Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/153

 s. in. FEB. 24, WIT.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

147

ELIZABETH HOPKINS' s THERD HUSBAND. (See 12 S. ii. 121-2.) Jeremiah Hopkins, -third husband of Elizabeth Hopkins, was in the Queen's Bangers, a loyalist provincial -corps which distinguished itself in the American Revolutionary War. He was taken prisoner twice: first with General Burgoyne, and secondly with Lord Corn- walHs. Sir James Marriott, writing on July 21, 1782, from the College of Advocates, Doctors' Commons, to Sir Guy Carleton, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in America, asks that he (Hopkins) may be promoted, or if disabled sent to England, in consideration of the respectability of his parents, who had " for long been in his [Marriott's] service, and before that in several very good families of rank in the neighbourhood of my borough of Sudbury." Hopkins, however, had been reduced in rank from a sergeant to a private, and was confined in November, 1782, for stealing the clothes of the sergeant-major. Owing to these lapses from grace the Commander- in-Chief replied that Hopkins was " un- deserving of recommendation and favour" {Hist. MSS. Com. Report on American MSS. un Royal Inst M vol. iii. pp. 32, 204, 205, 226.) E. ALFBED JONES.

6 Fig Tree Court, Temple, B.C.

WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest
 * o affix their names and addresses to their queries,

'n order that answers may be sent to them direct.

JACOB OR JAMES. Can any reader furnish definite proof at what period the name James "came into use in this country ?

The Latin form Jacobus, or any other possible form of the name James, was never

used by the Normans not a single example occurs in the ' Regesta Regum Anglo- .Normannorum,' vol. i., for the years 1066-

1100.

I believe the introduction to general use -in this -country of the Christian name -Jacobus to be due to the cult of the saint

known to us to-day as St. James the Greater, whose relics were translated to Compostella,

in Spain, and who thus became the patron

saint of Santiago. Perhaps one of the -earliest records we possess of a pilgrimage

from this country to the shrine of St.

Jacobus is that of the departure from Totnes

of Roger (II.) de Nonant (' Totnes Priory Mediaeval Town,' vol. i. pp. 43-5),

probably about the year 1148 (ibidem, vol. ii. p. 703).

The Latin form Jacobus, invariably used in early deeds, is to-day generally transltaed James ; but James is purely an English or perhaps should more correctly be described as a Scotch adaptation of the name Jacob, an adaptation which finds no equivalent, as far as I am aware, in other languages : Jacobus is rendered in Russian and German " lakob," in Spanish " lago," in French " Jacques."

Although of Hebrew origin, the Scriptural name Jacob must have been familiar in this country from the middle of the twelfth century, owing to the popularity which the pilgrimage already mentioned enjoyed. The Biblical use of the name, rendered into the vulgar tongue in the seventeenth century as James, is of course due to the translators of that period.* I cannot find even the Latin form Jacobus used as a Christian name in this part of England until the fourteenth century, and then not frequently. The almost isolated instances of Jacobus de Oxton (1301, ' Totnes Priory and Mediaeval Town,' p. 202), Jacobus de Cockington (1348, 'Torre Abbey Cartulary,' p. 97b, and 1346, ' Feudal Aids,' p. 385), and Jacobus de Audelegh (1346, ' Feudal Aids,' p. 392) will occur readily to the student of the early history of the Western counties. In 1348 a Jacobus de Conca, brother, and Jacobus de Spina, nephew, of the then Prior of Totnes occur (' Totnes Priory and Mediaeval Town,' p. 266) ; but these are the earliest instances in the Totnes records, which contain perhaps the largest com- pendium of early Devonian names yet put together.

If we search for the name in other con- nexions, Jacobstowe has never been known as Jamestowe, and the few dedications of early churches which bear the name of St. James were probably known before the Reformation as St. Jacob, just as Jacob- stowe is known only ecclesiastically and in comparatively recent years as Stow St. James. Similarly the* Priory of " St. Jacobus juxta Exoniam " is mentioned in the report on alien priories rendered in 11 Edward III., and I very much doubt if the religious foundation was ever known to the monks (by the title conferred by

James due to a desire by the translators to please ' the most high and mighty prince" thus addressed in the Introduction? or is Jacobus translated James 'in the earlier editions of the sixteenth century?
 * Was the use of the New Testament form