134 



and I think it very probable that le Beche, is another form of 

 le BeC; the beak, just as in other parts of the country such a 

 headland would be called a ness.* 



There can be little doubt that the Birch gives the name to 

 Berkley — its old name Beorca-ley shows this. The Birch is 

 certainly not the tree of Berkley now, but we must recollect 

 that when the name was given, the rising ground on which 

 Berkley stands was a promontory or almost a peninsula jutting 

 out from the Cotteswold into a vast impenetrable morass, the 

 drainage of which has completely altered the vegetation, so that 

 there may well have been Birches there in olden times, which 

 have now given place to Elms and Oaks. Shakespeare describes 

 the trees of Berkley as Bolingbroke and Percy saw them from 

 Stinchcombe Hill, and as he may have often seen them from the 

 same " wild high hills and rough uneven ways " that Northum- 

 berland complained of — 



" There stands the castle, by yon tuft of trees."t 

 but he does not tell us what the trees were. 



And near Berkley there is another j)lace named after a tree, 

 and apparently now misnamed. This is Alderly, which must be 

 named after the Alders, as many other places are. Alderly now 

 is at a considerable elevation above the low ground in which we 

 should look for Alders, | and so the name probably tells us some- 

 thing of the history of the place ; that the first settlement was 

 in the lower ground, as most early settlements were for the sake 

 of water, but that it afterwards migrated to the higher ground, 

 taking, however, with it its older name. The very same thing 

 must have happened with Marshfield. Such a name could never 

 have been given to that dry exposed hogs-back on which the 

 present Marshfield stands, but it must point to an older 



* Compare " High Beach," in Epping Forest, 



t Ric : II., A, 2. s. 3. 



I Crassisque paludibus alni nascuntnr — Geo. II., 110. 



