The _Eulogium_ of 1362, when it does not call Higden’s road Belinstrete, calls it Hykeneldstret, though when Gale quotes it he makes it Rykeneldstrete. Stukeley calls it “the Ricning Way,” and complains of Plot for calling it Icknil Way; yet he himself heard it called the Hickling Street near the crossing of Watling Street. Holinshed calls it “Ikenild or Rikenild.” In the time of the second and third Edwards there were men named after Ikenilde or Hikenilde strete (Pat. Rolls) in Worcestershire. One of them was a man of Alvechurch, which lies west of the road between Stadley and Birmingham; and there was an Ikeneld street in the sixteenth century within the lordship of Allechurche in Worcestershire. Drayton first distinguished between an eastern Icknield Street and a western Ricknield Street. He evidently knew the Icknield Way along the Chilterns, and his words about Rikneld Street as coming from Cambria’s farther shore until the road “On his midway did me in England meet,” suggest that he knew the road as a Warwickshire man, and that his distinction was not wantonness or the precision of ignorance. Gale accuses the road of taking the name of Ickle or Icknild Street without any just title. Guest also believes that the western road “gradually attached to itself the name of Icknield Street” as a famous name to which it had no right. Wise, in search of something to help him, suggests Hickling as the origin of the name, but knowing of Ryknield, he is tempted also by Rickley in Essex--confesses the temptation--and “must now beg leave to call” the road “the Great Ickle or Rickle way.” This use of Rickling reminds me of a woman living in a cottage beside the Ridgeway, near Chiseldon. I asked her the name of the road, and she said, with some hesitation, “The Rudgeway.” I asked why it was so called, and she said she did not know. I asked where it went, and she answered, “Oh, over there!”--pointing west, “--to Rudge, I suppose,” Rudge being near Westbury. An antiquary in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ (1787) comfortably explains the variation as due to the British particle “yr” prefixed. But no one has found a Ricknield or a Rickling or any such name along the course of the road from Newmarket to Wanborough.