occurs in the chartulary of the ancient abbey of SaintPierre at Chartres. A free man, by marrying a female serf of the monks, became himself a serf. On the death of his wife he espoused a free woman, who in consequence became a Thrall, along with all her issue. This was probably a rare case, for in consideration of its hardship the monks restored the parties to liberty, by a charter in the following terms: "I, William, Abbot of Saint Peter's, hereby give all men to wit that, with the consent of all my chapter, I have restored to his former freedom the bearer hereof Durand, with all his children, inasmuch as he, being at first a free man, did by his marriage with Duda our serf become our Thrall; which Duda our serf having died without children, the said Durand gave up the portion of her goods which belonged to him, trusting that he so regained his former free condition, and in this belief took another wife; which being made known to us we reclaimed him as our bondman, but he entreated of us, as well by himself as by Robert our monk, whose sister he had married, that he and his children might be released from all burden of servitude; and he restored to us

dae causa, ipsa colli et pectoris superiora operiebat. In labiis aliquam venustatem, in facetiis, in saltando, et fidibus ludendo peritiam habebat. Quod ad mentis imaginem attinebat, plena fuit superbiae, ambitionis, invidiae, luxuriae." p. 91.

that portion of the goods of his first wife which he had unjustly detained from us.' "This deed is dated in 1108. Another preserved in the same record, and belonging to the same age, is scarcely less interesting: "I, Gauslin de Leugis and my brothers Geoffrey, canon of Saint Mary's, and Milo give to Saint Peter and his church . . . Godescald de Campofauni our serf, and his wife Milesinde, and all their family of sons and daughters, procreated or to be procreated And we have offered up the said Godescald and his wife, with their sons and daughters, holding them by our own hands, at the altar of Saint Peter, transferring them from us to the said church, so that the abbot and convent of Saint Peter's may possess them for ever . . . But, in consideration of this gift, the said monks of Saint Peter have given to me, Gauslin, twenty silver merks for my journey to Jerusalem, and to my brother Milo twenty shillings; and Godescald and his wife have instantly deposited these sums, as the price of their heads, on the altar of Saint Peter."

1 Mém. de la Soc. Roy. des Antiq. de France, t. ix. pp. 172, 173.

2 Id. pp. 170, 171. The legal antiquary will not need to be reminded that in the middle ages it was customary to deposit on the altar the deed or symbol by which an estate was conveyed. In the year 1308, when Duncan earl of Fife, granted to the see of Aberdeen the right of a patron

Ꮓ

Perhaps it would be difficult to imagine a more impious offering.

age, he placed the charter on the high altar of the cathedral. (Dalyell's Chartularies of Aberdeen, p. 49. Edinb. 1820.) In the reign of Dagobert, "St Birlanda refused to consort with her leprous father. Oidelardus revenged himself by disinheriting the undutiful child, and transferred all his domains, with all the villains thereupon, to Saint Gertrude, by placing all the symbols of property upon her shrine,—a turf, a twig, and a knife,-indicating that all his estate was alienated to the monastery." (Sir F. Palgrave's Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, part. ii. p. ccxxvii.) Mr Ellis, in his "Observations on some Ancient Methods of Conveyance in England," has collected a multitude of other instances. In 1077, William the Conqueror bestowed the forest of Ele on the bishop and canons of Bayeux; and, as a token of delivery of seisin, he placed and left upon the altar the helmet which he then wore surmounted by a crown of gold. The same king gave the lordship of Broke to the priory of St Edmundsbury, by placing upon the altar a small knife wrapped up. In 1140, Ralph de Clinton gave to the cathedral of Peterborough six acres of land by laying his knife on the altar. Hiwen de Albeneio and Geoffrey de Chavenny gave the church of Plungard to the priory of Belvoir, by offering up a staff or baton on the altar of the Blessed Virgin. In three instances, in the years 1095, 1139, and 1284, lands were conveyed to monasteries, by placing a copy of the Holy Evangel on the altar. Two instances occur of the surrender and seisin of land by the branch of a tree: in one case it was deposited on the altar. But perhaps the most extraordinary mode of investiture was that by which William earl of Warren gave and confirmed to the church of St Pancras at Lewes, in the 24th year of King Henry III.,

LXXVI.

THE MAN OF THREE NAMES.

PERHAPS few instances of hereditary surnames occur in England before the Conquest; "but," says Camden, "shortly after, as the Romans of better sort had three names, according to that of Juvenal, Tanquam habeas tria nomina, and that of Ausonius, Tria nomina nobiliorum; so it seemed a disgrace for a gentleman to have but one single name, as the meaner sort and bastards had. For the daughter and heire of Fitz-Hamon, a great lord (as Robert of Gloucester in the librarie of the industrious antiquary, Maister John Stow, writeth), when King Henry the First would have married her to his base sonne Robert, she, first refusing, answered,

It were to me a great shame,

To have a lord withouten his twa name :

Whereupon the king, his father, gave him the name of Fitz-Roy, who after was Earle of Gloucester, and the onely worthy of his age in England."1

For some ages, two names seem to have been thought quite enough; and it was not until the be

certain land, rent, and tithe, of which he gave seisin per capillos capitis sui et fratris sui Radulfi, by the hair of his own head, and of his brother Ralph's. The hair of the parties was cut off by the Bishop of Winchester before the high altar. (Archaeologia, vol. xvii. pp. 90, 312-318.)

1 Remaines concerning Britaine, p. 96.

66

ginning of the seventeenth century that three were known. "Two Christian names," says the writer who has just been quoted, are rare in England, and I onely remember now his majesty, who was named Charles James, as the prince his sonne Henry Frederic; and among private men Thomas Maria Wingfield, and Sir Thomas Posthumus Hobby."1

The fashion, though now nearly universal, must have become so only within the last half century, if there were any grounds for the curious theory of the Irish peer mentioned by Mr Moore, who held that every man with three names was a Jacobin ; naming in Ireland Archibald Hamilton Rowan, Theobald Wolfe Tone, James Napper Tandy, and John Philpot Curran; and in England adducing as examples Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, John Horne Tooke, and Francis Burdett Jones.2

Whatever truth there may be in this hypothesis, it is opposed to antiquity, which set down the man of three names as an aspirant to patrician rank. Among the Romans, says Erasmus, one who wished to pass himself off as a gentleman of long descent, was ironically called a man of three letters,-homo trium literarum, from the patrician usage of marking in epistles the forename, name, and surname, by

1 Remaines concerning Britaine, p. 44.

The Fudge Family in Paris, letter iv. note.