In some of these surnames we can trace the early cuttings amongst the thickly wooded districts where the larger wealds were situated. Our ‘Royds,’ or ‘Rodds,’ or ‘Rodes,’ all hail from some spot _ridded_ of waste wood. Compounds may be found in our ‘Huntroyds,’ that is, the clearing for the chase; ‘Holroyds,’ that is, the holly-clearing; and ‘Acroyds,’ that is, the oak-clearing, the term ‘acorn,’ that is, ‘oak-corn,’ and such local names as ‘Acton’ or ‘Acland,’ reminding us of this the older spelling; ‘Ormerod,’ again, is but Ormes-clearing—Orme being, as we have already shown, a common Saxon personal name. Our ‘Greaves’ and ‘Graves’ and ‘Groves,’ descendants of the ‘de la Groves’ and ‘Atte Groves’ of early rolls, not to mention the more personal ‘Grover’ and ‘Graver,’ convey the same idea. A ‘Greave’ was a woodland avenue, graved or cut out of the forest. Fairfax speaks of the— Wind in holts and shady greaves. ’Tis true we only ‘grave’ in stone now, but it was not always so. Thus in the ‘Legend of Good Women’ mention is made of— A little herber that I have That benched was on turves fresh ygrave. We still call the last resting-place of the dead in our churchyards a _grave_, though dug from the soil. I have already mentioned ‘de la Graveshend’ occurring as a surname. Our ‘Hargreaves’ hail from the grove where the hares are plentiful; our ‘Congreves’ representing the same in the coney. Our ‘Greeves’ we shall have occasion in another chapter to show belong to another and more occupative class of surnames. Our ‘Thwaites,’ too, belong to this category. Locally the term is confined to Cumberland and the north, where the Norwegians left it. It is exactly equivalent to ‘field,’ a _felled_ place, or woodland clearing. The compounds formed from it are too numerous to wade through. Amongst others, however, we have, as denotive of the substances ridded, ‘Thornthwaite,’ ‘Limethwaite,’ ‘Rownthwaite,’ and ‘Hawthornthwaite;’ of peculiarity in position or shape, ‘Brathwaite’ (broad), and ‘Micklethwaite;’ of contents, ‘Thistlethwaite,’ ‘Cornthwaite,’ and ‘Crossthwaite.’ The very dress of the majority of these compounds testifies to the northern origin of the root-word. Our ‘Slade’ represents the ‘de la Slades’ of the Hundred Rolls. A slade was a small strip of green plain within a woodland. One of the numberless rhymes concerning Robin Hood says— It had been better of William a Trent To have been abed with sorrowe, Than to be that day in the greenwood slade To meet with Little John’s arrowe.