Note 494 — Chapter VI · ‘Nicknames.’

This was a nickname of Sir Thomas Woodcock, Lord Mayor of London, 1405—

‘Hic jacet, Tom Shorthose,

Sine tomb, sine sheets, sine riches.’

In the neighbourhood of Belper this surname may be commonly met with. Some change of fashion at this date, encouraged by the mayoralty, would readily give rise to the sobriquet in the metropolis. Some country squire or bumpkin carried the new style into Derbyshire, and the Belper people still relate the fact of the grotesque appearance he then made in their eyes by the nom-de-plume that as a necessary consequence arose. ‘Sic est vita nominum.’