ESSEX RIVERS AND THEIR NAMES. 283
till it reaches the Essex boundary at Roydon, where it receives
the Stort, and thence flows southward to the Thames. From
Roydon southward, it has formed the western boundary of
the County of Essex since the year 886, when, by treaty between
Alfred and Guthrum, the Danish king, it was arranged that the
river should form the dividing line between the Danelagh on
the east and Alfred's Kingdom of Mercia on the west. The
treaty12 provided that the boundary should run along the
Thames" to the Lea (Ligan), and up the Lea to its source, and
"then straight on to Bedford, and then up the Ouse to Watling
"Street." In the Saxon Chronicle, the name appears, under
Anno 896, as "Lygean," "Lygan," "Liggian," and "Ligenan,"
and, under Anno 913, as "Lygean" and "Ligenan." In a
Perambulation of the Forest of Essex, made 14 February 1301,13
we read of Bow Bridge, "sub quo currit ripa de Luye." The
parish of Leyton, which lies on the Essex side of the Lea, a mile
or two only from its mouth, and undoubtedly takes its name
from the river, appears in Domesday (1086) as " Leintun " and
"Leitun" (that is, the town on the Lea).
The form of these names suggests that they may come from
some Keltic or other pre-English root, as several writers have
held. The present form of the name, "Lea," seems to have
grown up in Mediaeval times, and is commonly regarded as
derived from the O.E. leah, a forest clearing, from which we get
"lea," "ley," "leigh," and other similar modern words. But
a river is not land, either under forest or when cleared ; and,
though the course of the Lea is largely through lands which
have been cleared of forest in comparatively-recent times, it is
necessary, if this derivation be accepted, to suppose that the name
"Lea" has been transferred somehow from the clearing itself
to the river which runs down it.14
(3)—The Stort (length about 18 miles), a tributary of the
Lea, rises actually on the boundary between the Essex parish
of Langley and the Hertfordshire parish of Nuthampstead,
and from thence, for about two miles, it defines the boundary
between the two counties. Afterwards, it continues through
Clavering, Manuden, and Birchanger to Stanstead Montfitchet,
12 Printed by Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, ii., p. XX. (1887).
13 P.R.O., Ch. Misc., Roll 113 (27-29 Edw. I.) ; printed by Sir John Manwood (Forest
Lawes, ff. 151 obv.-l53 obv. : 1615), and W. R. Fisher (Forest of Essex, pp. 393-399 : 1887).
14 The spelling ''Lee" appears to be a modern corruption for which there is no
justification.