significance in my ears than the names of the Dukes of Edom. Let us go back for our antiquity, if we wish it, to the misty Roman days. I have read in St. Gregory the Great, that on a time a certain individual let a lamp fall that he was cleaning, but when the pieces were scattered about the dark pavement of his house, slowly presenting themselves to his search by some inner virtue answering to it they were reunited and shoneout; so may old lights return to us out of the shadows, and broken things come together again.

The Romans, whose name of Fluentum hovered somehow about our river, and fixed itself at last on the Norman castle "apud le Flynt," whence the name of Flintshire comes, were the colonizers and settlers of all our neighbourhood. But between those days, when the legions and the garrisons at Ur-Iconium on the Severn, and Deva on the estuary of the Dee, gave rise to towns and villages which still mark our district, and made roads along which we yet may ride, and the appearance of any local concerns that have relation to ourselves, extend a thousand years; and we may think it fact enough that the towns and villages remained for us, and that Roman words continue, to denote our familiar bounds. In some

cases-as in that of the lands called Arowry, "Apoupa,' the plough-land, or in the Striga Lane, which, in rather colonial Latin, it is true, means what the place is still, the hollow way, these names are found unaltered, and without any combinations. In others, as in the name of the parish of Hanmer itself, which seems derived from the principal feature of its central spot, where the church and village stand, and to be Ain Meer, The Water, the first syllable repeats the Syrian speech of the not distant Ur-Iconium, and one of the most ancient terms to mean a village and fields extending by a water-side; the second syllable, of cognate intent, gives, by a not unusual process of nomenclature, the like meaning in the language of

1 Varro observes the habit which his countrymen had of using Greek words about their homesteads and villas. "Nec putant se habere villam si non multis vocabulis retineant Græcis quam vocant particulatim loca."-Lib. ii.

2 Richard of Cirencester, I think, but if not he, some other chronicler whom I have read, says that a garrison of Eastern horse was kept at Ur-Iconium. This is an interesting fact, for they may have been the progenitors of the beautiful Welsh ponies.

3 I find one of the names of Etna, "Mongibello," mentioned by Lord Stanhope in his second series of Miscellanies as composed in this manner: "a name made up of the Latin mons and the Arabic ghebel, both words meaning the same, and conjoined together by the mingled races of the time."

I

succeeding dwellers on the spot, and a glimpse of the progress of ages and of people is thus given by what is, to us, the most familiar name. forbear however from etymologies, often the vagaries of foolish people; lucus a non lucendo serves exactly to describe them.

Hanmer parish consists of six considerable townships, Hanmer,' Bettisfield, Bronington, Tybroughton, Willington, and Halghton, lying together at the south-eastern extremity of the county of Flint, bordered outwardly by Cheshire and by the Welsh march, now in Shropshire, and by parts of the parishes of Malpas, Worthenbury, Bangor, and Ellesmere, in the Flintshire hundred of Maelor, on its inner or north-western side. These townships correspond, more or less, with

1 These townships, with their associate vill of Iscoyd in Malpas parish, form the more valuable half, yet nearly balanced, of the hundred of Maelor, as it is assessed for the county rate at this day. Two other vills or hamlets formerly existed within the bounds of the township of Hanmer. One was Gredington, a name I think derived from the residence of Adam de Creting, who was bailiff for Margaret second queen of King Edward I., for lands she held in the hundred of Maelor; the second Croxton, mentioned further on. Haulton in Bronington was also once a hamlet; a certain limit called Haulton Ring was known there in my remembrance.

the valuable lordship of Beddesfeld, as it is surveyed in Domesday book, but I do not copy the Domesday survey, for it could not now be certainly extended to any particular limits; it does not mention any church but adverts to land which the See of Lichfield claimed by gift of Canute the King, but up to that time, as ever afterwards, had lost it altogether. There seems to have been a church in the reign of King Henry III. who obtained in border war some possession of Hanmer, for he granted it, by a deed which bears no date, to the monks of Haughmond, near Shrewsbury, and this, so far as I know, is the first mention of the parish by its name, in any existing deed or muniment.

GRANT OF THE CHURCH OF HANMER BY KING

HENRY III.

Henricus Dei gratiâ Rex Anglie et Dux Normannie et Aquitanie et Comes Andegavie omnibus fidelibus suis Francie et Anglie salutem. Sciatis me dedisse et concessisse in liberam puram et perpetuam eleemosynam Canonicis fratribus Hamonencis ecclesie ad sustentacionem eorum ecclesiam de Hanmere, etc. Teste Ricardo de Luci, Hugone de Laci, Roberto Marmion, etc., apud Salopesburiam, etc. etc.

This grant received ecclesiastical confirmation in the following terms:

CONFIRMATIO RICARDI EPISCOPI.

Ricardus Dei gratiâ Coventrie Episcopus omnibus sancte matris ecclesie salutem. Quia comperimus in visitatione nostrâ quam personaliter exercemus in Monasterio de Haghmon quod illius loci fratres regulares pro modicitate possessionum et defectu victualium non vacant contemplationi ut deberent, sed distarent per patriam pro necessariis vite eorum querendis; et ideo ad petitionem Domini Henrici Regis et Davidis Principis, Ecclesiam parochialem de Hanmer nunc vacantem cum omnibus ad eam pertinentibus de assensu Capituli nostri dicto Monasterio de Haghmon et fratribus ibidem deo servientibus et servituris in posterum ad eorum sustentationem auctoritate pontificali appropriamus et in proprios usus concedimus retinendam perpetuo, etc. etc. etc.

[The above are from copies at Bettisfield supposed to have been made from the Haughmond chartulary.]

This mention of Prince David shows the grantor to have been King Henry III., though the deed is without date and the King's regnal number is not added to his name.

I am no antiquary, and I pass on from what, according to any sensible date, are, for us, prehistoric times; but, notwithstanding what may be said of etymologies, I will cite a few more suggestive names,-Croxton, for example, a former hamlet,