It is thus we have acquired our phrase ‘to dub a knight.’ The term, however, became very general in the sense of embellishing, rather than mere dressing, and it is to this use of the word we owe the surname. Thus, in the ‘Liber Albus’ we find a ‘Peter le Dubbour’ recorded, whose trade was to furbish up old clothes; he was a fripperer in fact. In the York Pageant, already referred to more than once, we see the ‘Dubbers’ walking in procession between the ‘Bookbinders’ and ‘Limners,’ and here they were evidently mere trimmers or decorators externally of books. In another register we find a ‘dubbour,’ so called because as a hawker of fish he was in the habit of putting all the fine ones at the top of his basket, a trick still in vogue in that profession, I fear.[361] In all these cases we see that ‘adornment’ or ‘embellishment’ is the main idea. I need not remind my more North-country readers how every gardener still speaks of ‘dubbing’ when he heaps up afresh the soil about his flowers and plants. The old forms of the name were ‘Jordan le Dubber,’ ‘Payen le Dubbour,’ and ‘Ralph le Douber,’ which last most nearly approaches its root, the old Norman-French ‘adouber,’ to arrange. A curious occupation is preserved from oblivion in our somewhat rare ‘Raffmans.’ We have the root meaning of the word in our ‘reft’ and ‘bereft,’ implicative of that which is snatched away or swept off. Thus we still use ‘riff-raff’ in regard to the off-scouring of the people. A raff-merchant was a dealer in lumber of any kind. In the Guild of Saint George, Norwich, 1385, we find not merely the name of ‘John Raffman,’ but such entries as ‘Robert Smith, raffman,’ or ‘John Smith, rafman.’ The term ‘raff’ for a low fellow is not yet obsolete, and Tennyson, when he says Let raffs be rife in prose or rhyme, is only using a sobriquet which, until recently, was a very familiar one in the mouths of our peasantry. I have placed the surname here because I doubt not the occupation whence it sprung was chiefly in respect of trimmings, and the shearings of cloth, wool, and such like articles of merchandise. Another surname we must consider here is that belonging to ‘Ketel le Mercer’ or ‘Henry le Mercer,’ now found also as ‘Marcer.’ We see in the very title that the term has engrossed a sense not strictly its own, and that, though we visit the mercer’s shop for silken goods, he was originally a dealer in every kind of ware. He represented in mediæval times, in fact, the storekeeper of our colonies. Indeed I believe that to this day in some of our more retired country parts the mercer will supply his customers with haberdashery, drugs, draperies, hardware, and all general wants, saving actual comestibles. Mr. Lower quotes an old political song against the friars, in which this more correct sense of the word is conveyed—