centre of population, and it was finally decided to make it the capital of the province.
There has been some controversy respecting the origin of the choice of “Christchurch” as the name of the capital city of Canterbury. The accidental coincidence that Christchurch in Hampshire is also situated on a river Avon seems to have started a theory that the New Zealand Christchurch was named after this city. Archdeacon Harper, writing on Christmas Day, 1856, immediately after landing, endorsed this theory. He wrote:— “Through the site of the town, the river Avon, so called from the river at Christchurch, in Hampshire, winds its picturesque course.” But there can be no doubt that the combination of the two names in Canterbury was quite fortuitous. Captain Thomas, as we have seen, at first proposed to place Christchurch at the head of Port Lyttelton, where there was no river. He proposed to place a subordinate town on the Avon (already named), where Christchurch now stands, and to call it Stratford—the association obviously being with quite a different Avon, Shakespeare’s Warwickshire stream. The Canterbury Avon was named by the brothers Deans, after the Lanarkshire stream which formed the boundary of their grandfather's estate in Ayrshire. There seems to be ample evidence on this point, the most conclusive being a letter written by Mr. John Deans to his father (January 20, 1849), In which he said, “Captain Thomas has fixed on this place as the site of the Canterbury settlement... The river up which we now bring our supplies is to be called the Avon at our request, and our place Riccarton.”
Neither does there appear to be any sound reason for assuming that Christchurch was named after the Hampshire city. It might, indeed, be more plausibly suggested that the capital of the Province of Canterbury was called after the patron Saint of Canterbury Cathedral, which was consecrated in A.D. 597 by
