98 FOURTEENTH CENTURY LIFE IN BRIDPORT. 



within our island blended to form the true British breed ; which 

 unity ousted the French tongue and created the English 

 language and literature with Chaucer and Wycliffe as its able 

 exponents. It is the age, too, of originality and independent 

 initiative, when with the emancipation of the serf arose that 

 mainstay of England's greatness, the middle class, represented by 

 the country gentleman, the yeoman, and the merchant venturer. 



Now for the wills themselves. I touch lightly on their topo- 

 graphical interest, and endeavour to show what light they 

 throw on domestic, municipal, and ecclesiastical life in Bridport 

 during the Fourteenth Century. 



From a topographical point of view' may I here take the liberty 

 of daring to correct so great a master of Dorset lore as the late 

 Mr. H. J. Moule himself ? Yet so it must be. In Old Dorset 

 occurs a very pretty derivation of the strange name "Girtups," 

 the house in Bridport where Mr. Morey dwells. Mr. Moule 

 describes how King Charles II. as a fugitive from Worcester 

 fight, disguised as the groom of Mistress Juliana Coningsby, 

 alighted outside this very house to "girth up" his horse, and 

 ever afterwards the said dwelling retained the name of Girtups 

 in his honour. I distrust such a derivation. I fear it is the 

 exact converse to the case of that Pickwickian antiquary who 

 went into ecstacies over the field named " Wet Whistle," 

 writing a lengthy article explaining how it meant the Saxon 

 ' White Housel,' and evidently provided a rent to buy altar linen 

 for the Church ; only to discover from the oldest inhabitant that 

 the name arose from the local farmer having given them a hogs- 

 head to " wet their whistles " one great harvest year when wheat 

 Was worth growing. Now I turn to these ancient wills. I find 

 that a cleric called Sir Nicholas Gertop was one of the chaplains 

 of St. Michael's, Bridport, in 1360, and in these wills he receives 

 legacies from various pious testators. He endowed the Chantry, 

 of which he was priest, with a house, and naturally it was called 

 after him " Gertop's House." Added to this, a century and a 

 half later, when the Chantries were dissolved, a messuage called 

 4< Gyrtoppes, some time the property of St. Michael's Chantry," 



