What the original name of the river was is doubtful. Higher up, where it comes rioting down from the moor, above the Dewerstone is Cadover Bridge, not the bridge _over_ the Cad, but Cadworthy Bridge. Perhaps the river was the Cad, so called from _caed_, contracted, shut within banks, very suitable to a river emerging from a ravine. A witty friend referring to "the brawling Cad," the epithet applied to it by the poet Carrington, said that it was not till the institution of chars-a-bancs and early-closing days in Plymouth that _he_ ever saw "the brawling cad" upon Dartmoor; since then he has seen a great deal too much of the article.
Plymouth as a town is comparatively modern. When Domesday was compiled nothing was known of it, but there was a Sutton--South Town--near the pool, which eventually became the port of old Plymouth.
It first acquired some consequence when the Valletorts had a house near where is now the church of S. Andrew.
There was, however, a _lis_ or enclosed residence of a chief, if we may accept the Domesday manor of Lisistone[39] as thence derived. And there have been early relics turned up occasionally. But no real consequence accrued to the place till the Valletorts set up house there in the reign of Henry I.
The old couplet, applied with variations to so many places in the kingdom, and locally running:
"Plympton was a borough town When Plymouth was a vuzzy down,"
was true enough. Plympton at the time of the Conquest was head of the district, and there were then canons there in the monastery, which dates back at least to the reign of Edgar, probably to a much earlier period. The priors of Plympton got a grant of land in Sutton, which they held as lords of the manor till 1439. It was not till the end of the thirteenth century that the name of Plymouth came to knowledge and the place began to acquire consequence. But it was not till the days of good Queen Bess that the place became one of prime importance.
"In the latter half of the sixteenth century," says Mr. Worth, "Devonshire was the foremost county in England, and Plymouth its foremost town. Elizabeth called the men of Devonshire her right hand, and so far carried her liking for matters Devonian, that one of the earliest passports of Raleigh to her favour was the fact that he talked the broadest dialect of the shire, and never abandoned it for the affected speech current at court."[40]