Before passing on to a survey of our feudal aristocracy, I may mention our ‘Latimers,’ or ‘le Latymer,’ as I find it recorded in early lists. A latinier, or latimer, was literally a speaker or writer of Latin, that language being then the vehicle of all record or transcript. Latin, indeed, for centuries was the common ground on which all European ecclesiastics met. Thus it became looked upon as the language of interpretation. The term I am speaking of, however, seems to have become general at an early stage. An old lyric says— Lyare was mi latymer, Sloth and sleep mi bedyner. Sir John Maundeville, describing an eastern route, says (I am quoting Mr. Lower)—‘And men alleweys fynden Latyneres to go with them in the contrees and furthere beyonde in to tyme that men conne the language.’ Teachers of the Latin tongue itself were not wanting. ‘Le Scholemayster’ existed so early as the twelfth century to show that there were those who professed to initiate our English youth in the rudiments of that which was a polite and liberal education in the eyes of that period. Such sobriquets as ‘le Gramayre,’ or ‘Gramary,’ or ‘Grammer,’ represented the same avocation, being nothing more than the old Norman ‘Gramaire,’ or ‘Grammarian’ as we should now call him, only we now apply the term to a philologist rather than a professional teacher. As ‘Grammar’ the surname is far from being obsolete in our midst. A ‘Nicholas le Lessoner’ is met with in the Hundred Rolls. He was evidently but a schoolmaster also. The verb ‘to lesson,’ _i.e._ to teach, is still in use in various parts of the country, and we find even Shakespeare using it. Clarence says to his murderer— Bid Gloster think of this, and he will weep; to which the murderer replies— Ay, millstones; as he lessoned us to weep. (_Richard III._, act. i. sc. iii.)