A HISTORY OF ESSEX of the adjoining manors as ' Est ' and West ' Thorndon.' The latter knight's will spells the names similarly, and so does that of his descendant in 1527.* On July 25, 1423, the Crown also presented to the church as to that of ' Est Thorndon.' * The returns in Feudal Aids distinguish ' Thorndon ' and ' Horndon ' as carefully as does Domesday, where ' Torninduna ' and ' Horninduna ' are entered on the same page. We may therefore safely say that, exactly as with Laindon and Langdon, Morant was mistaken in assuming that the two names were identical, and that Horndon-on-the-Hill is the representative of the ' Horninduna ' of Domesday, while its ' Torninduna ' is represented by East and West Thorndon, as they used to be, and ought to be, named. 3 To those who are inexperienced in the study of county history it may seem a matter of small moment that ' Horndon ' and ' Thorndon ' should have been confused.* But without the most scrupulously careful distinction between places similar or identical in name the descent of the manors they contain is reduced to a hopeless jumble, especially where, as is the case in Essex, such similarity or identity is of very frequent occurrence. Moreover, the facts established above illustrate in a forcible manner the strong tendency on the lips of the people to the corruption of local place-names by wrongful assimilation of the true form to a neighbouring but distinct name. Due west of the Thorndons, and just within the Essex border, we see this process exemplified in the striking case of Walthamstow. Entered in Domesday as ' Wilcumestou,' it continues to occur in records as ' Welcomstowe,' ' Welcumestou,' ' Welcomes- towe,' and so forth, down to at least the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- turies, when it meets us as ' Welcomstowe,' ' Wolcomestoue ' and ' Wolkhomstowe.' It is obvious that the modern ' Walthamstow ' is a corruption due to the near neighbourhood of the great parish of Waltham. It also appears to me that Shellow owes the addition of its ' Bowells ' suffix 6 to the fact that it was only divided by Fyfield from the neighbouring Shelley, and that here too there was a tendency to confuse on the lips of the people these distinct place-names. Something has been said above (p. 391) of one of the two types represented among Essex parishes, namely that in which the parish comprises two or more Domesday manors which appear, from their distinct names, to have been once distinct vills. As this type is detected only by local knowledge or minute research, 6 it is naturally less familiar 1 Essex Archceokgical Transactions [n.s.] vi. 54-7. 8 Pat. i Hen. VI. p. 2, m. 3. 3 Horndon-on-the-Hill contains 2,650 acres, and the two Thorndons together 2,925. 4 The Petre family adhered rightly to the form ' Thorndon,' and even when a new parish church was erected (1734) for Ingrave and West Horndon a contemporary inscription styles the latter, 'Thorn- don Occidentali(s) ' (see Morant, i. 215). 6 See p. 356 above. 6 It is somewhat overlooked by Prof. Maitland, who holds that, ' as a general rule, the political geography of England was already stereotyped' in 1086, that when Domesday Book 'mentions the name of a place . . . speaking very generally we may say that the place so named will in after times be known as a vill and in our own day will be a civil parish.' . . . ' A place that is mentioned in Domes- day Book will probably be recognized as a vill in the thirteenth, as a civil parish in the nineteenth 400
