Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature

II. Originated by the Presbyterian Clergy

In Strype’s “Life of Whitgift” (i. 255) we find the following statement: —

“I find yet again another company of these fault-finders with the Book of Common Prayer, in another diocese, namely, that of Chichester, whose names and livings were these: William Hopkinson, vicar of Salehurst; Samuel Norden, parson of Hamsey; Antony Hobson, vicar of Leominster; Thomas Underdown, parson of St. Mary’s in Lewes; John Bingham, preacher of Hodeleigh; Thomas Heley, preacher of Warbleton; John German, vicar of Burienam; and Richard Whiteaker, vicar of Ambreley.”

I follow up the history of but two of these ministers, Hopkinson of Salehurst, and Heley of Warbleton. Suspended by the commissary, they were summoned to Canterbury, December 6, 1583, and subscribed. Both being married men, with young families, we may note their action in regard to name-giving. The following are to be found in the register at Salehurst:

“Maye 3, 1579, was baptized Persis (Rom. xvi. 12), the daughter of William Hopkinson, minister heare.

“June 18, 1587, was baptized Stedfast, the sonne of Mr. William Bell, minister.

“Nov. 3, 1588, was baptized Renewed, the doughter of William Hopkinson, minister.

“Feb. 28, 1591, was baptized Safe-on-Highe, the sonne of Willm. Hopkinson, minister of the Lord’s Worde there.31

“Oct. 29, 1596. Constant, filia Thomæ Lorde, baptisata fuit.

“March, 1621. Rejoyce, filia Thomæ Lorde, baptisata fuit die 10, et sepulta die 23.

“November, 1646. Bethshua, doughter of Mr. John Lorde, minister of Salehurst, bapt. 22 die.”

These entries are of the utmost importance; they begin at the very date when the new custom arose, and are patronized by three ministers in succession – possibly four, if Thomas Lorde was also a clergyman.

Heley’s case is yet more curious. He had been prescribing grace-names for his flock shortly before the birth of his first child. He thus practises upon his own offspring:

“Nov. 7, 1585. Muche-merceye, the sonne of Thomas Hellye, minyster.

“March 26, 1587. Increased, the dather of Thomas Helly, minister.

“Maye 5, 1588. Sin-denie, the dather of Thomas Helly, minister.

“Maye 25, 1589. Fear-not, the sonne of Thomas Helly, minister.”

Under rectorial pressure the villagers followed suit; and for half a century Warbleton was, in the names of its parishioners, a complete exegesis of justification by faith without the deeds of the law. Sorry-for-sin Coupard was a peripatetic exhortation to repentance, and No-merit Vynall was a standing denunciation of works. No register in England is better worth a pilgrimage to-day than Warbleton.32

Still confining our attention to Sussex and Kent, we come to Berwick:

“1594, Dec. 22. Baptized Continent, daughter of Hugh Walker, vicar.

“1602, Dec. 12. Baptized Christophilus, son of Hugh Walker.” – Berwick, Sussex.

I think the father ought to be whipped most incontinently in the open market who would inflict such a name on an infant daughter. They did not think so then. The point, however, is that the father was incumbent of the parish.

A more historic instance may be given. John Frewen, Puritan rector of Northiam, Sussex, from 1583 to 1628, and author of “Grounds and Principles of the Christian Religion,” had two sons, at least, baptized in his church. The dates tally exactly with the new custom:

“1588, May 26. Baptized Accepted, sonne of John Frewen.

“1591, Sep. 5. Baptized Thankful, sonne of John Frewen.” – Northiam, Sussex.

Accepted 33 died Archbishop of York, being prebend designate of Canterbury so early as 1620:

“1620, Sep. 8. Grant in reversion to Accepted Frewen of a prebend in Canterbury Cathedral.” – “C. S. P. Dom.”

One more instance before we pass on. In two separate wills, dated 1602 and 1604 (folio 25, Montagu, “Prerog. Ct. of Cant.,” and folio 25, Harte, ditto), will be found references to “More-fruite and Faint-not, children of Dudley Fenner, minister of the Word of God” at Marden, in Kent.

Now, this Dudley Fenner was a thoroughly worthy man, but a fanatic of most intolerant type. In 1583 we find him at Cranbrook, in Kent. An account of his sayings and doings was forwarded, says Strype, to Lord Burghley, who himself marked the following passage: —

“Ye shall pray also that God would strike through the sides of all such as go about to take away from the ministers of the Gospel the liberty which is granted them by the Word of God.”

But a curious note occurs alongside this passage in Lord Burghley’s hand:

“Names given in baptism by Dudley Fenner: Joy-againe, From-above, More-fruit, Dust.” – Whitgift, i. p. 247.

Two of these names were given to his own children, as Cranbrook register shows to this day:

“1583, Dec. 22. Baptized More-fruit, son of Mr. Dudley Fenner.”

“1585, June 6. Baptized Faint-not, fil. Mr. Dudley Fenner, concional digniss.”

Soon after this Dudley Fenner again got into trouble through his sturdy spirit of nonconformity. After an imprisonment of twelve months, he fled to Middleborough, in Holland, and died there about 1589.

The above incident from Strype is interesting, for here manifestly is the source whence Camden derived his information upon the subject. In his quaint “Remaines,” published thirty years later (1614), after alluding to the Latin names then in vogue, he adds:

“As little will be thought of the new names, Free-Gift, Reformation, Earth, Dust, Ashes, Delivery, More-fruit, Tribulation, The-Lord-is-near, More-triale, Discipline, Joy-againe, From-above, which have lately been given by some to their children, with no evill meaning, but upon some singular and precise conceite.”

Very likely Lord Burghley gave Fenner’s selection to the great antiquary.

Coming into London, the following case occurs. John Press was incumbent of St. Matthew, Friday Street, from 1573 to 1612:

“1584. Baptized Purifie, son of Mr. John Presse, parson.”

John Bunyan’s great character name of Hopeful is to be seen in Banbury Church register. But such an eccentricity is to be expected in the parish over which Wheatley presided, the head-quarters, too, of extravagant Puritanism. We all remember drunken Barnaby:

“To Banbury came I, O prophane one!Where I saw a Puritane one,Hanging of his cat on MondayFor killing of a mouse on Sunday.”

But the point I want to emphasize is that this Hopeful was Wheatley’s own daughter:

“1604, Dec. 21. Baptized Hope-full, daughter of William Wheatlye.”

Take a run from Banbury into Leicestershire. A stern Puritan was Antony Grey, “parson and patron” of Burbach; and he continued “a constant and faithfull preacher of the Gospell of Jesus Christ, even to his extreame old age, and for some yeares after he was Earle of Kent,” as his tombstone tells us. He had twelve children, and their baptismal entries are worth recording:

“1593, April 29. Grace, daughter of Mr. Anthonie Grey.

“1594, Nov. 28. Henry, son of ditto.

“1596, Nov. 16. Magdalen, daughter of ditto.

“1598, May 8. Christian, daughter of ditto.

“1600, Feb. 2. Faith-my-joy, daughter of ditto.34

“1603, April 3. John, son of ditto.

“1604, Feb. 23. Patience, daughter of Myster Anthonie Grey, preacher.

“1606, Oct. 5. Jobe, son of ditto.

“1608, May 1. Theophilus, son of ditto.

“1609, March 14. Priscilla, daughter of ditto (died).

“1613, Sept. 19. Nathaniel, son of ditto.

“1615, May 7. Presela, daughter of ditto.”

Why old Antony was persuaded of the devil to christen his second child by the ungodly agnomen of Henry, we are not informed. It must have given him many a twinge of conscience afterwards.

Had the Puritan clergy confined these vagaries to their own nurseries, it would not have mattered much. But there can be no doubt they used their influence to bias the minds of godparents and witnesses in the same direction. We have only to pitch upon a minister who came under the archbishop’s or Lord Treasurer’s notice as disaffected, seek out the church over which he presided, scan the register of baptisms during the years of his incumbency, and a batch of extravagant names will at once be unearthed. In the villages of Sussex and Kent, where the personal influence of the recalcitrant clergy seems to have been greatest, the parochial records teem with them.

Thus was the final stage of fanaticism reached, the year 1580 being as nearly as possible the exact date of its development. Thus were English people being prepared for the influx of a large batch of names which had never been seen before, nor will be again. The purely Biblical names, those that commemorated Bible worthies, swept over the whole country, and left ineffaceable impressions. The second stage of Puritan excess, names that savour of eccentricity and fanaticism combined, scarcely reached England north of Trent, and, for lack of volume, have left but the faintest traces. They lasted long enough to cover what may be fairly called an epoch, and extended just far enough to embrace a province. The epoch was a hundred years, and the province was from Kent to Hereford, making a small arc northwards, so as to take in Bedfordshire, Leicestershire, Buckinghamshire, and Oxfordshire. The practice, so far as the bolder examples is concerned, was a deliberate scheme on the part of the Presbyterian clergy. On this point the evidence is in all respects conclusive.

III. Curious Names not Puritan

Several names found in the registers at this time, though commonly ascribed to the zealots, must be placed under a different category. For instance, original sin and the Ninth Article would seem to be commemorated in such a name as Original. We may reject Camden’s theory:

“Originall may seem to be deducted from the Greek origines, that is, borne in good time,”

inasmuch as he does not appear to have believed in it himself. The name, as a matter of fact, was given in the early part of the sixteenth century, in certain families of position, to the eldest son and heir, denoting that in him was carried on the original stock. The Bellamys of Lambcote Grange, Stainton, are a case in point. The eldest son for three generations bore the name; viz. Original Bellamy, buried at Stainton, September 12, 1619, aged 80; Original, his son and heir, the record of whose death I cannot find; and Original, his son and heir, who was baptized December 29, 1606. The first of these must have been born in 1539, far too early a date for the name to be fathered upon the Puritans. Original was in use in the family of Babington, of Rampton. Original Babington, son and heir of John Babington, was a contemporary of the first Original Bellamy (Nicholl’s “Gen. et Top.,” viii.).

Another instance occurs later on:

“1635, May 21. These under-written names are to be transported to St. Christopher’s, imbarqued in the Matthew of London, Richard Goodladd, master, per warrant from ye Earle of Carlisle:

“Originall Lowis, 28 yeres,” etc. – Hotten’s “Emigrants,” p. 81.

Sense, a common name in Elizabeth and James’s reigns, looks closely connected with some of the abstract virtues, such as Prudence and Temperance. The learned compiler of the “Calendar of State Papers” (1637-38) seems to have been much bothered with the name:

“1638, April 23. Petition of Seuce Whitley, widow of Thomas Whitley, citizen, and grocer.”

The suggestion from the editorial pen is that this Seuce (as he prints it) is a bewildered spelling of Susey, from Susan! The fact is, Seuce is a bewildered misreading on the compiler’s part of Sense, and Sense is an English dress of the foreign Senchia, or Sancho, still familiar to us in Sancho Panza. Several of the following entries will prove that Sense was too early an inmate of our registers to be a Puritan agnomen:

“1564, Oct. 15. Baptized Saints, d. of Francis Muschamp.

“1565, Nov. 25. Buried Sence, d. of ditto.

“1559, June 13. Married Matthew Draper and Sence Blackwell.

“1570-1, Jan. 15. Baptized Sence, d. of John Bowyer.” – Camberwell Church.

“1651. Zanchy Harvyn, Grocer’s Arms, Abbey Milton.” – “Tokens of Seventeenth Century.”

“1661, June. Petition of Mrs. Zanchy Mark.” – C. S. P.

That it was familiar to Camden in 1614 is clear:

“Sanchia, from Sancta, that is, Holy.” – “Remaines,” p. 88.

The name became obsolete by the close of the seventeenth century, and, being a saintly title, was sufficiently odious to the Presbyterians to be carefully rejected by them in the sixteenth century. Men who refused the Apostles their saintly title were not likely to stamp the same for life on weak flesh.35

Nor can Emanuel, or Angel, be brought as charges against the Puritans. Both flatly contradicted Cartwright’s canon; yet both, and especially the former, have been attributed to the zealots. No names could have been more offensive to them than these. Even Adams, in his “Meditations upon the Creed,” while attacking his friends on their eccentricity in preferring “Safe-deliverance” to “Richard,” takes care to rebuke those on the other side, who would introduce Emanuel, or even Gabriel or Michael, into their nurseries:

“Some call their sons Emanuel: this is too bold. The name is proper to Christ, therefore not to be communicated to any creature.”

Emanuel was imported from the Continent about 1500:

“1545, March 19. Baptized Humphrey, son of Emanuell Roger.” – St. Columb Major.

The same conclusion must be drawn regarding Angel. Adams continues:

“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.”

If the Puritans objected, as they did to a man, to the use of Gabriel and Michael as angelic names, the generic term itself would be still more objectionable:

“1645, Nov. 13. Buried Miss Angela Boyce.” – Cant. Cath.

“1682, April 11. Baptized Angel, d. of Sir Nicholas Butler, Knt.” – St. Helen, Bishopgate.

“Weymouth, March 20, 1635. Embarked for New England: Angell Holland, aged 21 years.” – Hotten’s “Emigrants,” p. 285.

In this case we may presume the son, and not the father, had turned Puritan.

A curious custom, which terminated soon after Protestantism was established in England, gave rise to several names which read oddly enough to modern eyes. These were titles like Vitalis or Creature – names applicable to either sex. Mr. Maskell, without furnishing instances, says Creature occurs in the registers of All-Hallows, Barking (“Hist. All-Hallows,” p. 62). In the vestry-books of Staplehurst, Kent, are registered:

“1 Edward VI. Apryle xxvii., there were borne ii. childre of Alex’nder Beeryl: the one christened at home, and so deceased, called Creature; the other christened at church, called John.” – Burns, “History of Parish Registers,” p. 81.

“1550, Nov. 5. Buried Creature, daughter of Agnes Mathews, syngle woman, the seconde childe.

“1579, July 19. Married John Haffynden and Creature Cheseman, yong folke.” – Staplehurst, Kent.

One instance of Vitalis may be given:

“Vitalis, son of Richard Engaine, and Sara his wife, released his manor of Dagworth in 1217 to Margery de Cressi.” – Blomefield’s “Norfolk,” vi. 382, 383.

These are not Puritan names. The dates are against the theory. They belong to a pre-Reformation practice, being names given to quick children before birth, in cases when it was feared, from the condition of the mother, they might not be delivered alive. Being christened before the sex could be known, it was necessary to affix a neutral name, and Vitalis or Creature answered the purpose. The old Romish rubric ran thus:

“Nemo in utero matris clausus baptizari debet, sed si infans caput emiserit, et periculum mortis immineat, baptizetur in capite, nec postea si vivus evaserit, erit iterum baptizandus. At si aliud membrum emiserit, quod vitalem indicet motum in illo, si periculum pendeat baptizetur,” etc.

Vitalis Engaine and Creature Cheeseman, in the above instances, both lived, but, by the law just quoted, retained the names given to them, and underwent no second baptism. If the sex of the yet breathing child was discovered, but death certain, the name of baptism ran thus:

“1563, July 17. Baptizata fuit in ædibus Mri Humfrey filia ejus quæ nominata fuit Creatura Christi.” – St. Peter in the East, Oxford.

“1563, July 17. Creatura Christi, filia Laurentii Humfredi sepulta.” – Ditto.

An English form occurs earlier:

“1561, June 30. The Chylde-of-God, filius Ric. Stacey.” – Ditto.

Without entering into controversy, I will only say that if the clergy, up to the time of the alteration in our Article on Baptism, truly believed that “insomuch as infants, and children dying in their infancy, shall undoubtedly be saved thereby (i. e. baptism), and else not,” it was natural that such a delicate ceremonial as I have hinted at should have suggested itself to their minds. After the Reformation, the practice as to unborn children fell into desuetude, and the names with it.

IV. Instances(a.) Latin Names

The elder Disraeli reminded us, in his “Curiosities of Literature,” that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it was common for our more learned pundits to re-style themselves in their own studies by Greek and Latin names. Some of these – as, for instance, Erasmus36 and Melancthon – are only known to the world at large by their adopted titles.

The Reformation had not become an accomplished fact before this custom began to prevail in England, only it was transferred from the study to the font, and from scholars to babies. Renovata, Renatus, Donatus, and Beata began to grow common. Camden, writing in 1614, speaks of still stranger names —

“If that any among us have named their children Remedium, Amoris, ‘Imago-sæculi,’ or with such-like names, I know some will think it more than a vanity.” – “Remaines,” p. 44.

While, however, the Presbyterian clergy did not object to some of these Latin sobriquets, as being identical with the names of early believers of the Primitive Church, stamped in not a few instances with the honours of martyrdom, they preferred to translate them into English. Many of my examples of eccentricity will be found to be nothing more than literal translations of names that had been in common vogue among Christians twelve and thirteen hundred years before. To the majority of the Puritan clergy, to change the Latin dress for an English equivalent would be as natural and imperative as the adoption of Tyndale’s or the Genevan Bible in the place of the Latin Vulgate.

A curious, though somewhat later, proof of this statement is met with in a will from the Probate Court of Peterborough. The testator was one Theodore Closland, senior fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. The date is June 24, 1665:

“Item: to What-God-will Crosland, forty shillings, and tenn shillings to his wife. And to his sonne What-God-will, six pound, thirteen shillings, fourpence.”

This is a manifest translation of the early Christian “Quod-vult-deus.” Grainger, in his “History of England” (iii. 360, fifth edition), says —

“In Montfaucon’s ‘Diarium Italicum’ (p. 270), is a sepulchral inscription of the year 396, upon Quod-vult-deus, a Christian, to which is a note: ‘Hoc ævo non pauci erant qui piis sententiolis nomina propria concinnarent, v. g. Quod-vult-deus, Deogratias, Habet-deum, Adeodatus.’”

Closland, or Crosland, the grandfather, was evidently a Puritan, with a horror of the Latin Vulgate, Latin Pope, and Latin everything. Hence the translation.

Nevertheless, the Puritans seem to have favoured Latin names at first. It was a break between the familiar sound of the old and the oddity of the new. Redemptus was less grotesque than Redeemed, and Renata than Renewed. The English equivalents soon ruled supreme, but for a generation or two, and in some cases for a century, the Latin names went side by side with them.

Take Renatus, for instance:

“1616, Sep. 29. Baptized Renatus, son of Renatus Byllett, gent.” – St. Columb Major.

“1637-8, Jan. 12. Order of Council to Renatus Edwards, girdler, to shut up his shop in Lombard Street, because he is not a goldsmith.

“1690, April 10. Petition of Renatus Palmer, who prays to be appointed surveyor in the port of Dartmouth.” – C. S. P.

“1659, Nov. 11. Baptized Renovata, the daughter of John Durance.” – Cant. Cath.

It was Renatus Harris who built the organ in All-Hallows, Barking, in 1675 (“Hist. All-Hallows, Barking,” Maskell). Renatus and Rediviva occur in St. Matthew, Friday Street, circa 1590. Rediviva lingered into the eighteenth century:

“1735, – . Buried Rediviva Mathews.” – Banbury.

Desiderata and Desiderius were being used at the close of Elizabeth’s reign, and survived the restoration of Charles II.:

“1671, May 26. Baptized Desiderius Dionys, a poor child found in Lyme Street.” – St. Dionis Backchurch.

Donatus and Deodatus, also, were Latin names on English soil before the seventeenth century came in:

“1616, Jan. 29. Baptized Donate, vel Deonata, daughter of Martyn Donnacombe.” – St. Columb Major.

Desire and Given,37 the equivalents, both crossed the Atlantic with the Pilgrim Fathers.

Love was popular. Side by side with it went Amor. George Fox, in his “Journal,” writing in 1670, says —

“When I was come to Enfield, I went first to visit Amor Stoddart, who lay very weak and almost speechless. Within a few days Amor died.” – Ed. 1836, ii. 129.

In Ripon Cathedral may be seen:

“Amor Oxley, died Nov. 23, 1773, aged 74.”

The name still exists in Yorkshire, but no other county, I imagine.

Other instances could be mentioned.38 I place a few in order:

“1594, Aug. 3. Baptized Relictus Dunstane, a childe found in this parisshe.” – St. Dunstan.

“1613, Nov. 7. Baptized Beata, d. of Mr. John Briggs, minister.” – Witherley, Leic.

“1653, Sep. 29. Married Richard Moone to Benedicta Rolfe.” – Cant. Cath.

“1661, May 25. Married Edward Clayton and Melior39 Billinge.” – St. Dionis, Backchurch.

“1706. Beata Meetkirke, born Nov. 2, 1705; died Sep. 10, 1706.” – Rushden, Hereford.

(b.) Grace Names

In furnishing instances, we naturally begin with those grace names, in all cases culled from the registers of the period, which belong to what we may style the first stage. They were, one by one, but taken from the lists found in the New Testament, and were probably suggested at the outset by the moralities or interludes. The morality went between the old miracle-play, or mystery, and the regular drama. In “Every Man,” written in the reign of Henry VIII., it is made a vehicle for retaining the love of the people for the old ways, the old worship, and the old superstitions. From the time of Edward VI. to the middle of Elizabeth’s reign, there issued a cluster of interludes of this same moral type and cast; only all breathed of the new religion, and more or less assaulted the dogmas of Rome.

These moralities were popular, and were frequently rendered in public, until the Elizabethan drama was well established. All were allegorical, and required personal representatives of the abstract graces, and doctrines of which they treated. The dramatis personæ in “Hickscorner” are Freewill, Perseverance, Pity, Contemplation, and Imagination, and in “The Interlude of Youth,” Humility, Pride, Charity, and Lechery.

It is just possible, therefore, that several of these grace names were originated under the shadow of the pre-Reformation Church. The following are early, considering they are found in Cornwall, the county most likely to be the last to take up a new custom:

“1549, July 1. Baptized Patience, d. of Willm. Haygar.” —

“1553, May 29. Baptized Honour, d. of Robert Sexton.” – St. Columb Major.

However this may be, we only find the cardinal virtues at the beginning of the movement – those which are popular in some places to this day, and still maintain a firm hold in America, borne thither by the Puritan emigrants.

The three Graces, and Grace itself, took root almost immediately as favourites. Shakespeare seems to have been aware of it, for Hermione says —

“My last good deed was to entreat his stay:What was my first? It has an elder sister,Or I mistake you – O would her name were Grace!”“Winter’s Tale,” Act i. sc. 2.

“1565, March 19. Christening of Grace, daughter of – Hilles.” – St. Peter, Cornhill.