Tilson. (Ireland: granted by Carney, Ulster, 1697, to Thomas Tilson, Esq., of Dublin. Son of Henry Tilson, Bishop of Elphin.) Az. on a bend between two garbs. Or, a mitre gu, crest, out of a ducal coronet, or, a bull's head sa. armed gold. Motto: Fugite irreparable tempus.

Tilston, or Tilson. Huxleigh, Co. Chester. Confirmed 28 Aug., 1580. Az. a bend cotised between two garbs, or, crest out of a mural coronet. A bear's head, all ppr.

Sirnames and signification:

Mr. Lower, who does not quote any authority for the statement, alleges that there was an old provincial nickname for William, viz: Till whence Tilson. It is also thought to be a curtailment of Matilda, a familiar female name dating back to 1414.

                                         C. W. BEARDSLEY, London. 

Two favorite girls' names in Yorkshire previous to the Reformation were Matilda and Emma. Two of the commonest surnames there today are Emmott and Tillot, with such variations as Emmett and Tillett, Emmotson and Tillotson. Tylott, Thompson occurs under date of 1414 in the "Fabric Rolls of Yorkminster" (Surtees Society).

Boston, Eng., gets its name out of the twilight of history. Before the Romans built sea walls to keep out the tide on the one hand, and cut the Car Dyke to catch the drainage of the Kesteven and Lindsey highlands on the other hand the fens were wild morasses almost entirely under water in the winter. The whole of the district round Boston was probably a marsh, only inhabited here and there in its higher parts. At that time the tides forced their way up the line of the Witham to Dogdike and beyond these lay a large lake nearly up to Lincoln, which was then to some extent a seaport. Where Boston now stands was a lonely and desolate place. That was why Botolph came here to found a monastry. He asked the King for a spot which had belonged to no man before, "an untilled place where no man had dwelt," and the site of Boston was given to him, "a region as forsaken by man as it was possessed by demons." There he lived for a quarter of a century, raising his monastry by the side of the river at a place where it could be forded at low water, and here he died in 680. For many centuries after the cluster of houses which had sprung up around Botolph's monastry was called St. Botolph's town, but by the sixteenth century the name had been compressed into Boston. The next glimpse of the place we get is two hundred years later, when after the men of Holland, Croyland, Deeping, Langtoft, Baston, Bourn and Stamford had vainly tried to beat back an incursion of the Danes (though they killed three of their kings), at Threekingham, the monastry at Boston was burned,