380 Erlestoke and its Manor Lords. 
gave the same meaning in connection with Erlestoke, and Canon 
Jones in a paper on the Names of Places in Wiltshire included 
Stoc and Stow among Teutonic terminations and translated them 
together as place or habitation.” 
The large number of places bearing the name of Stoke would 
necessitate some addition to the name when it was required to 
identify any one of them, and Erlestoke had a near neighbour 
with which it may have been associated at an early period, as it 
was at a later, in the Stoke which formerly existed with its Church 
and its churchyard in the Bratton Tithing of the parish of 
Westbury. In the Wiltshire Domesday Book the six places of 
this name that are there mentioned had all been given a prefix, for 
the “Stoche” that occurs twice is identified elsewhere in the survey 
with Bradenstoke.t In three of the cases the prefix is an Anglo- 
Saxon word, Wintreburn; Lauvrece (lawerc or lauere, a lark) ; and 
Babe (beber, befer, beofer, a beaver), but there is no word of a 
like nature that can be associated with Erle.° In the other three 
cases—Bradene, Bichene, and Ode—the prefix seems to represent 
the names of two clans and an individual, no doubt earlier Saxon 
owners of these places, and the connection of the ancient family of 
Erle with Wiltshire at the present day suggests the possibility of — 
its association at some time with Erlestoke. In early times, — 
however, the name was written de Erlega, or Erleiga, and it is 
not until the year 1200 that it is found in the form of Erleye, at 
which time it is known that Erlestoke had been for some fifty 
years in other hands. The name is said to have been taken from — 
their lordship near Reading, now Maiden Earley, and their 
properties lay in Berkshire, Dorsetshire, and Somersetshire (where ; 
Somerton Erle perpetuates their memory), but there is no evidence 
of their connection with Wiltshire until a much later period. 
1 Aubrey’s Wiltshire, p. 298. 2 Wilts Arch. Mag., xx., 78. 
3’ Wilts Arch. Mag., xxiii., 282; Wilts Notes and Queries, I1., III., 
Records of Parishes—Bratton. 
4 Wyndham, 235, 505, 529; Jones, 68. / 
5 Aler, the alder tree, is only remotely allied to the German “‘erle,’”’ and 
the word “erl” in the German erl-king was in Anglo-Saxon ‘‘aelf.” 


