88 PLACE AND FIELD NAMES OF DERBYSHIRE. 
cease to wonder at the fearful plagues which committed such 
havoc among the upper classes of English society in the reign 
of the eighth Henry. 
The woad plant (Isasis tinctoria), with the juice of which 
the Britons used to stain and indelibly tattoo their bodies, 
supplies the prefix for WapsHELF (Brampton) and Wap CARR* 
(T. C. Hazelwood). This plant, which produces a deep blue 
dye, was more reasonably used by the Anglo-Saxons for colouring 
cloths and wool. 
LINLEY, by its prefix /iv, flax or linen, tells us of one of the 
earliest forms of clothing used in this island.t The remnants 
of a coarse kind of linen have been often found around the 
bones in British barrows. The same material formed the body 
garments of the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans, though it 
was not cultivated to any great extent in England till the 
time of the Stuarts.{ In looking through the parish maps of 
this county, it is at first somewhat astonishing to find hardly 
a single township that does not possess a FLAX PIECE, Close, 
croft, yard, or something similar. This circumstance, however, 
is explained by 24 Henry VIII. c. 4, “Every person having 
in his occupation three score acres of land, apt for tillage, 
shall sow one rood with seed, otherwise called flax or hemp- 
seed, and also one rood for every forty acres.” This was one of 
the numerous Acts passed in that reign, in the vain endeavour 
to prevent the great rise in the price of wool, which caused 
so many farmers to turn into sheep walks lands that had been 
arable for centuries. Like all laws that are contrary to the 
first principles of political economy, it proved a miserable 
failure, but it existed long enough to name afresh many a field 
throughout the country.§ 
* Wad carr may also mean ‘‘the pool that can be waded,” from wéd, a 
ford. For another interpretation of Wadshelf, see Edmund’s ‘*‘ Names and 
Places” sub voce. 
+ There are several other interpretations of the prefix 4, but I prefer in 
this instance to take that of Dr. Leo Heinrich. JLzzco/n has been already 
explained in a previous chaper. 
+ Strutt’s Dresses, p. 88 and 210, 
§ From the official Agricultural Returns for 1870, I find that the number of 
acres cultivated for flax in Derbyshire were fifty-four. The cultivation of flax 
