There is probably no village or hamlet in England which has not subscribed in this manner to the sum total of our nomenclature. It is this which is so telltale of the present, for while a small rural spot like, say ‘Debenham,’ in Suffolk, or ‘Ashford,’ in Derbyshire, will have its score of representatives, a solitary ‘Richard de Lyverpole,’ or ‘Guido de Mancestre,’ or ‘John de Burmyngham’ will be all we can find to represent such large centres of population as Manchester, or Liverpool, or Birmingham. Mushroomlike they sprang up but yesterday, while for centuries these insignificant hamlets have pursued the even tenor of their way, somewhat disturbed, it may have been, from their equanimity four or five centuries agone, by the announcement that Ralph or Miles was about to leave them, and who, by thus becoming ‘Ralph de Debenham’ or ‘Miles de Ashford,’ have given to the world to the end of time the story of their early departure. In the same class with the village names of England must we set our county surnames. These are of course but an insignificant number set by their brethren, still we must not pass them by without a word. In the present day, if we were to speak of a man in connexion with his county, we should say he was a Derbyshire or a Lancashire man, as the case might be. That they did this five or six hundred years ago is evidenced by the existence of these very names in our midst. Thus we can point in our records to such designations as ‘John Hamshire,’ or ‘Adam de Kent,’ or ‘Richard de Wiltshire,’ or ‘Geoffrey de Cornwayle.’ Still this was not the only form of county nomenclature. The Normans, I suspect it was, who introduced another. We have still ‘Kentish’ and ‘Devonish’ and ‘Cornish’ to represent the ‘William le Kentish’s,’ or ‘John le Devoneis’s,’ or ‘Margery le Cornyshe’s,’ of their early rolls; and our ‘Cornwallis’s’ also yet preserve such fuller forms as ‘Thomas le Cornwaleys,’ or ‘Philip le Cornwaleys.’ We may here mention our ‘Cockins,’ ‘Cockaignes,’ and ‘Cockaynes,’ instances of which are early found. An old poem begins— Fur in sea, bi west Spayne, Is a lond ihote Cockaigne.