Page:Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries.djvu/448

 Of Dartmoor and its Borderland, 77 The old spelling, or Saxon form, of the name occurs in the •deed of Aniicia, as we should expect, and also in the charter of her daughter Isabella de Fortibus, granted in 1291. The name was probably derived from the tenure of the lands, Boc lofid meaning land held by book, or charter. Boc is the Anglo-Saxon word for the beech, and received its other signifi- cation in consequence of beech boards having been used for writing on by the Teutons. Dyer, however, states that places or streams which bear the name of Buckland derive it from ock or uckj " water,*' as many were so named before the tenure of Boc land was known.* But in the present instance we shall have little difficulty in deciding which is the most probable etymology. The letters on the cross which compose the name of Sy ward, have been considered to be much more modern than those which we have just been examining, and certainly have that appearance. They were therefore probably cut on the stone long after the cross first obtained that name, in order to perpetuate it. As this cross was in existence before Buckland Abbey was founded, we know at once that the monks of that house were not the erectors of it ; with regard to the monks of Tavistock Abbey, the case is somewhat different. Siward's Cross, stand- ing as it does on the line of the Abbots* Way, would seem, not improbably, to have been set up by the monks of Tavistock, as a mark to point out the direction of this track across the moor. But it has been supposed to have obtained its name from Siward, Earl of Northumberland, who held property near this part of the moor in the Confessor's reign. His possessions, the manors of Tavy and Wame, were certainly a few miles distant from the cross, but as there is reason for believing that the forest was sometimes under grant to a subject in early days, there is nothing improbable in the supposition that it may have been temporarily conferred upon the great Dane, and that the cross was one of his bond-marks. But it may have been erected by the monks of Tavistock nevertheless, for Tavistock Abbey was founded in the tenth century. This, however, is a point which, from the slender evidence we have, it is impossible to determine. Mr. Sp)ence Bate is of opinion that it was
 * Restoration of the Ancient Modes of Besttnving NameSj etc, p. 163.