920       

920
"In the yeare of our Salvation 920, King Edward the Elder (as Mavianus writeth) sent an army of Mercians into Northumberland, To reedify the Citie of Manchester and to place a garrison there (for it belonged formerly to the kings of Northumberland), and seemeth to have been quite destroyed in the Danish warre, against whom, because the inhabitants had borne themselves as valiant men, they will have their towne to be called Manchester - that is, as they expound it, The Citie of Men; and in this conceit, which implieth their own commendation, they wonderfully please and flatter themselves. But full little know the good honest men that Mancunium was the name of it in the Britans' time, so that the etymologie thereof out of our English tongue can by no means seem probable. I, for my part, therefore, would derive it rather from main, a British word which signifieth a stone; for upon a stony hill it is seated, and beneath the very towne, at Colyhurst, there are most good and famous quarries of stone." Camden (Phil Holland's Translation, pp.746-7).(7)