288 Consecration of Nuns at Ambresbury, A.I). 1327. 



Piety and Humility, modestie and obedience to imitate and to practise. Here 

 they learned needlework, the art of confectionary, surgery, physick, writing, 

 drawing, &c. This was a fine way of breeding up young women who are led 

 more by example than precept, and a good retirement for widowes and grave 

 single women to a civil virtuous and holy life." * 



All very good, so far as the early education of the young ladies was 

 concerned : but the solemn dedication of them, by vow, to single 

 blessedness for life (and such would be the effect of the consecration 

 for which the document above given was the warrant) was a very 

 different affair. When carried to so great an extent as it used for- 

 merly to be, it became a serious national question, which at length 

 was seriously answered. 



2. As to the formation of surnames. It is well known that many 

 of what are now become established family surnames were originally 

 merely the names of the homes or places at which persons were 

 born, or to which they belonged; the particle "de" ("of" or 

 " from ") being prefixed. This was very common, especially in the 

 fourteenth century, and among ecclesiastics. In the earlier episcopal 

 registers at Salisbury, the greater part of the clergy are so described : 

 not as sons of certain parents, but simply as coming from such or such 

 a place. The present list is not a bad instance of the same custom 

 prevailing in the case of females. The reason was simply this. In 

 early days the Church, then all-powerful, acknowledged only the 

 Baptismal name : so that in order to distinguish one John or one 

 Katharine from another, it was usual — in Latin or French, one or 

 other of which was almost invariably the language of official papers 

 — to describe, say, John a Devizes-man, as "Johannes de Divisis," 

 or Katharine an Oxford maiden, as " Katharina de Oxenford." Some 

 families have retained, and some adopted, this primitive fashion of 

 nomenclature, a fancy at which Erasmus, in his colloquy called 

 " The False Knight," has an amusing hit. 



J. E. J. 



* See " Wiltshire Collections, Aubrey & Jackson," p. 12. 



