378 



ErlestoJce and its Manor Lords. 



which 1 Thomas Bulstrocle expresses the wish to be buried in the 

 Church of Herryll Stoke, and the remains of his tomb, which once 

 stood at the east end of the old Church, 2 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 Erie, 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 

 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, 3 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 Stoc, the place of the woods, and William Somner (1659) 



1 P.C.C. 36, Holder. 

 2 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." 



