There are those to whom the place-name suggests a Norman-French derivation--Roy's ton, or the King's Town,--but although the name arose in Norman times, it had a very different origin from anything suggested by royal patronage. Eight hundred years ago, when this part of the country remained little but the desolate tract the fury of the Conqueror had made it, the Lady Rohesia, wife of the Norman lord of the manor, set up a wayside cross where the roads met. The object of this cross does not clearly appear, but it probably filled the combined purpose of a signpost and wayside oratory, where those who fared the roads might pray for a happy issue from the rigours of their journey. At anyrate, the piety of the Lady Rohesia (or Roesia, for they were very uncertain about their h's in those times) has kept her name from being quite forgot, preserved as it is in Royston's designation; but it is not to be supposed that the pilgrims, the franklins, and the miscellaneous wayfarers along these roads tortured their tongues much with this awkward word, and so Rohesia's Cross speedily became known as "Roise's," just as to the London 'bus-conductors High Holborn has become "'iobun." A town gathered in course of time round the monastery--"Monasterium de Cruce Roesiæ"--founded here a century after this pious lady had gone her way. Monastery and cross are alike gone, but the parish church is the old priory church, purchased by the inhabitants for public worship when the monastic establishment was dissolved, and Royston Fair, held on 7th July in every year, is a reminiscence of that old religious house, for that day is the day of St. Thomas à Becket, in whose honour it was dedicated. As "Becket's Fair" this annual celebration is still known. For centuries afterwards Royston was a town and yet not a parish, being situated in portions of the five adjoining parishes of Melbourn, Bassingbourn, Therfield, Barley, and Reed; and for centuries more, after it had attained parochial dignity, its chief cross street, Melbourn Street, divided the place into two Roystons--Royston, Hertfordshire, and Royston, Cambridgeshire. The doings of one with the other afford amusing reading: how a separate workhouse was established and separate assessments made for each parish, and how at length, in 1781, an Act was passed for consolidating the two for local government purposes; all these inconvenient and absurdly conflicting jurisdictions of parishes and counties being eventually swept away in 1895, when the Cambridgeshire portion of Royston was transferred to Hertfordshire, the whole of the town now being in that county.