ORIGINS OF THE BOROUGH
we need not deny. There were closes within the walls of
Lincoln as late as Iθ86.1
The Latin terms applied to city messuages in these Kentish
charters do not indeed on their face suggest a tenement speci-
fically urban and on the contrary have a rural sound. Villa
and υicus, if not villulum and υiculum, were common Latin
versions of the Anglo-Saxon tun and wic in the sense of
“ dwelling-place,” “ homestead ” and by extension “ village ”
or, more widely, any populated place, as our word “ town ”
witnesses. While in the country at large, however, the
wider meaning tended to become predominant, the original
narrower sense persisted in the Kentish cities. Charters of
786 2 and 824 3 preserve the English names of two messuages
in Canterbury, Curringtun and Eastur Waldingtun. The
contemporary English endorsement of the sale of a plot of
land there in 868 describes it as “ Sisne tuun.” 4 But a more
specialized term was coming in. As early as 811 we find a
Mercian king transferring to Archbishop Wulfred “ duas
possessiunculas et tertiam dimidiam, id est in nostra lingua
Sridda half haga ”—i.e., 2⅜ haws—in Canterbury with their
appurtenant meadows on the east bank of the Stour,5 and
twelve years later another king of Mercia added a small
adjoining plot measuring 6θ feet by 30, together with 30
acres on the north side of the city, 25 in the arable {in arido
campo) and 5 of meadow.6 A Rochester charter of 855 granted
“ unam villam quod nos Saxonice an haga dicimus in meridie
castelli Hrobi ” with the appurtenances of land, etc., which
of old belonged to it.7 Haga, afterwards softened to haw,
was, like tun, a general term for an enclosed area, a dwelling-
place, but it never obtained such a wide extension of applica-
tion and came to be almost exclusively applied to urban
tenements. Even when the word dropped out of ordinary
use, it long survived in the “ hawgable ” rents of some old
boroughs.8
The descriptions of the appurtenances of the Canterbury
and Rochester haws, one or two of which have been quoted,
show clearly that these civitates were in the eighth and ninth
1 D.B. i. 336a, 2. They were called crofts.
2 C.S. 248, ɪ. 344. 3 Ibid. 382, i. 526.
i Ibid. 519, ii. 134. It measured 6 rods by 3, a moderate area. Such
plots could also be called " wics.” See ibid. 373, i. 512. Hence the Latin
υicus and υiculum.
6 Ibid. 335, i. 467. ∙ Ibid. 373, ɪ. 511. ’ Ibid. 486, ii. 86.
,E.g. Cambridge. See Maitland, Township and Borough, p. 48 and
passim : W. M. Palmer, Cambridge Borough Documents, i (1931), Iviii f., 57ff.
BEFORE THE DANES CAME
centuries no mere aggregations of small agricultural estates
within their Roman walls, but exhibit all those agricultural
features of the English borough with the later aspect of which
Maitland has made us familiar, the messuage within the
walls, or suburb, and the appendant arable, meadow, pasture,
wood and marsh further out. Especially noteworthy is the
mention of the urbanorum prata1 and burhwarawaldl2 “the
boroughmen’s wood,” of Canterbury.
The eighth-century charter which supplies the latter name
has a further interest in the combination of the grant of
a large agricultural estate at Ickham with that of “ the vicus
called Curringtun, ” on the north side of the market-place
in Canterbury. This looks very like an early instance of
those town houses attached to rural manors, so numerous
in Domesday Book, which Maitland wished to trace to military
arrangements of tenth century date.3
In regulating the use of unenclosed fields and pastures
and woods and marshes enjoyed in common, the burgware
had constant necessity to act as a community, but the charters
give hints of wider common action. Land in Canterbury was
sold between 839 and 855 with the witness of the portweorona i
who were present, and a few years later a sale was witnessed
among others by innan burgware, headed by an Athelstan
who was probably the reeve of the city.6 The existence of
other burgware, living without the walls is implied.6
The application of the term port to Canterbury in the first
of these documents is of vital importance as showing that the
city in the ninth century did not subsist on agriculture alone,
but was a place of trade. That this was already the well-
established meaning of port is clear from a contemporary
London charter (857) by which Ælhun, bishop of Worcester,
1 C.S. 449, ii. 30 (a. 845). Perhaps the burg-vara meda of C.S. 497, ii.
J02 (a. 859) in which a half tun participated. It is not clear to what
burh the burware felda in the bounds of Challock (C.S. 378, i. 519) belonged.
2 C.S. 248, i. 344 (a. 786). A Canterbury grant of 839 included two
cartloads of wood in summer, by ancient custom, “ in commune silfa quod
nos Saxonice in gemennisse dieɪɪnus ” (ibid. 426, i. 597). For the Middle
English menesse in this transferred sense see Place Names of Sussex, ed.
Mawer and Stenton, ii. 560.
3 Possibly another case is that of the half tun mentioned in note ɪ
above, which is said to have formerly belonged to a " Wilburgewell." For
the tenement in Canterbury granted to the nuns of Lyminge in 811 “ ad
refugium necessitatis ” see below, p. 15.
4 I.e. " Portmen,” C.S. i. 599. s C.S. 515, ii. 128.
,, , β They appear together in 958 as witnesses of C.S. ɪoɪo, 111. 213:
ɪɪɪ gcferscipas innan et utan burhwara.”