Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/10

2 divided London into two almost equal parts. According to Stow, this stream was named after the wall of the city; but it can hardly be doubted that it was originally Wealh-brōc, and was so called after the foreigners who used the water-way as a means of bringing their wares to market. In order to protect the two segments of the city—the ecclesiastical quarter and the soke of St. Paul's, which lay to the west of Walbrook, and the commercial quarter, which lay to the east of that stream—the massive walls and gates of the city were raised. On those walls, as Kemble says in an eloquent passage, "did the Saxon portreeve look down from his strong gyld-hall upon the populous market of his city" ('Saxons in England,' ed. 1876, ii. 313). It is in connexion with this custom of watch and ward that we meet with the mention of any of the London gates. In the earliest 'Instituta Lundoniæ' of King Ethelred it is stated that "Ealdredesgate et Cripelesgate, i.e. portas illas, observabant custodes" (Thorpe's 'Ancient Laws and Institutes of England,' p. 127). The gates in question must have been in existence at the end of the tenth century, if not considerably earlier. Another Saxon gate was the Westgate, which was the outlet for the traffic passing westward from the Cheap, as well as for merchandise conveyed from the landing- place at Billingsgate by a road which is probably only found at present in the line of Budge How. Near Westgate—the modern Newgate—was the large enclosure "known as Ceolmundinge-haga, the haugh of the family of Ceolmurid, which probably occupied a good portion of the space between Newgate and Aldersgate. On the eastern wall was Aldgate, originally known as Al-gate or Ale-gate, and not improbably deriving its name from the foreigners who, landing with their merchandise at one of the hithes nearer the mouth of the river, conveyed it by land to the eastern entry and thence by the main thoroughfare to Cheap (Æl=foreign, geāt=a gate or way).

Another gate which must have existed in Saxon times was Bishopsgate, the "Porta Episcopi" of Domesday ('Middlesex,' p. 128 a, col. 1). No authentic records exist with regard to the foundation of this gate, though it has been associated with the name of Erkenwald, a son of Offa, King of Mercia, and Bishop of London from 675 to 685. This is probably much too early a date. In later times, as the necessities of traffic increased, postern gates were opened in the walls. Among the earliest of these was probably Ludgate, which signifies a postern par excellence, from the A.-S. hlid, a cover or door, whence our modern lid. Moorgate dates from a much more recent period, and the gates on the riverside demand separate treatment.

To return to the point from which we started, the etymology of Cripplegate. Stow, as we all know, quotes the authority of Abba Floriacensis, and says it is "so called of Criples begging there," an explanation which was received with unquestioning faith until a few years ago, and, notwithstanding the doubts of a critical age, still finds acceptance by many. Mr. Denton, in his 'Records of St. Giles's, Cripplegate,' 1883, p. 195 (Appendix A), was perhaps the first to draw attention to the obvious difficulties contained in this explanation. He writes:—

And he therefore suggests that the name in Anglo-Saxon would be crepel, cryfele, or crypele, a den or passage underground, a burrow (meatus subterraneus) and geāt, a gate, street, or way, with reference to the probability that the road between the gate and the barbican beyond it ran between two low walls, and would form what in fortification is described as a covered way. , as we have seen at the first reference, accepts this explanation, but the form in which we first find the word seems to me to militate against it. In the 'Institutes' of King Ethelred, which I have quoted above, the word is found as "Cripelesgate"; in the celebrated charter of William the Conqueror, confirming the privileges of the "Canons of St. Martin's," it is referred to as the "posterula quæ dicitur Cripelesgate," and this form survived until the end of the sixteenth century, for Stow, in his account of Cripplegate Ward, though delightfully eclectic in his orthography, perhaps uses the spelling "Criplesgate" more frequently than any other. This form, it is perhaps unnecessary to note, is the Anglo-Saxon genitive. Assuming that cripel or crepel signifies a cripple in Anglo-Saxon, for which I cannot find any authority, the gate of the cripples would be Cripela-geāt, and not Cripeles-geāt, while the Den-gate or Burrow-gate would be Crypel-geāt; assuming, again, that crypel or cryfele is a genuine Anglo- Saxon word, and not a loan-word from the Greek. We are almost driven to the conclusion, therefore, that Cripplegate derived its name from a person of the name of Cripel, just as its neighbour, the modern Aldersgate, derived its name from a certain Ealdred.