380 



Erlestoke and its Manor Lords. 



gave the same meaning in connection with Erlestoke, 1 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. 2 



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. 3 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. 4 In three of the cases the prefix is an Anglo- 

 Saxon word, Wintreburn ; Lauvrece (lawerc or lauerc, a lark) ; and 

 Babe (beber, befer, beofer, a beaver), but there is no word of a 

 like nature that can be associated with Erie. 5 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 

 Erie 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 Beading, now Maiden Earley, and their 

 properties lay in Berkshire, Dorsetshire, and Somersetshire (where 

 Somerton Erie 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. 



;i Wilts Arch. May., xxiii., 282; Wilts Notes and Queries, II., 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." 



