378 Evlestoke and its Manor Lords. 
which! Thomas Bulstrode expresses the wish to be buried in the 
Church of Herry]l Stoke, and the remains of his tomb, which once 
stood at the east end of the old Church,” and the heraldic remains 
of which are in the present Church, show that his wish was obeyed. 
About this time the second syllable is frequently spelt Stock and 
Stocke, and an “a” introduced into the first syllable for the first 
time. In 1596 in the record of a post mortem inquisition taken 
at Devizes, an “a” is also introduced into the second syllable for 
the first time, and the name continues to be written Earle Stoke 
or Stoake for the next hundred years. Since that time the “a” 
has been dropped from Stoke, but the form Earl (or Earle) has 
lingered on and is given at this day, as an alternative to Erle, in 
the Ordnance Maps. 
In Domesday Book places of the more modern name Stoke are, 
with a few exceptions, written Stoch, Stoche, or Stoches, for the 
Prd 
Anglo-Saxons never used “k” in the middle of a word, though it 
was occasionally substituted for “c” at the beginning. It has been 
thought by some that Stoches is a compound of two words, stow— 
a dwelling, ches—by the water,’ but it seems more probable that 
this was the genitive form, and that it was mistaken by the 
Normans when they translated the words—the manor or the land 
of Stoche, into—manerium or terra de Stokes. Stoke, Stock, and — 
Stow are evidently different dialectical forms of the same word. 
The first two are found most frequently in the counties that formed 
the old kingdom of Wessex and those bordering on it, while Stow 
is found chiefly in the eastern counties. The Anglo-Saxon word 
to which they owe their origin is Stoc, a place, but the word was 
used to signify the stem or trunk of a tree, and this second meaning 
has by some been developed into “a wood” when explaining the — 
place-name. Bosworth, however, shows by a quotation from ( 
Simeon of Durham (1123) that Woodstock was known in his time — 
as Wude Stoe, the place of the woods, and William Somner (1659) — 

1 P.C.C. 86, Holder. 
> Jackson, Aubrey’s Wilts, p. 300; M.S. 115, Society of Antiquaries. 
3 Cese—cheese, Cessol—a cottage, and Ceosel—gravel, seem to be the only 
Anglo-Saxon words resembling ‘‘ Ches.” 

