24 



JBroughton Gifford. 



together. About 320 skirt Broughton common, then the tide 

 flows down " the street " to the church, and over the brook. The 

 two outlying portions are about 50 round Norrington common, and 

 about 12 at Challeymead. The houses edging the two commons are 

 taken out of them, some with, mostly without leave or license. 

 The population is not of a variable character. Whatever our 

 exports, our imports are very few. The present generation, with 

 many before them, are Broughton born and bred: with very few 

 exceptions, the names occurring in the earlier court rolls and paro- 

 chial registers are the existing names. This remark applies to the 

 labouring class, who have been induced to remain by the possession 

 of small cottages and by the operation of the law of settlement, 

 rather than to their employers. The chief names now, and in all 

 known previous periods, in this parish, are — Mortimer of whom 

 there are now 75, Keen 49, CanteJo 26, Gore 21, Wakely (or Weak- 

 ly) 20, Harding 16, Bull 15, Collet 12. Our Mortimers are of " an 

 honourable house," and if they have not the lands, they have the 

 name of Ralph Mortimer who came in with the Conqueror and got 

 131 English lordships for his trouble. Like Jack Cade they are 

 mostly " clothiers," and " are able to endure much :" but they do 

 not pretend " to dress the commonwealth and turn it, and set a 

 new nap upon it," though they have more right than he to say, 

 " My father was a Mortimer," and quite as much to claim Planta- 

 genets for mothers, and Lacies for wives. 1 They are not ignorant 

 of their high place in the Battle Abbey Boll. Speaking in con- 

 tempt of the Keens, the " head of the Mortimer family," old John, 2 

 once said to me, " They came in with the plundering Danes, 

 we with the Normans." Nor is this improbable. If the Mortimers 

 be so called from a town in Normandy, 3 Keen is from the Anglo 



1 2 Henry VI. Act 4. sc. 2. 



2 Old John used to attend church most regularly, with his white head and 

 prayer hook, though his relations were all Dissenters. Once he strayed into the 

 chapel. The minister looking straight at him exhorted his congregation to pray 

 for whited sepulchres, who carried their prayers in their pockets, instead of in 

 their hearts. 



3 T am aware of the derivation implied by " Rogerus de Mortuo mari." This 

 is as old as 1306 : hut I believe it to be a mere after- thought, like that which 

 in grammar derived the English possessive case from the possessive of the 



