ι8 ORIGINS OF THE BOROUGH
chance Asser not only describes his early fortifications at
Athelney, but quite casually reveals the fact that Shaftesbury,
to which in the Hidage 700 hides are assigned, was surrounded
by a wall with gates.1 It is significant, too, that the fortresses
of the Hidage stand thickest in central Somerset, the starting-
point of Alfred’s recovery of his kingdom, round his bridge-
head “ work ” at Lyng, the “ arx munitissima ” of Asser,a
which completed the isolation of Athelney.
The scheme as a whole is skilfully devised to stay Danish
attacks at all vulnerable points inland or on the coast.3 It
is surely too elaborate to have been devised during the early
difficulties of Edward’s reign before he took the offensive
against the Danes. Any measures of defence that he resorted
to must have been mainly based upon the work of his father
as we see it revealed by his biographer and chronicler. It is
conceivable that the original of the corrupt MS. of the Burghal
Hidage, which is all we have, was copied in the reign of
Edward from an earlier document, and any anachronisms, if
there be such,4 may have come in then.
About a third of the thirty-one 5 burhs in the main list
were small military centres of temporary importance and
never developed into towns. Only twenty-two were accounted
boroughs in the later sense, and not all these became corporate
towns.® Some twelve are mentioned as ports before the
Norman Conquest, and nineteen are known to have had
mints, twenty are described in Domesday Book either as
burgi or as having burgenses.
The nine or ten burhs which never became ports, mint-
places or boroughs may have owed their fate to the greater
suitability of neighbouring places for trade and administra-
tion,7 but this only shows that walls alone did not make a
1 Ed. Stevenson, c. 98, p. 85. 2 Ibid. c. 92, p. 80.
3 Its purely military object seems attested by the absence of the Dorset
Dorchester. The burhs were on the northern frontier and the sea coast
of the shire.
4 Buckingham, in its strong natural position and with perhaps early
slighter fortification, may have been reckoned a burh before Edward’s
time. Porchester, though belonging to the see of Winchester, may, like
episcopal Worcester, have been fortified in the public interest under Alfred.
5 Of the two hitherto unidentified, Sceaftesege has been located by
Professor Stenton as an island in the Thames, near Marlow.
β Watchet, Cricklade and Lydford never attained this status.
7 Burpham was apparently Outshadowed by Arundel, Eashing by
Godalming (of which it became a tithing), Porchester by Portsmouth,
Tisbury by Hindonj Bredy by Bridport, Halwell by Totnes, and Pilton by
Barnstaple.
THE NEW BURHS
19
borough in the municipal sense, though, where conveniently
situated, they normally provided the natural shell for the
growth of town life in stormy times.
The conditions under Alfred were not favourable to urban
growth. It is hardly likely that even the comparatively
quiet period after the settlement of Guthrum-Athelstan in
East Anglia (88θ) saw much revival of trade. When the
Danes were not raiding England they were ravaging Francia,
and commerce with that natural market was cut off. The
organization of the burhs for national defence must have de-
pressed the trading element where it existed and proportionately
increased the predominance of the thegnly class who no doubt
bore the brunt of the defence.1 On the other hand, too much
has perhaps been made of the absence of any reference to
trade in Alfred’s Laws except in c. 34 which required chapmen
to give security in folkmoot for the good conduct of those
whom they proposed to take up country with them.2 Traders
who moved about with a train of attendants cannot fairly be
dismissed as mere “ wandering pedlars.” We have seen
Charles the Great insisting on similar security from English
merchants in his country.3 Nor must it be forgotten that
Alfred of set purpose added as little as was possible to the
enactments of his predecessors, not knowing, he says, what
additions of his would be approved by his successors.
Although a study of the map shows that the sites of the
burhs of the Burghal Hidagc Were chosen for military reasons
and most of their names are not recorded before the ninth
century, some of these unrecorded names imply earlier settle-
ments and there is strong probability that important fords like
Oxford, Wallingford and Cricklade or the rarer bridge, as at
Axbridge, had already attracted population. Such passages
and the confluences of streams were the natural nuclei of early
trade as well as obvious points to defend. That a market was
the central point of the burhs constructed by Alfred and his
Mercian son-in-law we know from the only record of such a
fortification, either now or later, that affords a glimpse within
* But the burgιvare of London and Chichester who sallied forth against
the Danes in 894-5 are clearly distinguishable from the king’s thegns
at home in the forts " who gathered from all the burhs of the west to meet
the Danes on the middle Severn. The " men who were to keep the burhs ”
⅛κve Prev*ously been mentioned as an exception from Alfred’s division of
the fyrd into two halves, one at home, and the other in the field. The
thegns were for the present permanently '' at home ” in the burhs, but
their residence would presumably end with the return of peace.
a Liebermann, Ges. i. 68-9. 3 Above, p. 10.