<<There is no historical evidence that it was not done, and given the>> If it is asserted that the surname Puddephatt originated with runaway serfs who had deformed feet because their lords had driven metal spikes through them, or had iron feet because they had lost a foot from the same cause, then some evidence really should be provided that this did happen, that it happened in the period when serfs were adopting hereditary surnames, and that it happened sufficiently often to have given rise to the surname. Saying there's no evidence that it didn't happen isn't enough. My remarks about medieval society were naturally not based only on my own research. In fact they were based principally on the research of the many other historians who have studied manorial society and surnames during the entire medieval period, using original records - studies which my own work requires me to be familiar with. I won't go through all the points in debate again; suffice it to say that anyone who reads the historical literature of the last few decades will find little to support the idea that rural manors at the time when surnames were being acquired by serfs were 'concentration camps' - the more we study the actual records of manors the more we see a quite different picture. Incidentally, before I posted my comments I showed the spiked feet story to a couple of professors of medieval history who have worked on manorial records for many records. And this weekend I also mentioned it to some of the other historians attending a conference at Nottingham University on 'Slavery, Freedom and Unfreedom in the Middle Ages' (including one who gave a paper at the conference discussing the extent of lords' power over their tenants in thirteenth century England). None of them thought it had any foundation in fact (one professor, who has published quite a bit specifically on serfdom, called it 'total fantasy'). Matt Tompkins

As an aside to this, the Winslow Court Rolls which start in 1322 show exactly when ordinary peasants started using surnames, because the (new) system was still extremely fluid then: people with no surnames, people with several surnames at once, people with different surnames at different stages of their life, etc. As far as I can see, surnames then were more likely to be personal (especially patronymics or metronymics and place-names) than inherited. By the time the first surviving series of Court Rolls ends in 1377, a much more stable system had developed, and when they start again in the 15th century surnames are virtually always inherited from the father. So a peasant surname has really got to be a term which would be in use in the early 14th century. No Puddephatts in Winslow, though! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dr David Noy Lecturer (currently on sabbatical) Department of Classics University of Wales Lampeter U.K. d.noy@lamp.ac.uk www.lamp.ac.uk/~noy