NOMENCLATURE. - 109 



For a length of time after the Heptarchy was establislied, 

 independent Cornwall embraced part of Somersetshire, as well as 

 the whole of Devonshire. Exeter was the capital of Cornwall, 

 and probably, as Whitaker argues, the seat of her ancient Bishop- 

 ric* After the Saxons had subdued most of Devon, Exeter con- 

 tinued for a time to be inhabited jointly by Saxons and Cornish, 

 Then the latter were driven beyond the Tamar, and it was death 

 for a Cornishman to be found east of its banks. And now, 

 according to Whitaker, the seat of temporal authority and the 

 Court were probably fixed at Liskeard, and the seat of the Bishop 

 at St. Germans. The Saxons gradually gained influence and power 

 in the county. We read of Alfred hunting at St. Neots, and 

 Adsiting there his kinsman Neot, who gave his name to the parish 

 formerly known as S. Guerir. The county was overrun by both ' 

 Egbert and Athelstan. In the eastern part the Saxons must have 

 early gained a firm footing ; we there find Teutonic names almost 

 as common as Celtic. The Celtic inhabitants retreated westward, 

 and, it would appear, southward also, as we are told that so late 

 as the reign of Edward I, Cornish was spoken in the South Hams, 

 Domesday Book would show that, in the time of Edward the Con- 

 fessor, most, if not all the proprietors of Cornwall were Saxons ; 

 and some of these, we learn from that record, left their names to 

 the manors they held ; so that much of the local nomenclature of 

 the county may be more safely referred to their names and similar 

 ones, than to other sources, t The names found in the Manumis- 



* Dr. Oliver scouts the i<lea of these ancient Bishops. But though no 

 order or succession can be made out, yet those named as probable Bishops of 

 Cornwall, were called Bishops in the old Calendars. I think it not improb- 

 able that some of them may have been consecrated, and exercised episcoiDal 

 functions here, as Missionary Bishops, or Bishops " without any fixed place of 

 episcopal jurisdiction " ; as Archbishop Anselm complained was the case 

 with the sister Celtic Church in Ireland, equally regarded with that of Corn- 

 wall, as schismatic, by Eome ; who, on this account, may have ordinarily 

 ignored these Bishops. The same reason may account for our many strange 

 Cornish Saints : they were holy men and women, and Churches and Chapels 

 were called after them, though they were not canonized by Eome, and ad- 

 mitted into the Calendar*. Some of the names of our Saints, however, may 

 be only sobriquets, thus : S. Gwennap may be " the white faced " Saint ; S. 

 Boche, the rock Saint, &c. {Vide Kingston, Davies Gilbert, IV, 312.) 



f Boijton may be from the priest Boia mentioned in Domesday, or some 

 one else of that name. Alverton may be from Aluuard, tenant at the time 

 of the Confessor. These are pure Saxon names, with the Saxon suffix ton. 

 But in some cases it would seem as if the Saxon name had, in the Cornish 



