_Joh. Rabuz equum, saccum, et Brocham in exercitu Wall’ ad Custum Regis post primam noctem._ His service was to find a horse, sack, and broach on an expedition into Wales, the king finding him in provisions, or probably keeping him and his horse after the first night. It was a personal service to the Sovereign; the sack containing eatables and the can or pitcher drink for the king’s use. “Port” and “Port-Reeve.” BY J. H. ROUND, M.A. _PART III_ (_Continued from Vol. V. page 287._) BEFORE tracing the working of this process in the similar case of _ceaster_, it may be as well to dispose etymologically of _port_. I have avowedly restricted myself, in this paper, to _port_ as it occurs in “port-reeve.” But Professor Skeat, in his “Etymological Dictionary” (p. 457), while wholly ignoring, it would seem, its meaning in this and the similar compounds, assigns to the Anglo-Saxon “port,” not merely the derivation direct from port_us_, but an identity of meaning with that word. And in support of that meaning, “a harbour, haven,” he aptly adduces Alfred’s translation of Bede, in which “to tham porte” means “to the haven.” Here, however, it might perhaps be urged that Alfred was influenced in his choice of the term by the “portus” in the original before him. It need not follow that when not so influenced, he would have spoken of a haven as a “port.” Moreover, it is possible, and indeed probable, that the original sense of “port” was replaced by that narrower one of a “haven” or “sea-port,” which it had certainly come to bear by Middle English days, in consequence of that recurrence to Latin models, in which Alfred had himself led the way, and which would lead to what might almost be termed a re-introduction of the word into the language, fresh from the Latin itself. But again, Alfred might have been influenced in his style by the Welshman, “Asser, my bishop.”[9] For though the Welsh, as I have said, adopted “portman” in the sense of a “trader” from the A. S., they had in their own word _porth_ the equivalent at once of _porta_ and _portus_. Of its use in the former sense we have an illustration, as Mr. Barnes has pointed out (Arch. Jour. xxii. 232), in the Welsh version of Matthew vii. 13:--“ehang yw’r _porth_, a llydan yw’r fford,” (“wide is the _gate_, and broad is the way “), where in the A. S. version the word used is _geat_. Its use in the latter is familiar.