Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

13 Boyhood found before and after the Norman Conquest, when the northern French forms Anschetill, Anketill etc. are to be found in England too. In the Whitby cartulary the Aschetillus of c 1155 has become Astillus by c 1170. The earliest record from Leicestershire is of an Anketinus variously written also Asketinus and Anketillus in the late twelfth century. The surname of Ezra Astill’s wife, Preston, probably denotes simply a place of origin (one of the many Prestons in England is just over the border from Leicestershire in Rutland), or may be ‘son of a priest’, that is of an actual priest or a man who earned that appellation from priestly appearance, deportment or behaviour (or humorously from their absence). 27 Ezra was a staunch Liberal and the couple’s first child, a boy born on 1 March 1888, 28 was christened William Ewart in honour of the Grand Old Man of Victorian parliamentary life in the parish church of St Philip and St James, as his father had been, by the vicar Robert Sayers on 15 April. Two other Leicestershire cricketers, Benskin and Pratt, born respectively eight years earlier and seven years later, also bore throughout their 27 For further details see P.H.Reaney and R.M.Wilson, A Dictionary of English Surnames (revised edition), OUP, Oxford, 1997, svv Askell, Astell, Preston, Priest. 28 For many years Wisden gave his birth as 1890, on which see Chapter 2. A proud Preston family! Ewart’s mother, Fanny, is pictured in the middle row, on the left of her parents, William and Karan Preston. Ewart’s father, Ezra Astill, cuts a fine figure in the centre of the back row.