58 Gleanings from the Wiltshire Domesday. 



and, to a much greater extent, of those who owned or occupied 

 lands in Wilts in the time of the Confessor, still lingers amongst us. 

 It tells us, at all events, very clearly, the nature of the revolution 

 effected by the Norman Conquest. Some years ago we all believed 

 that the English were exterminated root and branch, but now we 

 know, — and in these English names still remaining in such numbers 

 we have in some sort an incidental confirmation of the fact, — that the 

 revolution was as bloodless as it could be. The principal landowners, 

 who were his active opponents, were supplanted by the Conqueror, 

 but the rights of the Church were all along respected, and the 

 tenants for the most part were not interfered with. The people 

 changed masters, but held their land in the same way, and under 

 the same customs, as before. 



Nor must we forget, that, during the ten intervening centuries 

 since Domesday Book was compiled, many circumstances, such as 

 the merging of smaller into larger estates, and the successive 

 changes of ownership, have all tended to obliterate many of the 

 older names. Hardly a neighbourhood is there in which we do not 

 seek in vain for one or more of the ancient names that once existed. 

 Thus, in the immediate vicinity of Bradford on Avon, there are 

 two places called in Domesday Book respectively " Berrelege " and 

 i( Withenham," the names of which have quite disappeared, whilst 

 the very site of the former is a puzzle to archaeologists, and yet these 

 were two distinct parishes, and in the Bishops' registers we have 

 the names of the incumbents appointed to them during the four- 

 teenth and fifteenth centuries. And so our examples, even though 

 they be not very numerous, are a testimony, however slight, to that 

 feeling which instinctively reverences the past, and shows itself 

 in so many of our acts, both private and public, in a steady 

 and persistent resolve to be guided by ancient precedents. Even 

 if exigencies so demand that we pull down a portion of our walls, 

 we seek to rebuld them on the old foundations. Our motto, as 

 Englishmen, has been hitherto — long may it continue so — Stare 

 super antiquas vias. 



William Henry Jones. 



Bradford-on-Avon, July, 1871. 



