The ward is mentioned in a murder case (Riley’s _Memorials_) in 1276. Reference to the parish occurs repeatedly between 1276 and 1349 (_Calendar of Wills_). There are mentioned messuages, rents, tenements, shops, a brew-house, etc., in the parish. The street is mentioned separately later. In the fourteenth century there are dwelling-places, tenements, mansion-houses, brew-houses, bakehouses, and shops. But there are no signs of a fen in or about the street. It is suggested that as Gracechurch Street is the street of Grass, so Fenchurch Street is Foin-church, the street of Hay, both streets belonging to the market of hay, grass, and corn. But Professor Skeat replies to this suggestion: “It is impossible to derive _fen_ from the French _foin_. No French _oi_ becomes _e_ in English. But it might be derived from the Anglo-French _fein_, which is the corresponding word to the French _foin_ and had the same sense. In this case it ought to be possible to find the spelling _fein_. Otherwise _fen_ can only mean _fen_. Note that the English _fen_ may be spelt also _fenne_. But the Anglo-French _fein_ could not take either _n_ or _ne_ at the end of it. I suspect Stow is right. I see no evidence to the contrary.” Again, writing later, Professor Skeat says: “I think we can get at Fenchurch now, by help of the history. “Fen was an extremely common word in Middle English, not merely in the sense of _morass_, but in the sense of the modern word _mud_. ‘Mud’ is quite a late word, but I presume that the thing was known in the City even in the earliest times, and the name of it was ‘fen.’ This being so, it is tolerably certain that if the name originally was anything that could be readily turned into _fen_, that would soon become the pronunciation and the ‘popular’ etymology. “If we start from the idea of Hay, we proceed through the Norman form which was not _foin_ (this could never have given us _fen_), but _fein_ or _fayn_, or _fain_, pronounced as modern English _fain_ (the nasal _n_ in Norman being of little account except after the simple vowels _a_ and _e_). But the corresponding verb ‘to cut hay’ was actually ‘fener.’ The phrase ‘Li fain estoient fené’ is quoted from Froissart in Godefroy’s _Old French Dictionary_, s.v. _Fener_. And the verb _fener_ is still in use in Burgundy. “It is easy to see how the word _fain_ could thus be associated with a pronunciation _fen_, and Englishmen who knew no French (there were plenty of them) may very well have imagined in their hearts that the reference was to the mud in the streets. That there _was_ mud may be taken for granted. There is some left still. “There was also a remarkable adjective _feneresse_, whence the word _feneresse_, a female seller of hay. And there was a word _fenerie_ which meant a barn for hay. And _feneron_, a hay maker.”