Republican Fields January 6, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
A month ago Beach offered up some of the most offensive names that farmer’s gave their fields in medieval and modern England: Judas, Kiss Arse Hill, and Poison Piddle being some of the highlights. Our reference guide, Mark Field’s English field names, goes beyond the offensive though to the downright bizarre. Perhaps the most striking example of this are some of the field names recorded in Halstock, Dorset, in the south of Britain. Here is a sample and a very small sample of the extremely peculiar names that occur in that parish:
Cicero, Constitution, Freestate, The Good Old Cause, Hollis, January Thirtieth, Liberty, Locke, Needham, Republic, Revolution, Solon and Toleration.
Attentive readers will notice that there is a theme: ‘The Good Old Cause’ was the phrase used by members of Parliament’s army in the English Civil War and particularly afterwards. Revolution and Republic, Liberty and Constitution (to limit the king’s power) were all words that Parliamentarians reveled in (though they delivered pitifully little). The surnames are their heroes, from the classical and the early modern world: Cicero, Locke, Needham and Solon. Then just in case there can be any doubt January the Thirtieth was the day that Charles I was judicially murdered by Cromwell and co. Either the parish was a parliamentary stronghold, or there was a landholder with strong parliamentarian loyalties there.
The explanation is, in fact, the latter. One Thomas Hollis lived at Halstock (notice that his name appears too in the list) in the century following the civil war. Mark Field fills in the details.
Hollis was born in 1720 and early in life inherited extensive properties, from not only his father but also his great-uncle Thomas Hollis, benefactor of Harvard College, Hollis spent several hundred pounds yearly on books many of which he presented to libraries, particularly those at Harvard, Berne and Zurich. He led the led the life of a recluse and abstained from alcohol, spices, salt, butter, milk and sugar. He was notorious for his extreme republican views, and was even reputed an atheist (though in fact he was a man of intense personal piety). He retired to a cottage on his Dorset estate in 1770 and died in 1774.
Beach has been able to fine one other satisfying snippet about this eccentric from the Western Gazette (15 Oct 1943)
When [Hollis] died he was buried 10 feet down on one of his farms, and the place was ploughed over by ten ploughs at midnight, so that there was no trace of his grave.
Chris S, 23 Jan 2016:
This reminds me of Iain M. Banks’s science fictional Culture series and the trope of its ships having cheeky names. For example, No More Mr. Nice Guy from Consider Phlebas, Youthful Indiscretion from The Player of Games, Recent Convert and Frank Exchange of Views from Excession. Also the names you cite make me believe the seeds for the unpleasantness of 1776 had already been widely sown but the Crown decided to remain disastrously ignorant.
