THE MYSTERY OF CORFE. 55 



Again the question of the name requires some slight con- 

 sideration. It is stated that the murder took place at Corfe 

 Geate ; but while this may be so, it does not follow that Corfe 

 Geate and Corfe Castle were one and the same place, even 

 although they were considered to be so in the 12th Century, for 

 prior to about 1130 there seems to be no doubt that Corfe 

 Castle was known as Warham Castle, and although the place 

 or its vicinity was termed Corfe, yet there is no evidence 

 whatever of an independent nature which goes to prove 

 that the name Corfe Geate was ever applied thereunto. 

 Corfe was a fairly common place name in certain parts of 

 England, while Corfe Geate, so far as I am aware, occurs but 

 seldom. 



Where then was this Corfe Geate and what evidence is 

 there connecting it with the crime ? There is direct testimony 

 from an unimpeachable source that there was a tract of land, 

 or a site, at or near Portisham which was known as Corfe 

 Geate. In a charter of Canute * granted not many years after 

 the death of Edward, Corfe Geate is mentioned as a boundary 

 of an estate demised to one Ore, and although there is no 

 direct evidence that Elfrida held this land, yet such may well 

 have been the case, and indeed one copy of the Chronicle of 

 Roger Hovenden names Coryates as the site of Edward's 

 decease, and Coryates is not far from Portisham and may 

 easily be a corruption of Corfe Geate. It is, however, only 

 fair to point out that this evidence is not conclusive, but that 

 it is only partly confirmatory, the missing link being the lack 

 of anything pointing to the fact that Elfrida had an estate 

 there. 



On the other hand the probabilities in favour of this site 

 are stronger than those in favour of Corfe Castle, even sup- 

 posing the weight of testimony against the latter spot be totally 

 ignored. Again it is clear that the earliest records simply 

 stated that the murder was committed at a house of Elfrida's ; 



* Dugdale, Vol. 3, p. 54. 



