S IR CHAPTER I EARLY YEARS WALTER SCOTT, writing of Swift's mother in his memoir of the Dean of St Patrick's, declares that her "ancient genealogy was her principal dowry." The lady in question was Abigail Ericke, descended from one of the branches of the Leicestershire family of Erickes, Heyricks or Herricks, to which also belonged the author of the Hesperides. The family tradition of the Herricks is that they owe their origin to a certain Eric the Forester, who raised an army to oppose William the Conqueror, and who, being defeated, was employed as a commander in the Conqueror's army. In his old age this Eric is said to have retired to his home in Leicestershire-the county with which the Herricks have ever since been closely associated.1 This tradition, unlike many such family traditions, does not seem to err through ambition. The probability is, indeed, that the Herricks are 1 See Deane Swift, Essay on the Life of Dr Jonathan Swift, Appendix, p. 37, and Nichols' History of the County of Leicester, vol. ii. p. 579. of royal descent. The name Herrick, the spelling of which with the initial aspirate was not common until late in the sixteenth century, and, as we see from the name of Swift's mother, was not even then adopted by all the branches of the family, is undoubtedly Scandinavian in origin. Under the forms Eirikr and Eirekr it appears as the name of at least one Swedish and one Danish king, and it is found in English history as early as the middle of the tenth century. The first English Eric of whom historic legend tells was the famous Viking, Eric Blood-axe-Eirekr Blodax of whom Norse saga and English chronicle have much to relate. He was the son of the Norwegian king, Harold Fairhair, and was born in Norway early in the tenth century. Driven from his home by his kinsfolk, he settled among the Anglian and Danish peoples of Northumbria, who, in the year 952, at a time of revolution, made him their king. For two years he reigned at York, and then was driven from his throne, and afterwards slain by Anlaf, an under-king of Eadred of Wessex. This Eric Blood-axe, by virtue of his deeds of daring and his adventurous career, appealed to the imagination of the gleemen, and in his honour was written the famous Eiriks-Mal or Dirge of Eric, the earliest of all Scandinavian Valhalla-songs.1 There was, too, another Eric Eric Hakonsson who 1 See Appendix II. occupies a distinguished place in Dano-English history, and is celebrated in song no less than Eric Blood-axe. This was the Eric who married the daughter of King Sveinn, and joined with that king in the Danish conquest of Wessex. He lived into the reign of Cnut, by whom he was made Earl of Northumberland, and as "Dux Ericus" his name is found in old English charters down to the year 1023.1 Under the stern rule of William the Conqueror the Erics, as the family tradition already referred to relates, found it prudent to retire to their Leicestershire estates, within the old Danelaw, where we find them leading a peaceful, lawabiding existence in the centuries which follow. There is still extant a letter sent by Henry III. to a certain Ivo de Herric, and more than a century later we hear of another Ivo de Herric, or Eyrick, who was living at Great Stretton in Leicestershire. The first of these two Ivos may be the Eyrick of Stretton, temp. Henry III., to whom the Herrick pedigrees refer, and from whom was descended Sir William Eyrick, the progenitor of the Houghton branch of the family, to which the author of the Hesperides belonged. Another member of the family was Robert Eyrick, who was the first Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and died Bishop of Lichfield in 1385. 1 See Corpus Boreale, ii. 98. |