There is yet another argument for putting Wereia here. Domesday says that Godwin had a virgate of land at Wereia free of tax, and the Inquest of the Geld says that he had a virgate in Teignbridge Hundred free of tax. No doubt, his Teignbridge virgate may be his virgate at Wereia; but it may just as well be his virgate in four other estates of his which had a virgate each, or two half-virgates in any two of his three estates with half a virgate each. And the equation does not work out, as he has a quarter of a virgate more in Domesday than in the Inquest of the Geld. There were two Wreys on the river Wrey, just as there are two Boveys on the river Bovey not far off. They are distinguished as North Bovey and South Bovey or Bovey Tracey, and the Wreys were distinguished as Wreyford and Wreycombe. In the old title-deeds this place is Wrey or Wreyford as far as 1529 and Wrey or Wreyland in 1544 and onwards; but I do not know the reason for the change. There are several families called Wreyford or Wreford or Wrayford, and I presume their ancestors all came from here. But, so far as I know, there is not any family called Wreyland; and this tempts me to say that families had ceased (by 1544) to take their surnames from the places whence they came. There is, however, a family called Rellend; and sometimes Wreyland is pronounced like that. Writers on Devon show a curious reticence about its good old name--Damnonium. There are writers like Moore and Lysons who give it correctly in Greek letters when they are quoting Ptolemy, and yet transpose the _m_ and _n_ on putting it into English, as if they could not face the Damn. Think of the lines in Carrington’s _Dartmoor_--“Erstwhile here the fierce Danmonii dwelt.” The softening takes off half its strength. In his poem _Of the courtier’s life_, probably written in 1541, Sir Thomas Wyatt contrasts his country life with life at court, and says “In lusty leas at liberty I walk.” He was not at Lustleigh--he says “but I am here in Kent and Christendom”--but his verse gives the true meaning of the name. The ‘leas’ are fields and meadows, and ‘lusty’ is pleasant, the old English ‘lusty’ answering to the modern German ‘lustig.’ Lustleigh Cleave is Lustleigh Cliff, as ‘cleave’ and ‘cliff’ are really the same word. Other steep hillsides have the name--Caseleigh Cleave, Wrey Cleave, Neadon Cleave, and so on. And sometimes it is spelt the other way, as in a note of my grandfather’s, 31 May 1863, that he is laying in a stock of firewood--“all the oak wood on Casely Cliff at eight shillings per hundred faggots.”