Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/303

 s. v. MAR. 30, i9i2.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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OLD LONDON NOMENCLATURE : PUDDYNG LANE : RETHERES LANE : FYNCHELANE. In a ' Kalendare ' of lands and tenements belonging to the church of " S ce Margarete in Briggestrete, London," I find (on folio Ixij) an abstract of a document (" cartam ") of 2 Queen Mary (1556),* quoting, apparently verbatim, from the will (dated 2 Richard III., 1484) of Thomas Goldwell, " Civis et Pisten- arius," a description of the situation of his house which seems to have been inhabited by at least three bakers in succession thus :

"... .situat' in venella vocat' Rethereslane quondam diet' ffynchelane iam nuncupaf Puddynglane, in p'ochia S ce Margarete de Brigge- strete, in warda de Belyngesgate."

Strype's ' Stow ' (p. 492) mentions

" . . . . Rother-lane or Redrose-lane, of such a Sign there ; now commonly called Pudding-lane, because the butchers of "Eastcheap had their Scalding-house for Hogs there,"

whence the offal or refuse was carried along that lane to be emptied into boats on the Thames.

An alternative suggestion as to the origin of the name might be found in a query of mine on the "Pudding Mill" near Paris Garden Stairs (10 S. xi. 328), or in MR. THOMAS RATCLIFFE'S reply (10 S. xi. 498). I have seen Pudding, by the way, as a surname in Exeter records, c. 1250.

Pudding Lane, as the starting-point of the Great Fire, is familiar to most of us, but Finch Lane is to me a new alias.

occurs again in the same Guildhall MS. (fol. lix), but in an entry whose date does not appear, thus : "... .tent ... .in ffyncheslane diet' puddynglane in eodem p'ochia."

It is no doubt the butchers' building of Stow that is referred to in an entry (noted by me for its quaintness) in the burial register of St. George's, Botolph Lane :

1597. Mother Meeres, a poore woman dwellinge noowher, dyed in the skold^ng hall, on the 7 of Aprell, 1598 ; & was buryed y* daie in ye afternoone, in ye churchyard."

ETHEL LEGA-WEEKES.

BEAUMONT AND HAMILTON. It is well known that in the old days, when it was usual for families to extend their pedigree back to the Conquest by claiming a descent from some more ancient house, or con- cocting an imaginary lineage, the Hamiltons derived themselves from William de Beau- mont, brother of Robert, fourth and last


 * Guildhall, MS. No. 1171.

Earl of Leicester. But I have never seen any reason given as to why the Beaumonts were selected as eligible ancestors. I suggest that the choice was inspired by an heraldic coincidence. The seal of Robert, fourth Earl of Leicester, bore an ermine cinque- foil (see the illustration in Doyle's ' Official Baronage,' ii. 337), and the arms afterwards attributed to the family, doubtless from the seal, were Gules, a cinquefoil ermine. As the Hamiltons bore three ermine cinque- foils on a field of gules, the temptation to adopt the Beaumonts as ancestors is obvious. A convenient connexion with Scotland would be supplied by the fact that a brother of the last earl was made Bishop of St. Andrews by his cousin William the Lion (cp. ' Roger, Bishop of St. Andrews, and Ermengard, Queen of Scotland,' 11 S. iv. 245).

William de Beaumont has been usually considered a younger son (e.g., Burke's ' Extinct Peerage,' under ' Bellomont, Earls of Leicester,' Bellomont being a mistransla- tion of de Bello Monte, the Latinized form of de Beaumont). But William and his brother Robert are both witnesses to a charter of their cousin Robert, Count of Meulan (1166-81), to the Abbey of Savigny (' Cal. Documents in France,' No. 830), and William's name precedes Robert's : " Testi- bus his : Guillelmo de Breteil ; Roberto de Breteil." This implies that William was the elder brother, and he is carefully indexed as such by the learned editor. " Breteil " is their father's great Norman barony of Breteuil ; and a charter of Robert, third Earl of Leicester (1189-90), is also witnessed by Robert as Robert de Breteuil, in its Latinized form " de Britol[io]" (ibid., No. 306). Robert is more generally known as Robert fitz Parnel (filius Petronellse), his mother, Parnel de Grandmesnil, being a great heiress.

The alleged descent of the Hamiltons from the Beaumonts is now, I believe, aban- doned ; but Dr. Round complained in his ' Studies in Peerage and Family History ' (1901) that Burke's ' Peerage,' under ' Aber- corn,' still left it to be supposed that some- how or other the Hamiltons did descend from the Beaumonts, and persisted in beginning their definite pedigree a genera- tion too soon, instead of frankly deriving them from " Walter Fitz Gilbert, who first appears on the ' Ragman Roll ' of homage, 1296 " (pp. 89-90). Certainly a genuine pedigree of over 600 years should satisfy any reasonable person. G. H. WHITE. St. Cross, Harleston, Norfolk.