Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature. Bardsley Charles Wareing Endell
brothers, older than himself, were of course the four Evangelists, and had there been a sixth I dare say his name would have been “Romans.” An older member of this family, many years one of the kennel-keepers of Tickham fox-hounds, was Pontius Pilate Pegden. At a confirmation at Faversham in 1847, the incumbent of Dunkirk presented to the amazed archbishop a boy named “Acts-Apostles.” These are, of course, mere eccentricities, but eccentricities follow a beaten path, and have their use in calculations of the nature we are considering. Eccentricities in dress are proverbially but exaggerations of the prevailing fashion.
The affection felt by the Puritans for the Old Testament has been observed by all writers upon the period, and of the period. Cleveland’s remark, quoted by Hume, is, of course, an exaggeration.
“Cromwell,” he says, “hath beat up his drums cleane through the Old Testament – you may learne the genealogy of our Saviour by the names in his regiment. The muster-master uses no other list than the first chapter of Matthew.”
Lord Macaulay puts it much more faithfully in his first chapter, speaking, too, of an earlier period than the Commonwealth:
“In such a history (i. e. Old Testament) it was not difficult for fierce and gloomy spirits to find much that might be distorted to suit their wishes. The extreme Puritans, therefore, began to feel for the Old Testament a preference which, perhaps, they did not distinctly avow even to themselves, but which showed itself in all their sentiments and habits. They paid to the Hebrew language a respect which they refused to that tongue in which the discourses of Jesus and the Epistles of Paul have come down to us. They baptized their children by the names, not of Christian saints, but of Hebrew patriarchs and warriors.”
The Presbyterian clergy had another objection to the New Testament names. The possessors were all saints, and in the saints’ calendar. The apostolic title was as a red rag to his blood-shot eye.
“Upon Saint Peter, Paul, John, Jude, and James,
They will not put the ‘saint’ unto their names,”
says the Water-poet in execrable verse. Its local use was still more trying, as no man could pass through a single quarter of London without seeing half a dozen churches, or lanes, or taverns dedicated to Saint somebody or other.
“Others to make all things recant
The christian and surname of saint,
Would force all churches, streets, and towns
The holy title to renounce.”
To avoid any saintly taint, the Puritan avoided the saints themselves.
But the discontented party in the Church had, as Macaulay says, a decided hankering after the Old Testament on other grounds than this. They paid the Hebrew language an almost superstitious reverence.16 Ananias, the deacon, in the “Alchemist,” published in 1610, says —
“Heathen Greek, I take it.
Subtle. How! heathen Greek?
Ananias. All’s heathen but the Hebrew.”17
Bishop Corbet, in his “Distracted Puritan,” has a lance to point at the same weakness:
“In the holy tongue of Canaan
I placed my chiefest pleasure,
Till I pricked my foot
With an Hebrew root,
That I bled beyond all measure.”
In the “City Match,” written by Mayne in 1639, Bannsright says —
“Mistress Dorcas,
If you’ll be usher to that holy, learned woman,
That can heal broken shins, scald heads, and th’ itch,
Your schoolmistress: that can expound, and teaches
To knit in Chaldee, and work Hebrew samplers,
I’ll help you back again.”
The Puritan was ever nicknamed after some Old Testament worthy. I could quote many instances, but let two from the author of the “London Diurnall” suffice. Addressing Prince Rupert, he says —
“Let the zeal-twanging nose, that wants a ridge,
Snuffling devoutly, drop his silver bridge:
Yes, and the gossip’s spoon augment the summe,
Altho’ poor Caleb lose his christendome.”
More racy is his attack on Pembroke, as a member of the Mixed Assembly:
“Forbeare, good Pembroke, be not over-daring:
Such company may chance to spoil thy swearing;
And these drum-major oaths of bulk unruly
May dwindle to a feeble ‘by my truly.’
He that the noble Percy’s blood inherits,
Will he strike up a Hotspur of the spirits?
He’ll fright the Obediahs out of tune,
With his uncircumcis-ed Algernoon:
A name so stubborne, ’tis not to be scanned
By him in Gath with the six fingered hand.”
If a Bible quotation was put into the zealot’s mouth, his cynical foe took care that it should come from the older Scriptures. In George Chapman’s “An Humorous Day’s Work,” after Lemot has suggested a “full test of experiment” to prove her virtue, Florilla the Puritan cries —
“O husband, this is perfect trial indeed.”
To which the gruff Labervele replies —
“And you will try all this now, will you not?
Florilla. Yes, my good head: for it is written, we must pass to perfection through all temptation: Abacuk the fourth.
Labervele. Abacuk! cuck me no cucks: in a-doors, I say: thieves, Puritans, murderers! in a-doors, I say!”
In the same facetious strain, Taylor, the Water-poet, addresses a child thus:
“To learne thy duty reade no more than this:
Paul’s nineteenth chapter unto Genesis.”
This certainly tallies with the charge in “Hudibras,” that they
“Corrupted the Old Testament
To serve the New as precedent.”
This affection for the older Scriptures had its effect upon our nomenclature. No book, no story, especially if gloomy in its outline and melancholy in its issues, escaped the more morbid Puritan’s notice. Every minister of the Lord’s vengeance, every stern witness against natural abomination, the prophet that prophesied ill – these were the names that were in favour. And he that was least bitter in his maledictions was most at a discount. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were in every-day request, Shadrach and Abednego being the favourites. Mordecai, too, was daily commemorated; while Jeremiah attained a popularity, as Jeremy, he can never altogether lose. “Lamentations” was so melancholy, that it must needs be personified, don a Puritanical habit, and stand at the font as godfather – I mean witness – to some wretched infant who had done nothing to merit such a fate. “Lamentations Chapman” appeared as defendant in a suit in Chancery about 1590. The exact date is not to be found, but the case was tried towards the close of Elizabeth’s reign (“Chancery Suits, Elizabeth”).
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Several names seem to have been taken directly from the Hebrew tongue. “Amalasioutha” occurs as a baptismal name in the will of a man named Corbye, 1594 (Rochester Wills); Barijirehah in that of J. Allen, 1651, and Michalaliel among the Pilgrim Fathers (Hotten).
Colonel Cunningham, in his annotations of the “Alchemist,” says, speaking of the New Englanders bearing the Puritan prejudices with them: “So deeply was it rooted, that in the rebellion of the colonies a member of that State seriously proposed to Congress the putting down of the English language by law, and decreeing the universal adoption of the Hebrew in its stead.” – Vol. ii. p. 33, Jonson’s Works.