attention has hitherto exclusively, or almost exclusively, been devoted to those now represented by towns or villages. With these it is easy to associate the idea of a clan settlement. But what are we to make of such cases as our Sussex Billingham and Tillingham? We shall search for them in vain in Lewis’ Topographical Dictionary; and yet they are names of the same status as fully developed villages. As a Sussex antiquary has observed (though I cannot accept his explanation): “In the names of many farms we shall likewise find names which also mark whole parishes in the county.” Canon Taylor has unconsciously recorded, in the adjoining county of Kent, evidence to the same effect, observing that “the lone farmhouses in Kent, called Shottington, Wingleton, Godington, and Appleton, may be regarded as venerable monuments, showing us the nature of the Saxon colonization of England.”[31] I say that this evidence is unconscious, for the Canon applies it only to the evolution of the ton, and seems not to have observed its bearing on that compound ing, which he, like Kemble, fully accepts as proof of a clan community. From Shottington and Godington, as from Billingham and Tillingham, Kemble would have confidently deduced the settlement of a ‘mark’ or clan community; and yet, when we learn what the places are, we see that they represent a settlement by households, not by communities.

Here, then, is the value of these cases of what we may term arrested development: they warn us against the rashness of assuming that a modern or even a mediæval village has been a village from the first. The village community may be so far from representing the original settlement as to have been, on the contrary, developed from what was at first but a farmstead. The whole argument of such scholars as Professor Earle here and Dr. Andrews in America is based on the assumption that the land was settled by communities, each of them sufficiently large to have a head, whether civil or military. To that supposition such names as I have mentioned are, I think, fatal.

Yet another point must be touched on as to this alleged patronymic. To Kemble, as I have said, it was of small moment what suffix his ‘marks’ bore. Indeed, those that denoted forest were to him specially welcome, because he associated the idea of a ‘mark’ with that of a forest clearing. But we who have seen that such suffixes as -field, -hurst and -den are distinctive of those districts untouched by the early settlers cannot recognise such names, for instance, as the Itchingfield or Billingshurst of Sussex as denoting village communities. Again, in the Anglo-Saxon charters the characteristic den of Kent is frequently preceded by ing; and if these dens were clearly from the context only forest pastures for swine, we must here also reject the ing as proof of a clan community. One may also glance in passing at such names as the “Willingehala” of Essex, now “Willingale,” and ask whether a clan community is supposed to have settled in a hall?[32]

I trust that I have now sufficiently shown that even where ing genuinely enters into the composition of a place-name it is no proof of settlement by a clan. Kemble looked on the typical ‘mark’ as “a hundred heads of houses,” which he deemed “not at all an extravagant supposition.”[33] I think that even at the present day a visit to the hams and tons of Sussex, and, in some cases, to the ings, would lead us in practice to the opposite conclusion, and would throw the gravest doubt on the theory of the village community. I was trained, like others of my generation, to accept that theory as an axiomatic truth; but difficult as it is to abandon what one has been so taught, the solitary manor house, the lonely farm, is a living protest against it. The village community of the class-room can never have existed there. On paper it holds its own: solvitur ambulando.

But the fact that a place bearing a typical clan name may prove to have been but a single homestead takes us farther than this. Ing, which Canon Taylor has described as “the most important element which enters into Anglo-Saxon names,” has been held to denote settlement not merely by a clan, but by a portion of a tribe bearing, both in England and abroad, one common name. Kemble insisted strongly upon this,[34] and is duly followed by Canon Taylor[35] and others. On the same foundation Mr. Andrew Lang has erected yet another edifice, tracing the occurrence in scattered counties of the same clan name to the existence of exogamy among our forefathers. And this ingenious suggestion has been adopted by Mr. Grant Allen.[36] But the very first instance he gives, that of the Hemings, will not stand examination.[37]

As yet I have been dealing with those ‘clan names’ in which the presence of the ing is genuine; and I have been urging that it is not proof, as alleged, of settlement by a clan. I now pass to those place-names in which the ing is not genuine, but is merely a corruption. That such names exist has always, of course, been admitted,[38] but their prevalence has not been sufficiently recognised. And not only are there large deductions, in consequence, to be made from the so-called clan names, but even in cases where the ing is genuine the prefix is often so corrupt that the name of the clan deduced from it is altogether wrong.

Let us take some instances in point. Kemble deduced the existence of the Brightlings (‘Brightlingas’) from Brightling in Sussex and Brightlingsea in Essex. Nothing, at first sight, could seem clearer. And yet, on turning to Domesday, we find that the Sussex Brightling is there entered as Brislinga—suggesting that Somerset Brislington from which Kemble deduced the Brislings—while Brightlingsea appears in the Essex Domesday as ‘Brictriceseia,’ and in that of Suffolk as ‘Brictesceseia,’ from which forms is clearly derived the local pronunciation ‘Bricklesea.’ So much for the Brightlings. Yet more striking is the case of an Essex village, Wormingford. Kemble, of course, detects in it the name ‘Wyrmingas.’ Yet its Domesday name is Widemondefort,’ obviously derived from ‘Widemond,’ the name of an individual.[39] Here the corruption is so startling that it is well to record the transition form ‘Wiremundeford,’ which I find in the 13th century.[40] Now, as I have often to point out in the course of my historical researches, however unpopular it may be to correct the errors of others, those errors, if uncorrected, lead too often to fresh ones. Thus, in this case, the ‘Wyrmingas,’ wrongly deduced from Wormingford, have been claimed by scholars as sons of the ‘worm,’ and, therefore, as evidence that ‘Totemism’ prevailed among the Anglo-Saxons. It would take me, I fear, too far afield to discuss the alleged traces of Totemism; but when we find Mr. Grant Allen asserting that “the oak has left traces of his descendants at Oakington in Cambridge” (shire), one has to point out that this place figures in Domesday as ‘Hochinton(e)’[41] in no fewer than five entries, although Kemble derives from it more suo the ‘Æcingas.’ But a few more instances of erroneous derivation must be given in order to establish clearly the worthlessness of Kemble’s lists. How simple it seems to derive, with him, the ‘Storringas’ and ‘Teorringas’ from Storrington, Sussex, and Tarrington, Herefordshire, respectively. Yet the former, in Domesday, is ‘Storgetune’ or ‘Storchestune,’ while the latter is ‘Tatintune’ in both its entries. It might be suggested that the error is that of the Domesday scribe, but in this case I have found the place entered in several documents of the next century as Tadinton or Tatinton, thus establishing the accuracy of Domesday. Indeed, in my experience, the charters of the 12th century prove that Domesday nomenclature is thoroughly deserving of trust. The climax of Kemble’s derivations is reached perhaps in Shillingstone, from which Dorset village he duly deduces the ‘Scyllingas.’ For, as Eyton has shown, its name was ‘Acford,’ but, from its Domesday tenant, Schelin, it became known as Ockford Eskelling, Shilling Ockford, and finally, by a yet bolder corruption, Shillingstone.[42] As if to make matters worse, Kemble treats ‘Shilling-Okeford’ and ‘Shillingstone’ as two distinct places. Could anything, one asks, be more unfortunate than this? Alas, one must answer Yes. The great clan of the ‘Cypingas’ is found in eight counties: at least so Kemble says. I have tested his list and discovered that the names which prove the existence of his clan are Chipping Ongar, Chipping Barnet, Chipping Sodbury, Chipping Campden, Chipping Wycombe, Chipping Warden, and Chipping Norton. Even the historical tyro would avoid this wild blunder; he would know that Chipping was about as much of a clan name as is Cheapside. After this final example, it can hardly be disputed that Kemble’s lists are merely a pitfall for the unwary.

Yet we still follow in his footsteps. Take such a case as that of Faringdon, which Mr. Grant Allen, we have seen, selected as a typical instance of the ing patronymic in place-names.[43] If we turn to Domesday, we find in Berks a ‘Ferendone,’ in Northants a ‘Ferendone’ or ‘Faredone,’ in Notts a ‘Ferendone’ or ‘Farendune,’ in Hants a ‘Ferendone.’ These names were all the same; and yet they have become ‘Farndon’ in Notts and Northants, ‘Faringdon’ in Berks, and ‘Farringdon’ in Hants. Farringdon, therefore, is no more a clan name than is the Essex Parndon, the ‘Perenduna’ of Domesday. But, indeed, in Essex itself, there is an even better illustration. We learn from Canon Taylor that “the Thurings, a Visigothic clan, mentioned by Marcellinus ... are found ... at Thorrington in Essex.” Kemble had previously described them as “likely to be offshoots of the great Hermunduric race, the Thyringi or Thoringi, now Thuringians, always neighbours of the Saxons,[44] and claims the Essex Thorrington” as their settlement.[45] Now Thorington in the first place was not a ton, and in the second place had not an ing. Both these forms are corruptions. In Domesday it occurs twice, and both times as ‘Torinduna.’ With this we may compare ‘Horninduna,’ which is the Domesday form of Horndon, and occurs frequently. Therefore Thorington and Thorndon, like Farringdon and Farndon, were both originally the same name and destitute alike of ing.

As to the names ending in ing, with no other suffix, I prefer, for the present, to reserve my opinion. Kemble’s hypothesis, however, that they were the parent settlements, and the hams and tons their filial developments, seems to me to have little support in the facts of their actual distribution. If in that distribution there is a feature to be detected, it is, perhaps, that the ings are found along the foot of the downs. This, at least, is often observable. Another point deserving of attention is that, in its French form, igny, this suffix seems as distinctive of the ‘Saxon’ settlement about Bayeux as it is absent in that which is found in the Boulogne district. But these are only, as it were, sidelights upon the problem; and this, as I said, is nothing more than a ‘pioneer’ paper.

I close with a point that appears to me of no small importance. To the east of Sussex and the south of Sussex there lay that so-called Jutish land, the county of Kent. As I pointed out years ago, in my ‘Domesday Studies,’ the land system of Kent is found in the Great Survey to be essentially distinct from that which prevailed in other counties. It was not assessed in ‘hides,’ but in ‘solins,’ that is, the sulungs of the natives, the land of a suhl or plough. The yokes, or subdivisions, of this unit are also directly connected with the plough. But the hide and virgate of other counties are, as I pointed out, not connected in name with the plough.[46] Now if we work through the land charters printed by Professor Earle, we find that this Domesday distinction can be traced back, clear and sharp, to the earliest times within their ken. We read in an Anglo-Saxon charter of “xx swuluncga,” while in Latin charters the normal phrase is the land of so many ploughs (‘terra trium aratrorum,’ ‘terra decem aratrorum,’ etc.); we even meet with the phrase, “decem aratrorum juxta æstimationem provinciæ ejusdem.”[47] In another charter “v aratra” equates “fifsulung landes.” But in other counties the normal terms, in these charters, for the land units are “manentes” and “cassati,”[48] which occur with similar regularity. A cleavage so ancient and so clear as this, in the vital sphere of land division, points to more than a separate rule and confirms the tradition of a distinct origin.