Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature

Biblical localities were much resorted to:

“1616, Nov. 26. Baptized Bethsaida, d. of Humphrey Trenouth.” – St. Columb Major.

“1700, June 6. Buried Canaan, wife of John Hatton, 55 years.” – Forthampton, Gloucestershire.

“1706, April 27. Married Eden Hardy to Esther Pantall.” – St. Dionis Backchurch.

“1695, Dec. 15. Baptized Richard, son of Richard and Nazareth Rudde.” – St. James, Piccadilly.

Nazareth Godden’s will was administrated upon in 1662. Battalion Shotbolt was defendant in a suit in the eleventh year of Queen Anne (Decree Rolls, Record Office). The following is odd:

“1683, Oct. 11. Buried Mr. Inward Ansloe.” – Cant. Cath.

V. A Scoffing World

While these strange pranks were being played, the world was not asleep. Calamy seems to have discovered a source of melancholy satisfaction in the fact that the quaint names of his brethren were subjected to the raillery of a wicked world. One of the ejected ministers was Sabbath Clark, minister of Tarvin, Cheshire. Of him he writes:

“He had been constant minister of the parish for nigh upon sixty years. He carried Puritanism in his very name, by which his good father intended he should bear the memorial of God’s Holy Day. This was a course that some in those times affected, baptizing their children Reformation, Discipline, etc., as the affections of their parents stood engaged. For this they have sufficiently suffered from Profane Wits, and this worthy person did so in particular. Yet his name was not a greater offence to such persons than his holy life.”

Probably Calamy was referring to the “profane wit” Dr. Cosin, Bishop of Chester, who, in a visitation held at Warrington about the year 1643, is said to have acted as follows: —

“A minister, called Sabbaith Clerke, the Doctor re-baptized, took’s marke, and call’d him Saturday.”

That this was a deliberate insult, and not a pleasantry, Calamy, of course, would stoutly maintain. Hence the above sample of holy ire.

Many of the names in the list I have recorded must have met with the good-humoured raillery of the every-day folk the strangely stigmatized bearer might meet. I suppose in good time, however, the owner, and the people he was accustomed to mix with, got used to it. It is true they must have resorted, not unfrequently, to curter forms, much after the fashion of the now almost forgotten nick forms of the Plantagenet days. Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith is a very large mouthful, if you come to try it, and I dare say Mr. White or Brown, whoever he might be, did not so strongly urge as he ought to have done the gross impropriety of his friends recognizing him by the simple style of “Faith” or “Fight.” Fancy at a dinner, in a day that had not invented the convenient practice of calling a man by his surname, having to address a friend across the table, “Please, Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith, pass the pepper!” The thing was impossible. Even Help-on-high was found cumbersome, and, as we have seen, the Rector of Lydney curtailed it.

A curious instance of waggery anent this matter of length will be found in the register of St. Helen, Bishopgate. The entry is dated 1611, just the time when the dramatists were making fun of this Puritanic innovation, and when the custom was most popular:

“Sept. 1, 1611. Job-rakt-out-of-the-asshes, being borne the last of August in the lane going to Sir John Spencer’s back-gate, and there laide in a heape of seacole asshes, was baptized the ffirst day of September following, and dyed the next day after.”

This is confirmed by the burial records:

“Sept. 2, 1611. Job-rakt-out-of-the-asshes, as is mentioned in the register of christenings.”

The reference, of course, is to Job ii. 8:

“And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal; and he sat down among the ashes.”

This was somewhat grim fun, though. Probably Job-rakt-out-of-the-asshes, during his brief life, would be styled by the curter title of “Ashes.” It is somewhat curious to notice that Camden, writing three years later, says Ashes existed. Perhaps this was the instance.

A similar instance of waggery is found in the parish church of Old Swinford, where the following entry occurs: —

“1676, Jan. 18. Baptized Dancell-Dallphebo-Marke-Antony-Dallery-Gallery-Cesar, sonn of Dancell-Dallphebo-Marke-Antony-Dallery-Gallery-Cesar Williams.”

Allowing the father to be thirty years of age, the paternal christening would take place in 1646, which would be a likely time in the political history of England for a mimical hit at Puritan eccentricity.

(a.) The Playwrights

There is a capital scene in “The Ordinary” (1634), where Andrew Credulous, after trolling out a verse of nonsensical rhyme against the Puritan names, says to his friends Hearsay and Slicer, in allusion to these new long and uncouth names:

“Andrew the Great Turk?I would I were a peppercorn, if thatIt sounds not well. Doe’st not?Slicer. Yes, very well.Credulous. I’ll make it else great Andrew Mahomet,Imperious Andrew Mahomet Credulous.Tell me which name sounds best.Hearsay. That’s as you speak ’em.Credulous. Oatmealman Andrew! Andrew Oatmealman!Hearsay. Ottoman, sir, you mean.Credulous. Yes, Ottoman.”

“Oatmealman Andrew! Andrew Oatmealman!” seems to have suggested to Thomson that unfortunate line:

“O Sophonisba, Sophonisba O,”

so unkindly parodied into —

“O Jemmy Thomson, Jemmy Thomson O.”

From this quotation it will be seen that it is not to the church register alone we must turn, to discover the manner in which these new names were being received by the public. Calamy might wax wroth over the “profane wits” of the day, but one of the severest blows administered to the men he has undertaken to defend, came from his own side; for Thomas Adams, Rector of St. Benet, Paul’s Wharf, must unquestionably be placed, even by Calamy’s own testimony, among the Puritan clergy of his day. His name does not appear in the list of silenced clergy, and his works are dedicated to pronounced friends of the Noncomformist cause. In his “Meditations upon the Creed” (vol. iii. p. 213, edit. 1872), first published in 1629, he says —

“Some call their sons Emanuel: this is too bold. The name is proper to Christ, therefore not to be communicated to any creature. It is no less than presumption to give a subject’s son the style of his prince. Yea, it seems to me not fit for Christian humility to call a man Gabriel or Michael, giving the names of angels to the sons of mortality.

“On the other side, it is a petulant absurdity to give them ridiculous names, the very rehearsing whereof causeth laughter. There be certain affectate names which mistaken zeal chooseth for honour, but the event discovers a proud singularity. It was the speech of a famous prophet, Non sum melior patribus meis– ‘I am no better than my fathers;’ but such a man will be sapientior patribus suis– ‘Wiser than his fathers.’ As if they would tie the goodness of the person to the signification of the name. But still a man is what he is, not what he is called; he were the same, with or without that title or that name. And we have known Williams and Richards, names not found in sacred story, but familiar to our country, prove as gracious saints as any Safe-deliverance, Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith, or such like, which have been rather descriptions than names.”

I have quoted portions of this before. I have now given it in full, for it is trenchant, and full of common sense. Coming from the quarter it did, we cannot doubt it had its effect in throwing the practice into disfavour among the better orders. But there had been a continued battery going on from a foe by whose side Adams would have rather faced death than fight. Years before he wrote his own sentiments, the Puritan nomenclature had been roughly handled on the stage, and by such ruthless pens as Ben Jonson, Cowley, and Beaumont and Fletcher. A year before little Job-rakt-out-of-the-asshes was laid to rest, the sharp and unsparing sarcasm of “The Alchemist” and “Bartholomew Fair” had been levelled at these doings. The first of these two dramas Ben Jonson saw acted in 1610. By that time the custom was a generation old, and men who bore the godly but uncouth sobriquets were walking the streets, keeping shops, driving bargains, known, if not avoided, of all men. In 1610 Increase Brown, your apprentice, might be demanding an advance upon his wages, Help-on-high Jones might be imploring your patronage, while Search-the-Scriptures Robinson might be diligently studying his ledger to see how he could swell his total against you for tobacco and groceries. In 1610 society would be really awake to the fact that such things existed, and proceed to discuss this serio-comic matter in a comico-serious manner. The time was exactly ripe for the playwright, and it was the fate of the Presbyterians that the playwright was “rare Ben.”

In “The Alchemist” appears Ananias, a deacon, who is thus questioned by Subtle:

“What are you, sir?Ananias. Please you, a servant of the exiled brethren,That deal with widows’ and with orphans’ goods,And make a just account unto the saints:A deacon.Subtle. O, you are sent from Master Wholesome,Your teacher?Ananias. From Tribulation Wholesome,Our very zealous pastor.”

After accusing Ananias of being related to the “varlet that cozened the Apostles,” Subtle meets Tribulation himself, the Amsterdam pastor, whom he treats with scant courtesy:

“Nor shall you need to libel ’gainst the prelates,And shorten so your ears against the hearingOf the next wire-drawn grace. Nor of necessityRail against plays, to please the aldermanWhose daily custard you devour; nor lieWith zealous rage till you are hoarse. Not oneOf these so singular arts. Nor call yourselvesBy name of Tribulation, Persecution,Restraint, Long-patience, and such like, affectedBy the whole family or wood of you,Only for glory, and to catch the earOf your disciple.”

To which hard thrust Tribulation meekly makes response:

“Truly, sir, they areWays that the godly brethren have inventedFor propagation of the glorious cause.”

Every word of this harangue of Subtle’s would tell upon a sympathetic audience. So popular was the play itself, that a common street song was made out of it, the first verse of which we find Credulous singing in “The Ordinary:”

“My name’s not Tribulation,Nor holy Ananias;I was baptized in fashion,Our vicar did hold bias.”57Act iv. sc. 1.

This comedy appeared twenty years after “The Alchemist,” and yet the song was still popular. Many a lad with a Puritan name must have had these rhymes flung into his teeth. Tribulation, by the way, is one of the names given in Camden’s list, written four years later than Ben Jonson’s play. This name, which has been the object of an antiquary’s, a playwright’s, a ballad-monger’s and an historian’s ridicule (for Macaulay had his fling at it), curiously enough I have not found in the registers. But its equivalent, Lamentation, occurs, as we have seen, in the “Chancery Suits” (1590-1600), in the case of Lamentation Chapman. Restraint is met by Abstinence Pougher, and Persecution by Trial Travis (C. S. P. 1619, June 7).

Still more severe, again, is this same dramatist in “Bartholomew Fair,” which was performed in London, October, 1614, by the retinue of Lady Elizabeth, James’s daughter. Pouring ridicule upon the butt of the day, whose name of “Puritan” was by-and-by to be anagrammatized into “a turnip,” from the cropped roundness of his head, this drama became the play-goers’ favourite. It was suppressed during the Commonwealth, and one of the first to be revived at the Restoration.58 The king is said to have given special orders for its performance. Whether his grandfather liked it as much may be doubted, for it once or twice touches on doctrinal points, and James thought he had a special gift for theology.

Zeal-of-the-land Busy is a Banbury man, which town was then even more celebrated for Puritans than cakes. Caster, in “The Ordinary,” says —

“I’ll send some forty thousand unto Paul’s:Build a cathedral next in Banbury:Give organs to each parish in the kingdom.”

Zeal-of-the-land is thus inquired of by Winwife:

“What call you the reverend elder you told me of, your Banbury man?

Littlewit. Rabbi Busy, sir: he is more than an elder, he is a prophet, sir.

Quarlous. O, I know him! a baker, is he not?

Littlewit. He was a baker, sir, but he does dream now, and see visions: he has given over his trade.

Quarlous. I remember that, too: out of a scruple that he took, in spiced conscience, those cakes he made were served to bridales, maypoles, morrices, and such profane feasts and meetings. His christian name is Zeal-of-the-land?

Littlewit. Yes, sir; Zeal-of-the-land Busy.

Winwife. How! what a name’s there!

Littlewit. O, they all have such names, sir: he was witness for Win here – they will not be called godfathers – and named her Win-the-fight: you thought her name had been Winnifred, did you not?

Winwife. I did indeed.

Littlewit. He would have thought himself a stark reprobate if it had.”

All this would be caviare to the Cavalier, and it is doubtful whether he did not enjoy it more than his grandparents, who could but laugh at it as a hit religious, rather than political. The allusion to witnesses reminds us of Corporal Oath, who in “The Puritan,” published in 1607 (Act ii. sc. 3), rails at the zealots for the mild character of their ejaculations. The expression “Oh!” was the most terrible expletive they permitted themselves to indulge in, and some even shook their heads at a brother who had thus far committed himself:

“Why! has the devil possessed you, that you swear no better,You half-christened c – s, you un-godmothered varlets?”

The terms godfather and godmother were rejected by the disaffected clergy, and they would have the answer made in the name of the sponsors, not the child. Hence they styled them witnesses.

In “Women Pleased,” a tragi-comedy, written, as is generally concluded, by Fletcher alone about the year 1616, we find the customary foe of maypoles addressing the hobby:

“I renounce it,And put the beast off thus, the beast polluted.And now no more shall Hope-on-high BombyFollow the painted pipes of worldly pleasures,And with the wicked dance the Devil’s measures:Away, thou pampered jade of vanity!”

Here, again, is no exaggeration of name, for we have Help-on-high Foxe to face Hope-on-high Bomby. The Rector of Lydney would be about twenty-five when this play was written, and may have suggested himself the sobriquet. The names are all but identical.

From “Women Pleased” and Fletcher to “Cutter of Coleman Street” and Cowley is a wide jump, but we must make it to complete our quotations from the playwrights. Although brought out after the Restoration, the fun about names was not yet played out. The scene is laid in London in 1658. This comedy was sorely resented by the zealots, and led the author to defend himself in his preface. He says that he has been accused of “prophaneness:”

“There is some imitation of Scripture phrases: God forbid! There is no representation of the true face of Scripture, but only of that vizard which these hypocrites draw upon it.”

This must have been more trying to bear even than Cutter himself. Under a thin disguise, Colonel Fear-the-Lord Barebottle is none other than Praise-God Barebone, of then most recent notoriety. Cowley’s allusion to him through the medium of Jolly is not pleasant:

“Jolly. My good neighbour, I thank him, Colonel Fear-the-Lord Barebottle, a Saint and a Soap-boiler, brought it. But he’s dead, and boiling now himself, that’s the best of ’t; there’s a Cavalier’s comfort.”

Cutter turns zealot, and wears a most puritanical habit. To the colonel’s widow, Mistress Tabitha Barebottle, he says —

“Sister Barebottle, I must not be called Cutter any more: that is a name of Cavalier’s darkness; the Devil was a Cutter from the beginning: my name is now Abednego. I had a vision which whispered to me through a keyhole, ‘Go, call thyself Abednego.’”59

But Cutter – we beg his pardon, Abednego – was but a sorry convert. Having lapsed into a worldly mind again, he thus addresses Tabitha:

“Shall I, who am to ride the purple dromedary, go dressed like Revelation Fats, the basket-maker? – Give me the peruke, boy!”

I fancy the reader will agree with me that Cowley needed all the arguments he could urge in his preface to meet the charge of irreverence.

(b.) The Sussex Jury

One of the strongest indictments to be found against this phase of Puritanic eccentricity is to be found in Hume’s well-known quotation from Brome’s “Travels into England” – a quotation which has caused much angry contention. The book quoted by the historian is entitled “Travels over England, Scotland, and Wales, by James Brome, M.A., Rector of Cheriton, in Kent.” Writing soon after the Restoration, Mr. Brome says (p. 279) —

“Before I leave this county (Sussex), I shall subjoin a copy of a Jury returned here in the late rebellious troublesome times, given me by the same worthy hand which the Huntingdon Jury was: and by the christian names then in fashion we may still discover the superstitious vanity of the Puritanical Precisians of that age.”

A second list in the British Museum Mr. Lower considers to be of a somewhat earlier date. We will set them side by side:

I dare say ninety-five per cent. of readers of Hume’s “History of England” have thought this list of Sussex jurors a silly and extravagant hoax. They are “either a forgery or a joke,” says an indignant writer in Notes and Queries. Hume himself speaks of them as names adopted by converts, evidently unaware that these sobriquets were all but invariably affixed at the font. The truth of the matter is this. The names are real enough; the panel is not necessarily so. They are a collection of names existing in several Sussex villages at one and the same time. Everything vouches for their authenticity. The list was printed by Brome while the majority must be supposed still to be living; the villages in which they resided are given, the very villages whose registers we now turn to for Puritanic examples, with the certainty of unearthing them; above all, some of the names can be “run down” even now. Accepted or Approved Frewen, of Northiam, we have already referred to. Free-gift Mabbs, of Chiddingly, is met by the following entry from Chiddingly Church:

“1616, – . Buried Mary, wife of Free-gift Mabbs.”

The will of Redeemed Compton, of Battle, was proved in London in 1641. Restore Weeks, of Cuckfield, is, no doubt, the individual who got married not far away, in Chiddingly Church:

“1618, – . Restore Weeks espoused Constant Semer.”

“Increase Weeks, of Cuckfield,” may therefore be accepted as proven, especially as I have shown Increase to be a favourite Puritan name. These two would be brothers, or perchance father and son. As for the other names, the majority have already figured in this chapter. Fly-fornication is still found in Waldron register, though the surname is a different one. Return, Faint-not, Much-mercy, Be-thankful, Repentance, Safe-on-high, Renewed, and More-fruit, all have had their duplicates in the pages preceding. “Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith White, of Emer,” is the only unlikely sobriquet left to be dealt with. Thomas Adams, in his “Meditations upon the Creed,” in a passage already quoted, testified to its existence in 1629. The conclusion is irresistible: the names are authentic, and the panel may have been.

(c.) Royalists with Puritan Names

It may be asked whether or not the world went beyond scoffing. Was the stigma of a Puritan name a hindrance to the worldly advancement of the bearer? It is pleasant, in contradiction of any such theory, to quote the following: —

“1663, Aug. Petition of Arise Evans to the King for an order that he may receive £20 in completion of the £70 given him by the King.” – C. S. P.

In a second appeal made March, 1664 (C. S. P.), Arise reminds Charles of many “noble acts” done for him as a personal attendant during his exile.

“1660, June. Petition of Handmaid, wife of Aaron Johnson, cabinet-maker, for the place for her husband of Warden in the Tower, he being eminently loyal.

“1660, June. Petition of Increased Collins, His Majesty’s servant, for restoration to the keepership of Mote’s Bulwark, near Dover, appointed January, 1629, and dismissed in 1642, as not trustworthy, imprisoned and sequestered, and in 1645 tried for his life.

“1660, Oct. Petition of Noah Bridges, and his son Japhet Bridges, for office of clerk to the House of Commons.” – C. S. P.

Thus it will be seen that, in the general rush for places of preferment at the Restoration, there were men and women bearing names of the most marked Puritanism, who did not hesitate to forward their appeals with the Williams and Richards of the world at large. They manifestly did not suppose their sobriquets would be any bar to preferment. One of them, too, had been body-man to Charles in his exile, and another had suffered in person and estate as a devoted adherent of royalty. We may hope and trust, therefore, that all this scoffing was of a good-humoured character.

It was, doubtless, the prejudice against Puritan eccentricity that introduced civil titles as font names into England – a class specially condemned by Cartwright and his friends. At any rate, they are contemporary with the excesses of fanatic nomenclature, and are found just in the districts where the latter predominated. Squire must have arisen before Elizabeth died:

“1626, March 21. Petition of Squire Bence.” – C. S. P.

“1662, Oct. 30. Baptized Jane, d. of Squire Brockhall.” – Hornby, York.

“1722, July 28. Baptized Squire, son of John Pysing and Bennet, his wife.” – Cant. Cath.

Duke was the christian name of Captain Wyvill, a fervent loyalist, and grandson of Sir Marmaduke Wyvill, Bart., of Constable Burton, Yorkshire:

“1681, Feb. 12. Baptized Duke, son of Robert Fance, Knt.” – Cant. Cath.

Squire passed over the Atlantic, and is frequently to be seen in the States; so that if men may not squire themselves at the end of their names in the great republic, they may at the beginning.

Yorkshire and Lancashire are the great centres for this class of names on English soil. Squire is found on every page of the West Riding Directory, such entries as Squire Jagger, Squire Whitley, Squire Hind, Squire Hardy, or Squire Chapman being of the commonest occurrence. Duke is also a favourite, Duke Redmayne and Duke Oldroyd meeting my eye after turning but half a dozen pages. But the great rival of Squire is Major. There is a kind of martial, if not braggadocio, air about the very sound, which has taken the ear of the Yorkshire folk. Close together I light upon Major Pullen, farmer; Major Wold, farmer; Major Smith, sexton; Major Marshall, ironmonger. Other illustrations are Prince Jewitt, Earl Moore, Marshall Stewart, and Admiral Fletcher. This custom has led to awkwardnesses. There was living at Burley, near Leeds, a short time ago, a “Sir Robert Peel.” In the same way “Earl Grey” is found. Sir Isaac Newton was living not long ago in the parish of Soho, London. Robinson Cruso still survives, hale and hearty, at King’s Lynn, and Dean Swift is far from dead, as the West Riding Directory proves.

It was an odd idea that suggested “Shorter.” I have five instances of it, two from the Westminster Abbey registers:

“1689, March 3. Buried Shorter Norris.”

“1690, July 9. Baptized Shorter, son of Robert and Ann Tanner.”

Junior is found so early as 1657:

“1657, – . Christened Junior, sonne of Robert Naze.” – Cant. Cath.

Little is similarly used. Little Midgley in the West Riding Directory is scarcely a happy conjunction. In the same town are to be seen John Berry, side by side with “Young John Berry,” and Allen Mawson, with Young Allen Mawson.