the year 1,300 nearly one-third of Englishmen were named either William or John.

The pet names assumed various forms of termination. Kin, expressing relationship, was to be found frequently attached to the baptismal names of children of both sexes. Cock, which Mr. Bardsley defines as 'pertness,' especially the pertness of lusty, swaggering youth, and which, perhaps, is to be discovered in the cock of the school of our boyhood, became as common a desinence as the one already mentioned. In addition to these two, Mr. Bardsley mentions two pairs of terminations on or in, ot or et, besides double terminatives to be found in such names as Colinet, Robinet, and Dobinet.

Scattered amongst the other names before the Reformation there were to be found a few Scriptural names. These names were not derived, as we might at first have expected, directly from the Bible. It is to be remembered that before this period the Bible, to the population generally, was a sealed book. Written in a strange tongue, of which the majority of priests had only a smattering, the Bible was doled out in small pittances to the people, and, therefore, their knowledge of the Bible could not be very extensive. The names with which they did become acquainted were such as came to them through the medium of the Romish Church. Mr. Bardsley regards them as coming from the Mystery Plays, the Crusades, the Saints' Calendar, and from the festivals of the Church.

6

Our author gives us some very interesting passages about the method in which some pre-Reformation names were chased out of the English name-list. Let one instance, which shall be that of Malkin, suffice. This name, which comes originally from Mary, was fashionable enough at one time. Afterwards it was made use of to designate a person in low condition of life; then, from a drab,' says our author, Malkin became a scare-crow. Hence, Chaucer talks of malkin-trash. As if this were not enough, malkin became the baker's clout to clean ovens with. Thus, as Jack took the name of the implements Jack used, as in boot-jack, so, by easy transitions, Malkin. The last hit was when Grimalkin, that is, grey-malkin, came to be the cant term for an old worn-out queen-cat. Hence, the witch's name in Macbeth."

The book, in addition to the Prologue and the Epilogue, has only two chapters. To the first chapter is given the very appropriate title of The Hebrew Invasion. This title is a real index or key to the whole chapter, and, had the best of a thousand titles been adopted, it could not have better expressed the contents of this chapter. The first division of the chapter is equally happy, for if the series of events.

described in the chapter is like an invasion, the commencement of that series is like an army's march, and therefore Mr. Bardsley styles it The March of the Army.

The army began its march when the German Bible of 1560 made its appearance, being the Scriptures translated into the English tongue. In this book the common people could read in their own language those mysteries which, to some extent, had been hidden from them before. As they read it their attention would be drawn to the interesting events which it contained, and those personages whose doings it records would become known and admired; and it was, therefore, quite natural that they should wish to name their children by the names of those men whose lives and acts had imparted so much grandeur and glory to the inspired record. Another reason from the Bible helped the army in its earlier victories, and probably in its later ones too, and that was the Hebrew fashion of giving names to children expressive of the circumstances of the child's birth, or having some reference to the parents' hopes and aspirations in regard to the child.

In the earlier periods of the Reformation the old English names were used along with the new ones introduced from the Bible. At this time the Popish names only were rejected, but as Puritanism arose in numbers and influence, the old English names were as ruthlessly driven forth as savouring too much of Paganism. Thus, a new need was created for new names, and the Puritan, in his necessity, was driven to the Bible for names by which to call his children. In his selection of names the Puritan was assisted by the clergymen having Presbyterian sympathies, who displayed the utmost anxiety that the old names, with all the names introduced through the Romish church, should be obliterated as far as possible. The Northern counties were the last to give way to the invasion of the Hebrew army. At last the army invaded Yorkshire, and our author says, in language beautifully picturesque :

The Genevan Bible crept into the dales and farmsteads, and their own primitive life seemed to be but reflected in its pages. The patriarchs lived as graziers, and so did they. There was a good deal about sheep and kine in its chapters, and their own lives were spent among the milk-pails and wool-shears. The women of the Old Testament baked cakes, and knew what good butter was. So did the dales' folk. By slow degrees Cecilia, Isabella, and Emma lapsed from their pedestals, and the little babes were turned into Sarahs, Rebeccas, and Deborahs. As the seventeenth century progressed the state of things became still more changed. There had been villages in Sussex and Kent previous to Elizabeth's death where the Presbyterian rector, by his personal influence at the time of baptism, had turned the new generation into a Hebrew colony. The same thing occurred

in Yorkshire only half a century later. As Nonconformity gained ground, Guy, and Miles, and Peter became forgotten. The lads were no sooner ushered into existence than they were transformed, into duplicates of Goel, and Amos, and Obediah. The measles still ran through the family, but it was Phineas and Caleb, not Robert and Roger, that underwent the infliction. Chosen leaders of Israel passed through the critical stages of teething. As for the twelve sons of Jacob, they could all have answered to their names in the dames' schools, through their little apple-cheeked representatives, who lined the rude benches. On the village green every prophet from Isaiah to Malachi might be seen of an evening playing leap-frog, unless, indeed, Zephaniah was stealing apples in the garth.

Soon these names crossed into Lancashire, and took a firm hold there. The Puritans must have searched the obscurest name-lists of the Bible for some of their names. So obscure and uncommon were some of the names given, that Mr. Bardsley, with great frankness, confesses that in his researches he has lighted upon name after name that he did not know existed in the Bible at all until he found them in the Yorkshire and Lancashire directories.

At the present day the nomenclature of the North of England is drawn chiefly from the Bible. Our author records the following amusing stories:

A clerical friend of mine christened twins Cain and Abel, only the other day, much against his own wishes. Another parson on the Derbyshire border was gravely informed at the proper moment that the name of baptism was Ramoth-Gilead. Boy or girl, eh ?' he asked in a somewhat agitated voice. The parents had opened the Bible haphazard, according to the village tradition, and selected the first name the eye fell on. It was but a year ago a little child was christened Tellno in a town within six miles of Manchester, at the suggestion of a cotton-spinner, the father, a workman of the name of Lees, having asked his advice. 'I suppose it must be a Scripture name,' said his master. 'Oh yes! that's of course.' Suppose you choose Tellno,' said the employer. That'll do,' replied the other, who never heard it before, and liked it better on that account. The child is now Tell-no Lees, the father, too late, finding that he had been hoaxed.*

One thing that ought to have made the Puritans limit their selection of names was euphony. Of that in their name-choosing they seemed to be altogether ignorant, or tried their utmost to offend correct taste. How barbarous and ugly look and sound such names as Kerenhappuch, Habakkuk, Mahaliel, Eli-lama-Sabacthani, TalithaCumi, Mabershalalhasbaz, and Zaphnaphpaaneah in the English language. Yet names of this class outraged good English and sound sense in the days of the Puritans. We believe the practice is not quite extinct yet, and it would be well if ministers of all denominations

* Lie is lee in Lancashire dialect.

would do their utmost to stamp it out. In his second division Mr. Bardsley discusses the popularity of the Old Testament,' as a source from which the Puritans drew names. This division is especially interesting, but we cannot give more than a summary of it. There are several instances given to show how interesting as a name-source the Old Testament was. Then he tries to account for the fondness of Puritans for gloomy names. This is a remarkable feature in the nomenclature of their age. We find such names as Lamentations, Aphrah, Benoni, and Ichabod. Was not this a serious reflection on the kind of treatment that the Puritans received? As soon as they appeared attempts were made to crush them out of being. Elizabeth hated them as much as she did Romanists, and perhaps a little more. We know also that James, at the beginning of his reign, mocked them with the Hampton Court Conference, and drove them therefrom with words of ominous meaning, 'I will make them conform, or I will harry them out of the land.' It seems to us that there was enough in such treatment to make them sad and gloomy. Undoubtedly their melancholy nomenclature was a protest againt the cruel tyranny under which they groaned. This is further supported by the fact that, as the freedom brought by the Commonwealth appeared, the gloomy names disappeared, and parents began to name their children in a more pleasing way.

In the third division, under the head of objectionable Scripture names,' our author enters a very sensible protest against such names as Tamar, Bathsheba, Ananias, Antipas, Druisilla. Equally objectionable, though for a different reason, are such names as Emanuel and others which belong to celestial beings.

The introduction of the Biblical nomenclature could not take place without very seriously affecting the old names which were in use previous to the Reformation, and there must have taken place a great loss of old English names. It is to this great loss that the fourth division of this chapter is devoted. We have before shown how the names introduced through the medium of the Romish church were abolished, as a result of the Reformation, and how the old English names were served in the same fashion by the Puritans, because they imagined that these names came from a Pagan source. It makes us wonder that the Puritans did not cut their own throats, and thus blot themselves out of existence, seeing that they themselves had come from Papal and Pagan sources.

We deeply regret the loss of many of the old English names, though we do not much care about the loss of many of those names that came

through the Romish church, because most of them were foreign to the English language, and therefore appeared barbarous. The Hebrew invasion drove out the pet forms which had at one time been so extensively used throughout the whole country. Mr. Bardsley, in accounting for this disappearance, gives some very good reasons indeed. In answer to the question, Why should this be?' he says:

An important reason strikes us at once. The ecclesiastical names on which the enclytics had grown had become unpopular throughout England. It was an English, not a Puritan, prejudice. With the suppression of the names proper went the desinences attached to them. The tree being felled, the parasite decayed. Another reason was this, the names introduced from the Scriptures did not seem to compound well with these terminatives. The Hebrew name would first have to be turned into a nick form before the diminutive was appended. The English peasantry had added 'in,' 'ot,' 'kin,' and 'cock' only to the nickname, never to the baptismal form. It was Wat-kin, not Walterkin; Bat-kin, not Bartholomewkin; Wil-cock, not Williamcock; Colin, not Nicholas-in; Phil-pot, not Phillipot. But the popular feeling for a century was against turning the new Scripture names into curt or nick forms. As it would have been an absurdity to have appended diminutives to sesquipedalian names, national wit, rather than deliberate plan, prevented it. If it was irreverent, too, to curtail Scripture names, it was equally irreverent to give them the diminutive dress. To prove the absolute truth of my statement, I have only to remind the reader that, saving 'Nat-kin,' not one single Bible name introduced by the Reformation and the English Bible has become conjoined with a diminutive.

This extract will show that with the pet forms the nicknames took their departure also, and whatever name was given to a Puritan child, that name, however short or long, clung to him throughout life in all its fulness, as the abolition of nick forms did not allow of any alteration or contraction of the word whatever.

The remaining division of this chapter is entitled, 'The General Confusion,' and though there is much that is interesting in it, we will pass it by with just this mention of it.

In Chapter II. Mr. Bardsley deals with names which he regards as evidences of Puritan eccentricities. In his introduction to this chapter he adverts to the scepticism of many persons in regard to eccentricities in the matter of Puritan name-giving. Some of these he rightly regards as 'Nonconformists, who do not like the slights thus cast upon their spiritual ancestry, unaware that, while this curious phase was at its climax, Puritanism was yet within the pale of the Church of England.' We thank Mr. Bardsley for these words. It seems to us that, as Puritanism developed more fully into a protest against Episcopalianism, and thus drew nearer to what really is Nonconformity, it abandoned the practice of giving absurd Scripture