Farm-related words in Sixteenth century Essex

Continuing my posts on the vocabulary of the Essex Wills and its place in English lexical history, an introduction to which can be found here.

The Essex Wills are naturally full of words for household and farm goods. The majority are words that are still used, though the things to which they are applied may now be different in design or appearance. A large majority are words, or meanings of words, that are no longer used, but are carefully recorded in dictionaries, and especially in the Oxford English Dictionary. But a significant number have escaped notice by lexicographers and yet can be found, often in large numbers, in wills, inventories, and other non-literary documents of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (and sometimes in earlier and later documents). Please note that I record the absence of terms from Early English Books Online not in order to criticize that inestimable resource but to highlight the gap between the language we find in non-literary texts and that of the printed book, especially the literary text.

grey wheat

OED’s grey adj. has been revised, but it does not seem to cover grey wheat, which occurs quite often in the Essex Wills:

1559 (VIII. 149) 2 seam white wheat and 2 seam grey wheat

1563 (I. 176) grey wheat

1567 (II.  51) grey wheat

1570 (II.  235) grey wheat

1574 (III. 128) grey wheat

1581 (X. 213) grey wheat

It is also common in later works on agriculture, including a mention by Johnson, and in recent historical discussions:

1658 G. Atwell Faithfull Surveyor [Wing A4163] vii. 132 I have seen a sack of fine seed, white wheat, sold for ten shillings a bushel, another of  grey wheat at seven, sold the same day all to one man: yet he had no more measure of the course grey, then of the fine wheat.

1666 Philos. Trans. 1665–6 1 93 There being many sorts of Wheat, as the White or Red Lammas, the bearded Kentish Wheat, the gray Wheat, the red or gray Pollard, the Ducks-bill Wheat, the red-eared-bearded Wheat. &c.

1716 J. Worlidge Compl. Syst. Husbandry & Gardening iv. 63 We find many sorts of Wheat, mentioned in our Rustick Authors, as Whole Straw Wheat, Red Straw Wheat, Rivet Wheat, white and red; Pollard Wheat, white and red, great and small; Turkey Wheat, Pur key meat, Grey Wheat, Flaxen Wheat.

1773 Johnson at Wheat, 6. Grey wheat, and in some places duck-bill wheat and grey pollard.

1834 D. Low Elem. Pract. Agric. vii. iii. 334 In the next species, Triticum turgidum, Turgid wheat, the corolla is awned, but not the calyx, the spikes are covered with soft hairs, and in some varieties change to a dark colour, and the awns drop off as the seeds become ripe; in which respects it differs from summer-wheat. It is termed with us Grey-wheat, Duck-bill-wheat, Grey Polard, Rivet, Pole-Rivet, Cone, Pendulum, &c.

1870 St Paul’s 5 340 [In 1550] White wheat of the best sort was to be sold at 13s. 4d. a quarter; white wheat of the second sort and red wheat of the best sort at l1s. a quarter; grey wheat of the best sort at 10s. a quarter; and all other descriptions at 8s.

1984 D. Hey in J. Thirsk Agrarian Hist. Eng. & Wales V. iii. 59 Barley, oats, rye, and grey wheat were grown on the better soils.

From the the 1834 quotation, which seems more reliable than some of the earlier lists, it would seem to be a variety of Triticum turgidum.

bullock, cow bullock

In the Essex Wills, cow bullock occurs at least 9 times and bullock alone at least 5 times with reference to a female bovine, e.g. 

1559 (I. 59) a bullock with a calf..the other bullock that hath no calf

1560 (I. 49) 2 bullocks that shall be milch and give milk

1589 (XI. 173) my little milch bullock

1598 (XII. 171) 5 bullocks with calves.

1559 (I. 39), 1559 (I. 64) cow bullock

1561 (I. 116) 1 cow bullock of 2 years [several]

1571 (III. 261) cow bullock

1573 (III. 100) a cow bullock of 2 years

1581 (X. 17), 1582 (X. 120), 1584 (V. 185), 1590 (XI. 64) cow bullock

Compare:

B. Trinder in T. Arkell, N. Evans, & N. Goose When Death do us Part (2000) xiv. 274 Another inventory from Moor taken in 1710 is one of several in which the word bullock appears to describe female cattle. 

English Dialect Dictionary gives bullock sb. 1, ‘horned cattle of either sex’ (although the examples imply individual ‘bovine animal’ not collective ‘cattle’) from many parts of England, and not specifically Essex.

There is no evidence of cow bullock on Early English Books Online . 

ox(en) hog

Apparently a term for a pig, but not, if 1590 is to be believed, a male pig.

1581 (X. 157) my oxen hog, my poultry, and my acorns

1590 (V. 150) 1 ox hog called a sow

[1558–65] (I. 29) oxen hog

No evidence is forthcoming from Early English Books Online, English Dialect Dictionary, or other sources.

grimble, grimbled

In the Essex Wills there are at least 7 examples of grimble, 5 applied to a cow, e.g.:

1560 (VIII. 13)  my grimble cow and my 3^rd bed

1563 (I. 179) the ‘grimbell’ cow

1563 (I. 179) the ‘grymble’ cow that hath a calf

1569 (VIII. 216) a black grimble cow

1572 (III. 88)  my young grimble cow

and one to a bullock (probably a female bovine: see bullock above):

1574 (III. 129) To my man Richard my grimble bullock.

and one applied to a cow’s face:

1583 (V. 20) 1 brown cow with a grimble face

There are 8 examples of grimbled, 3 applied to a cow, 3 to a bullock, and one to a ‘beast’:

1558 (VIII. 45) a black grimbled bullock

1559 (VIII. 10) my red grimbled bullock calf

1560 (I. 110) gryn bellide (cow)

1565 (II. 2) a red ‘gryembled’ and a dun ‘howed’ (beast)

1572 (III. 108) a red grimbled cow

1582 (IV. 143)  a grimbled bullock of 2 years

1591 (XI. 150)  my grimbled cow

1582 (X. 82) my grimbled cow

There is also one example of grindled, probably a variant:

1599 (VII. 9) a brown cow with a grindled face

The only readily traceable similar word occurs in:

1701 Fable of Cuckoo 7 As th’ Apron’d Cuckold with his grimbled Phiz’, Fondles the Todpole-Bratt, he thinks is his.

1830 Robert Forby Vocabulary of East Anglia II. 141 Grimble, v. to begrime. A dimin. Ex. ‘The child’s face is grimbled with collar.’ Grumbled in the same sense is stronger, implying a thicker coat of dirt. 

In the 1830 quotation, the word collar = collow ‘soot, smut, coal dust’. In both the animal cases and the later human ones, the location of the marking is the face. In the 1830 example it seems to be suggested that the word is related to grime. Possibly the animal name Crockyface ‘sooty-face’ (Essex Wills 1599 XII. 44) lends support to this etymology.

howed

An immensely common term in the Essex Wills relating to the appearance of cattle:

1558 (I. 4) howed wennel

1559 (I. 95) a brown ‘hoodde’ cow

1559 (I. 274) a dun ‘hewed’ bullock

1559 (I. 274) a black ‘howed’ bullock

1559 (VIII. 8) 1 brown howed cow

1559 (VIII. 10) howed cow

1559 (VIII. 15) a black howed cow

1561 (I. 43) howed cow

1561 (I. 46) howed bullock

1561 (I. 101) a brown and a black ‘howed’.

1561 (I. 116) 7 beasts..the black ‘howyde’ and the brown ‘howede’

1561 (I. 116) 6 beasts..the black ‘howyde’ and the brown ‘howede’

1563 (I. 179) the black ‘howed’ bullock

1563 (I. 220) howed cow

1565 (II. 2) 2 beasts..a red ‘howed’ and a garled

1566 (II. 44) 1 black ‘howed’ cow

1567 (II. 149) a black ‘howde’ cow

1568 (II. 61) red howed cow

1569 (VIII. 217) 1 bullock being red howed

1570 (IX. 202) my yellow howed bullock

1571 (IX. 68) the youngest cow ‘fallacke’ [perhaps error for bullock] howed

1571 (IX. 68) 1 brown cow howed

1575 (III. 357) howd cow

1581 (X. 58) red howed cow

1584 (X. 121) red howed steer

1586 (V. 303) the brown cow with a ‘howde’ face

1589 (XI. 118) red howed bullock

1590 (V. 214) 1 cow in colour red howed

1590 (XI. 95) red ‘houd’ cow

1596 (XI. 54) red howed bullock

[no date] (III. 28) howede

The word is applied to a cow 14 times, a ‘bullock’ 6 times, a ‘beast’ 3 times, a wennel once. The following forms occur: howed (which may show spelling normalized by the Editor in some cases) 17 times (of which 5 are shown by quote marks to be the actual spelling); howd once, howde twice, howede three times, howyde twice, hewed (apparently the actual spelling) once, and hoodde once. Brown, black, dun, ‘red’, and ‘yellow’ beasts can all be howed, which suggests a marking, contrasted in one case with garled, which means ‘spotted, speckled’ (OED garled adj.) A beast’s face can be howed (as it can be grimbled). 

Also, garled, grimbled, and howed can all be combined with colour terms:

1558 (I. 252) red garled weaning pig

1559 (I. 204) her calf black garled

1558 (I. 65) black ‘howed’

1559 (I. 71) black ‘howed’

1560 (I. 301) brown-hued

1582 (X. 81) black garled

1589 (XI. 118) black howed

1592 (XI. 211) brown howed

1593 (XI. 170) black grimbled

1593 (XI. 241) black howed

1594 (XI. 214) dun howed

1591 in F. G. Emmison Elizabethan Life: Essex Gentry’s Wills (1978) 252 a white garled cow

Two examples (earlier, and also from eastern England) have been found outside EW (no evidence on EEBO):

1510 Duchy of Cornwall Record Office. Court Rolls. Hertfordshire. Hemel Hempstead Court Book 1418-1529.  (Court of John Rector of Asshrugg held there 21st day of January in the first year of the reign of Henry VIII) folio 75r, Item they say that William How of Pykes has died since the last court who held of the lord certain land and tenements and there falls due to the lord after his death one cow coloured red brown howed price 6s 8d in the name of a heriott. 

1530 Will of Robt. Rande 7 Dec. in E. Hailstone Hist. & Antiq. Parish Bottisham in Cambs. (Camb. Antiquarian Soc.) (1873) App. II. 146 To my son Joh’. a young Howed cow, and 6 shepe. (This is explained by the editor as ‘? = Housed’.)

A possible etymon is houve | hoove n. ‘a covering for the head,..a coif, a cap’, which itself occurs in Essex Wills:

1589 (XI. 184) my ‘houve’ and my best hat.

The likelihood of this is suggested by the use of howe as a name for a cow in the Essex Wills:

1571 (IX. 112) Northern Welman, Brown Howe, Brown Harvie and old Brown Wealde

A form ho(u)we is recorded in Chaucer MSS and a form howe in Promptorium Parvulorum, both given in the OED. The meaning of howed would be ‘having a marking like a cap or coif on the head’.

kneebanded

1602 (XII. 129) a black bullock that goeth ‘kneebanded’

kneeband is in the OED with no quotations, but is well established in the literature. The derivative kneebanded is not in the OED, but compare these later examples:

1769 Pennsylvania Gaz. 2 Nov. in NJ Archives XXVI. 369 A chestnut sorrel mare..has a mark round her near leg, above the knee, made with a rope by going knee banded.

1862 G. F. Playter Hist. Methodism in Canada i. 72 Keeler preaching in Thurlow one night, lost his horse. He was knee-banded, for pasture, perhaps with no enclosure.

Nothing found on Early English Books Online.

northern, western

These are terms describing cattle, perhaps referring to the provenance of the individual animals, or, more likely, to the provenance of the breed.

1558 (VIII. 45) norden cow

1559 (II.  112) the best Northern cow

1561 (I. 213) a black Northern cow

1584 (X. 4) 5 Northern bullocks

1588 (V. 102) my northern black cow

1588 (XI. 13) the Northern heifer

1592 (XI. 264) my Northern bullock

1594 (XI. 100) my little Northern cow

?a1567 (VIII. 125) 1 bullock of the Northern kind

1591 (XI. 67) my black western cow

1594 (XI. 86) my western cow

Contrast:

1598 in F. G. Emmison Elizabethan Life: Essex Gentry’s Wills (1978) 164 the northern white gelding.

No evidence is available on Early English Books Online.

ronded

This is another adjective used to describe animals, in this case horses.

1558 (VIII. 154)  ronded mare

1559 (I. 74) raundyde mare

1573 (IX. 60)  the ronded mare

1578 (IV. 16)  my ‘ronded’ colt

1578 (IV. 20)  my young ‘ronded’ gelding

1585 (X. 29) ronded mare

1587 (X. 36) ronded mare

1588 (V. 73) my ronded colt

1590 (XI. 186) 1 ronded bald mare colt

1598 (XII. 217)  ronded gelding

Also:

1574 in F. G. Emmison Elizabethan Life: Essex Gentry’s Wills (1978) 183 a ronded wort carthorse.

1602 in F. G. Emmison Elizabethan Life: Essex Gentry’s Wills (1978) 117 my pied stone horse, my ronded mare and her colt.

One other example has been found outside the Essex Wills:

1572 in Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth: Preserved in the Public Record Office (1913) XVII. 473, I am very sorry you did not send for my  ‘ronded’ gelding sooner. If the weather were as cold and as full of snow with you, as it was here all February, I am afraid Walter shall find him there dead for hunger. I were better to have lost 10l.”—Blois.

The word rand n. could supply the etymology and meaning. Common to most of its senses is the notion of a strip: in sense 1a and b, of land, in sense 2 of meat or fish, and in sense 3 of leather or iron. Several senses are specifically evidenced in East Anglia, and sense 2b, denoting a strip of marshy land, is chiefly East Anglian and usually in the form rond. If ronded is a derivative of this word, it would mean ‘characterized by strips’ (presumably of colour).

Another possibility that presents itself is randed:

1854 A. E. Baker Gloss. Northamptonshire Words & Phrases II. 158 Randed, specked, grub-eaten on the outer coat or skin, and not penetrating beyond. The term is particularly applied to potatoes, and presents a curious instance of limited locality; though very current in Northampton market, it is not recognised beyond the immediate vicinity. I have never met with any printed authority for the word, and am not aware that it is known out of the county. Fruit that is bruised by hail is also said to be randed.

This word would also offer a term relating to the outside of an animal, though neither the phonology nor the location (nor the limited use of the word at least by the mid nineteenth century) entirely favour this derivation. This objection is partially overcome by the fact that Baker also gives rand in OED’s senses 2a and 3a.

Shakespeare and the Essex Wills

This post is part of a series on the vocabulary of the sixteenth-century Essex Wills. For an introductory overview, see The Words of Sixteenth Century Essex Woman and Man.

You are quite right. There is no special connection. Except as regards furnishing the OED with early examples of words and meanings. And the fact that this weekend marks the quatercentenary of Shakespeare’s death.

It’s pretty well known that the OED gives the mistaken impression that Shakespeare coined a great many more words and meanings than he did in reality, simply because his works were extremely well-known and had been concordanced—so you could look up any word for which you needed a sixteenth or early seventeenth century example, and, with luck, there’d be one in his works somewhere.

The Shakespeare scholar Jürgen Schäfer (Documentation in the O.E.D, 1980) showed that you only had to mine other leading writers of the period, such as Thomas Nashe (1567–c1601), in the same way and you could come up with earlier examples that removed Shakespeare’s spurious primacy. This sounds rather brutal, but of course no one ever imagined that, for example, Shakespeare invented the name of a piece of furniture, the court cupboard, and then made Juliet’s father get his servants to move one. Every comfortably off household had a court cupboard in the sixteenth century as countless wills and inventories testify.

Schäfer’s work is all the more commendable because it came before the era of online databases. We now have Early English Books Online and can replicate—and vastly extend—his searches with relative ease. We can find plentiful examples from the printed literature of the early modern period of words and senses hitherto not even known to have existed then, as well as examples earlier than Shakespeare first uses.

In the 1990s the OED made another step forward. We realized that non-literary documents, such as wills, inventories, and accounts, dating from this period, which have been and continue to be printed in large quantities, are full of yet more documentation, much of it earlier than the literary documentation that antedates Shakespeare.

Not the least among such sources are the Essex Wills, which you can read about in my introductory blog, The Words of Sixteenth Century Essex Woman and Man. So here are seven words for which there is an example in a will from Essex earlier than in Shakespeare. In all but one, there is also an example on EEBO, usually also from a literary text. In two cases the EEBO example is the earliest.

OED barred adj. 1: 1597 Shakespeare Richard II i. i. 180   A ten times bard vp chest.

Essex Wills: (II. 199) 1567 my barred chest in my study

EEBO : 1580 J. Lyly Euphues & his Eng. [STC 17070] The key of yonder great  barred chest.

OED beer barrel at beer n.¹ Compounds 1d: 1603 Shakespeare Hamlet v. i. 207   Why might not time bring to passe, that he might stopp the bounghole of a beere barrell

Essex Wills:  (IV. 32) 1578? beer barrel

EEBO (earlier than both): 1551 The second volume conteinyng those statutes vvhiche haue ben made in the tyme of the most victoriouse reigne of Kyng Henrie the Eight [STC 9303.7] Table sig. A.ii/2 Beere barrell and kilderkin.

OED fail v. 3d ‘To die’: 1623 Shakespeare & J. Fletcher Henry VIII i. ii. 185 Had the King in his last Sicknesse faild. 

Essex Wills: (II. 92) 1569 If all my children fail before 20 

EEBO: nothing earlier found. This is a use which you might expect to have been a literary creation; but no, OED also has an 1878 example from Cumberland.

OED fellow n. 4b: 1600 Shakespeare Henry V iv. viii. 41 Let me see thy gloue. Looke you, This is the fellow of it.

Essex Wills: (III. 388) 1571 a framed hutch (the fellow to Agnes’ hutch) 

EEBO: apparently nothing older than the Shakespeare example. 

OED gleaned adj.: a1616 Shakespeare Henry V (1623) i. ii. 151 The Scot..Came pouring like the Tyde..Galling the gleaned Land with hot Assayes.

Essex Wills: (VII. 28) 1599 gleaned [corn]

EEBO (earlier than both): 1581 J. Keltridge Two godlie and learned sermons [STC 14921] his gleaned and piked vp corne. 

OED half-kirtle at half- comb. form 2m (not defined): 1600 Shakespeare Henry IV, Pt. 2 v. iv. 21 If you be not swingde, Ile forsweare halfe kirtles.

Essex Wills: (VIII. 36) 1565 half-kirtle

EEBO: the Shakespeare example seems to be the only one. It is the only example in the OED, so you might have thought it was his invention.

OED sanded adj. 1 ‘of a sandy colour’: 1600 Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream iv. i. 119 My hounds are bred out of the Spartane kinde: So flew’d, so sanded.

Essex Wills: (I. 210) 1558 a red sanded barrow hog with black spots, a red sanded weaning pig; (I. 252) 1558 sanded barrow hog; (I. 71) 1559 sanded pig

EEBO: 1575 G. Gascoigne Noble Arte of Venerie [STC 24328] Whereas oures are whyte, sanded, and of all coloures. 

In two of the above cases the alternative literary example (from EEBO) is earlier than Shakespeare’s but later than the Essex Wills. In three, Essex Wills are again earlier but EEBO seems to have nothing earlier than Shakespeare. In two cases, EEBO’s examples are earlier than both. There is nothing very special about the Essex Wills here; many other sets of wills or inventories could offer similar material. But it reminds us just how much more extensive, and how hidden, the actual ordinary spoken language is, in contrast to the highly visibility but minority status of the literary language.


Finally, how about dobbin n.? OED (sense 1) defines this as ‘an ordinary draught or farm horse; sometimes contemptuously, an old horse, a jade’; the earliest example is from Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice (dated by OED3 1600) 

‘thou hast got more haire on thy chin, then Dobbin my philhorse has on his taile’.  

There is evidence for Dobyn as a personal name from Middle English literature. But did people call their horses Dobbin before Shakespeare? The Essex Wills tell us that they did (and EEBO has nothing earlier):

Essex Wills (1560, I. 76) have ‘a horse called Dobyne’ (as well as ‘a gelding called Dobb’ (1588, V. 103)).

A Danish Chest? Evidence from the Essex Wills

This post is part of a series on the vocabulary of the sixteenth-century Essex Wills. For an introductory overview, see The Words of Sixteenth Century Essex Woman and Man.

A common item of household furniture bequeathed by testators in The Essex Wills was the dansk chest. Numerous examples occur. It is also commonly found in many other collections of wills and inventories.

The Essex Wills include three examples that are earlier than the single  example that you will find in the OED’s unrevised entry DANSK adj. (and n.): they date from 1560 (I. 37), 1563 (I. 163), and 1566. They also contain examples of dansk coffer and dansk hutch, which were probably very similar objects. F. G. Emmison’s volume Elizabethan Life: Essex Gentry’s Wills (1978) contain three further examples:

1593 p. 279 the hutches saving a danske chest I give to Alice.

1596 p. 307 my yellow danske chest in the north loft with the linen.

1600 p. 291 the new danske chest therein.

The OED’s example dates from 1569: ‘a danske chiste that was his sisters’. It comes from Wills and inventories, illustrative of the history, manners, language, etc. of the northern counties of England, which clearly shows how widespread was both the expression and the thing it denotes.

Like many other household terms of the period, the word scarcely appears in ‘literature’. I have found two examples of Dansk so used in Early English Books Online:

1571 T. Knell Declaration Tempestious & Outragious Fluddes  [STC 15032] Two Shippes laden with  Danske Ware.  

1580 J. Stowe Chronicles [STC 23333] Trussed hym in a  Danske Cheste. (This also occurs in Holinshed.)

So what is Dansk? Well, OED has two other adjectival examples:

1596 On her head a crowne She wore much like vnto a Danisk hood. 

1610 Our English [Iron] is best, the Spanish next, and the Danske worst.

And a noun:

1568 The rootes are now condited [preserved] in Danske.

On the basis of Danish, Swedish, and Icelandic Dansk the adjective is defined as ‘Danish’ and the noun as ‘Denmark’. This has been followed by several historians and editors of documents. 

This is, in fact, one of the few examples of the OED, first edition, confusing two things. I think we can accept that the ‘Danisk hood’ may well be Danish, and possibly the ‘Danske’ iron. But the place Danske is not Denmark at all, and Danske chests are not from there. The 1568 example is from Turner’s Herbal; Turner is discussing angelica, and the quotation continues:

for a frende of myne in London called maister Alene, a marchant man who hath ventered over to Danske sent me a little of these well condited with very excellent good honey.

In the Essex Wills there is also an example of the word as a place name which points to its true etymology: a will of 1565 ‘Written in haste in Danske’ by the master of a ship. Danske can only be the name of the port where the will was written, not the name of a country.

In fact Danske was the contemporary English name of Danzig (now Gdansk), the port from which the timber or the chests made from it were brought to England, as the OED itself shows elsewhere:

1390 Earl Derby’s Exped. (Camd.) 37 Item Herman, skypper de Dansk. (at SKIPPER n.²)
1533 St. Papers Hen. VIII, I. 414 The Cytees of Lubeke, Danske, Hamburgh, Bromeswyke, and all other the Stedes of the Haunse Tutonyk. (at STEAD n.)

There was a thriving import trade in timber from the Baltic to England. Many imports came from SPRUCE (OED, = Prussia, this form of the name attested from the 14th century), the region in which Danske was situated. One article was the SPRUCE n., sense 2, ‘a Spruce coffer or chest’:

1481–90   Howard Househ. Bks. (Roxb.) 273   Item a sprusse conteining ij. coffres of my Lordes. 

1507   in E. Hobhouse Church-wardens’ Accts. (1890) 54   Item one spruc.

or more fully:

1461   J. Paston in Paston Lett. & Papers (2004) I. 98   On of the canvas baggis jn the gret cofir or in the spruse chestt. 

1540   in J. W. Clay North Country Wills (1908) I. 174   The spruse chest which is in my litle chamber. 

1445   in J. Raine Testamenta Eboracensia (1855) II. 195   j cistam vocatam sprusse coffre. 

1522   in W. Greenwell Wills & Inventories Registry Durham (1860) II. 106,   I bequeathe to my said Wyffe..a spruse coffer.

And one might guess that the wood of which they were made was that of the SPRUCE FIR n. (much later in OED: 1731), though that would need confirmation by a historian.

In further support of this thesis, OED also has an unrevised entry for DANTZIG ‘used attrib. chiefly to designate kinds of timber grown in that district, as Dantzig deal, fir, oak’. The examples date from the 19th century, by which time the early modern English form of the port’s name had been replaced by the contemporary German form.

The Words of Sixteenth Century Essex Woman and Man

For the time being I have no further material on Tolkien to post. Instead, something rather different: word studies based on the extensive materials of the twelve volumes of sixteenth-century Essex Wills, which shed interesting light on the history of the English vocabulary.

What are the Essex Wills?

The work entitled The Essex Wills is an edition in twelve volumes by F. G. Emmison of approximately 13,000 wills from the various ecclesiastical jurisdictions of Essex dating from the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603). These wills are now located in the Essex Record Office in Chelmsford, Dr Emmison having himself been a very distinguished County Archivist of Essex (1938-1969). The volumes were published between 1982 and 2000. The last two appeared (thanks to the work of Mr Ken Neale and Mr Tony Burton) after Dr Emmison’s death in 1995, though the essential abstraction and basic editing up to the end of the series had already been carried out by Dr Emmison.

Abstracts of the wills of nearly all the Essex gentry and some yeomen and merchants, amounting to some 646 wills, had previously been published in Emmison’s work Elizabethan Life, Volumes IV (1978) and V (1980). An American researcher, John B. Threlfall of Madison, Wisconsin, then proposed to Dr Emmison that he should publish all the remaining wills of the middle and lower classes housed in the Essex Record Office (according to the original proposal, all those up to 1640). Publication of the first three volumes was undertaken by the National Genealogical Society of Washington D.C. with considerable financial support from Mr Threlfall (which continued for the remaining volumes). The remaining volumes were published by the Essex Record Office in collaboration with The Friends of Historic Essex.

Editorial method

The wills are organized into two groups. Those from the Archdeaconry courts, arranged chronologically, occupy the first seven volumes, each of which is divided into three sections for each archdeaconry. Those from the Commissary courts, also arranged chronologically, occupy the other five volumes.

Two major methodologies are followed. The wills are abstracted, not printed verbatim, so that predictable and repetitive formulae are skipped or abbreviated and repetitions removed. They are also modernized, so that the spelling is that of modern English. A number of words, however, are left in their original form and enclosed within quotation marks (of which more is said below).

Each volume has an introduction discussing the important historical, economic, and social features of the wills and indexes of persons, places, and subjects. Significantly from the linguistic point of view ‘words, rare, archaic, obsolete, local, or with different meaning from present use’ are also indexed in each volume, and Volumes 6 to 12 also have a glossary.

Reliability of the text for linguistic purposes

The fact that the texts are abstracted and the spelling modernized raises questions about their reliability and usefulness as a source of Elizabethan vocabulary and linguistic usage. We have, in fact, a number of pointers to the considerable reliability of the texts.

In the first place, the Editorial Method is set out in detail in each volume, making clear what omissions and changes have been made. Although these are extensive, for the most part they affect only predictable parts of each will; and most of the changes are straightforward omissions. New text does not seem to have been manufactured to summarize any passages.

Several volumes contain reproductions of individual wills which can be compared with their abstract in order to gain an impression of the kinds of abbreviation that has been carried out. In one volume a number of wills are duplicates of wills already published in a previous volume, and here again comparison yields a good idea of what sorts of change have been made.

Finally it is clear from examining the text itself that the language has not been interfered with, apart from the modernization of the spelling. Many words that are of interest have been left in a form which is clearly not the spelling they would have if they existed in modern English, which testifies to the conservatism of the abstractor.

There are very many words enclosed in quotation marks. Some of these are glossed or in other ways made the subject of comment, but many others have been left without remark. These quite evidently reproduce the original written form.

The importance of the Essex Wills to the lexical history of English

There are four main ways in which the Essex Wills are of importance for the lexical history of English. Specifically, but not exclusively, these contribute to the revision of the Oxford English Dictionary.

The Essex Wills contain a considerable body of words, compounds, and word meanings that are not recorded (except in a few scattered instances) in dictionaries, including the current OED, but are recognizable as genuine lexical items rather than potential errors (scribal or editorial). These show that there is still much to be discovered about the vocabulary of the past. They suggest that similar analysis might profitably be done on comparable records, published and unpublished, from other parts of the country.

The Essex Wills contain a number of word forms which do not appear to be readily analysable. They may be known words that have been miswritten or miscopied, or they may really be hitherto unknown words, to which, from the context, no meaning can at present be assigned. Evidently these are not readily usable in any systematic description, but if and when more materials are gathered, they may have a contribution to make.

The Essex Wills contain examples of words and meanings that are first recorded only later in the OED (antedatings), others whose coverage in the OED ends significantly earlier (postdatings), and a third group which fill a gap in the OED’s record (interdatings). Of these, the antedatings are of the greatest general interest, since they extend the history of many words further back in time and help to complete the historical picture of the English language. Needless to say these are being incorporated into the OED when the entries affected are revised.

The Essex Wills contain much material of a miscellaneous nature that contributes to the refinement of our knowledge of the English vocabulary, specifically as described in the OED. This includes modifications or extensions to particular definitions, the alteration of regional labelling (frequently from ‘Northern’ and/or ‘Scots’, which is unexpected), and new light on word origins (etymologies). The Essex Wills also contain a number of word forms, preserved by the editor as written in the manuscripts, and nearly all enclosed in quotation marks, which are unrecorded variant spellings of known words; some of these are relatively trivial variants and others shed new light on the regional pronunciation of the word.

Now read on...

This is an introduction. The plan is to post a series of studies on some of the aspects of the vocabulary of the Essex Wills outlined above. The first studies will deal with significant changes to the history of lexical items that are already recorded in dictionaries.