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Recorded in a variety of spellings including Maycock, Meacock and Mecock, this is an English surname. It derives from "Mahieu" a short form of the hebrew personal name Matthew, a name introduced into Europe by the famous Knight Templars (Crusaders). This was on their return from the various unsuccessful expeditions to free the Holy Land from the Muslims, it being the fashion to call ones children by biblical names in honour of the fathers exploits. In this case the old English or Anglo-Saxon suffix "cocca", used to denote "son of", was added as a patronymic. The name in its many and varied spellings has been well recorded since the 13th Century; and examples taken from early surving charters, rolls and registers of the medieval period include: Maicoc, le Crouder, in the Assize Court rolls of the county of Lancashire in 1284, and Thomas Macok in the Pipe Rolls of Derbyshire in the Subsidy Rolls of 1327. Other recordings from a later period are those of Elizabeth Maycoke in London in 1548. This was during the first year of the reign of King Edward V1, known as 'The boy king', whilst Alice Mecock, was christened at St Andrews by the Wardrobe in the city of London on December 8th 1616, and Ann Meacock, married Edward Whitcombe at St George's chapel, Mayfair, on October 15th 1754. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of William Maycock. This was dated 1323, when he was a witness at the Assize Court of Stafford. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.
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