ORIGINS OF THE BOROUGH
deserted.1 The more important became capitals of kingdoms
and, in some cases, bishops’ sees. In none, however, did the
bishop acquire the feudal authority which passed into the
hands of the French bishops in the old Roman episcopal
cities of Gaul or enjoy even the delegated public authority
of the German bishops in the Roman towns along the Rhine
and Danube. Such administrative and ecclesiastical centres
would naturally attract settlers to supply their wants, many
of whom would be attached to the royal domain and the
episcopal and monastic estates. There would be a market.2
These centres were already, in one sense, “ boroughs ” for burh,*
the general name for a fortification, was specially applied to
walled towns, but we shall not expect to detect in them all the
features of the later Anglo-Saxon borough. There is evidence,
for instance, that a court was held in them, but it seems to
have been the king’s court for a wider district than the ciυitas.
With rare exceptions, such communal organization as they
yet possessed would be mainly of an agricultual type. Most,
if not all, of them had arable fields and their appurtenant
meadow, pasture and wood, which suggests that the original
settlers had formed agricultural communities which differed
from others only by living within walls. The germ of a more
thoroughly urban Communalism lay in their market, though
royal policy afterwards, though reluctantly, decided that
markets and fairs were not to be exclusive marks of a borough.
That London at least was the centre of much more than
local trade as early as the seventh century we know from
Bede’s description of the metropolis of the East Saxons as
“ multorum emporium populorum terra marique uenientium.” 4
A law of Hlothere and Eadric reveals Kentishmen as frequent
purchasers in London.5 Signs of increasing trade elsewhere
in the eighth and ninth centuries will come before us later.
It is significant that when at the latter date the place of
minting is given on the coins, eight out of the ten mints on
1 As regards London, this is disputed by Dr. Wheeler (see above, p. 3,
n. 2). Haverfield pointed out that the correct Roman names of Canterbury
and Rochester, Doruuernis and Dorubreuis, were known to Bede, ap-
parently by tradition only. He ascribed this to the first English settle-
ment in Kent having been by agreement (E.H.R. x. (1895), 710-ιr), but
it may also perhaps indicate an early re-occupation of these civitates.
2 The venalis locus at Canterbury is mentioned in a charter of 786
(C.S. no. 248, i. 344).
, Latin, urbs in Bede, etc., arx usually in charters.
4 Hist. Eccl., ed. Plummer, i. 85.
5 Liebermann, Ges. i. ɪɪ (c. 16), a. 685-6.
BEFORE THE DANES CAME
record were in old Roman cwitates.1 This is far from ex-
hausting the Roman sites which developed into boroughs.
Of the seventy-one unmediatized boroughs which appear in
Domesday, some eighteen are of this type and Carlisle and
Newcastle raise the number to twenty.
Apart from Bede’s testimony to the trade of London, we
are not altogether left to conjecture and inference from later
evidence in estimating the stage reached by the future boroughs
in this early period. Royal grants of land in Canterbury and
Rochester, to Christ Church and St. Augustine’s Abbey in
the one and the see in the other, and similar gifts to thegns,
have fortunately been preserved and throw a little welcome
light upon the two Kentish cities. The charters attributed
to Ethelbert are forgeries and the earliest genuine grant is
that of Egbert, king of Kent, to Bishop Eardulf of Rochester
in 765.a This is a gift of land within the walled area (cas-
tellum}3 described as “ unum viculum cum duobus jugeri-
bus adjacentem ρlateae quae est terminus a meridie hujus
terrae.” This and some later grants of jugera with houses in
Rochester and Canterbury have been claimed as revealing the
existence within their walls of large estates ranging up to six
ploughlands and so “ indicating the survival in the civitas of
only a scanty population living by agriculture.” 4 The argu-
ment is, however, vitiated by two errors into which Professor
Stephenson has fallen. He identifies jugerum, “ acre ” with-
jugum, the fourth part of a ploughland,6 and fails to notice
that the acres were in most cases wholly or largely outside the
walls. The only certain evidence of acres within them is
confined to the two acres of the Rochester grant quoted above
and ten in Canterbury.6 Even these of course are large
tenements for a town, but in the ancient borough, we must not
expect the small and uniform lots of those of later creation.7
That there was some agricultural land even within the walls
ɪ E.H.R. xi. (1896), 759. It has even been questioned whether the
evidence for Alfred’s mint at Oxford is trustworthy (J. Parker, Early History
of Oxford, pp. 366 ff.). The most recent opinion, that of Sir Charles Oman,
rejects this scepticism.
2CS. 196, i. 278.
3 Cf. W. H. Stevenson, Asser, p. 331.
lE.H.R. xlv. (1930), 204-5.
6 The 30 jugera on the north side of Canterbury granted (a. 823) in
c s∙ 373. ɪ- 5iι are “ ðritiges aecra " in the contemporary English endorse-
ment.
’ Ibid. 426, i. 597.
, An acre for the burgage seems to have been a maximum allowance
ɪn the new boroughs of the thirteenth century (B.B.C. ii. 47, 51, 62).