22
ORIGINS OF THE BOROUGH
What light does this invaluable charter throw upon the
vexed question of the origin of the medieval borough ? Here
it was the wall which made possible the trading centre, the
port, not the trading centre which was given a protecting wall.
All or nearly all of the features on which the discussion has
turned appear here in full or in germ, walls, market, separate
profits of justice if not a separate court, divisions of revenue
between king and earl, probably an earlier agricultural com-
munity. It is not the deliberate foundation and fortification
of a trading town that the charter reveals. The walls were
built as a refuge for the population of a wide region, liable to
sudden Danish attacks, a market was an indispensable pro-
vision for the needs of temporary and permanent inhabitants
alike. Had it not been for the military necessities of the
time, episcopal Worcester might have had to wait long for
urban growth, for the making of markets as of walls was
a prerogative of the state. Yet the market, though at the
outset an incidental result of the fortification, was a vital
germ of the future borough, the fortification merely the
occasion which called it into existence. Circumstances de-
cided that most towns should grow up behind walls, but
exceptions can be found. Droitwich, the “ Wicum emptorium
salis ” of an early eighth-century character,1 never appears
as a burh, but it was accounted a borough in 1086 and its
burgesses received a charter from King John.
The jurisdiction over market and streets at Worcester
involved a local court, but it seems unlikely that this would
be a purely Worcester court at this date. Elsewhere the
court may usually have been that of a district centring in
a royal residence, burh in one of its older senses, for the new
burhs were, it would seem, nearly always fortified royal
tuns. Worcester was not, but it would be rash to claim for
it the distinction of having the first purely burghal court.
It does not seem possible to accept the opinion of the
editors of the Place-names of Worcestershire 2 that the area
walled at Worcester was the comparatively small district of
Sudbury at the south-eastern corner of the city. A refuge
for the population of a wide area must have enclosed a much
greater space and not only is this confirmed by the size of
the holding in one corner of it which the bishop leased to
Ethelred and his wife in 904,3 bfit the mention of the north
1 C.S. 138, i. 203 (a. 716-7).
8 P. 22.
3 Above, p. 20.
THE NEW BURHS
23
wall and the Severn in its bounds shows that their burh
lay in the same position north of the cathedral church as the
later borough and may have been со-extensive with it.
Fortification did not usually, if ever, lead to a change in
the earlier name of the place. New burhs with names ending
in -bury or -borough generally owed them to some more
primitive defences. London is a partial exception. Until
now it had, as we have seen, been very commonly called
Lundenwic, but this seems to have been quite superseded in
the last centuries of the Anglo-Saxon period by Lunden-
burh. This, however, proved no more permanent. The
uncompounded form Lundene, London, derived from the
Roman Londinium, continued in use alongside it and ultimately
prevailed. It is more than likely that Lundene in virtue of
its walls had sometimes been called Lundenburh in the pre-
ceding age. Bede’s “ urbs Lundoniae ” points to that. The
increased use of the compound name may perhaps be explained
by the fact that burh was now in everybody’s mouth rather
than by any repairs of the walls that Alfred may have carried
out when, in 880 or shortly after,1 he recovered the town from
the Danes and entrusted its custody to his son-in-law. Some
years later, in 889, Alfred and Ethelred made that gift of
a tenement at Hwaetmundes Stane in the city to Bishop
Werfrith of Worcester which has been mentioned above 2
on account of the privilege conferred with it of buying and
selling within the messuage for its necessities and taking the
resultant tolls, which in the streets and quay would go to the
king. This is interesting as showing that the London tolls
were not granted to Ethelred with the custody of the city,
but, as at Worcester, were retained by the crown. It was to
Alfred too, if we may trust a somewhat dubious document,
as part of the restoration of London after the Danish occupa-
tion, that the sees of Worcester and Canterbury owed their
adjoining sokes of an acre each by Ethelredshithe, the later
Queenhithe, with quays (naυium staciones) of equal width
outside the wall.3 It seems likely that the much larger soke
of Queenhithe, east of the Worcester soke, represents an
earlier grant to Ethelred.4
London, like Worcester, must of course have been the
seat of a court, but in this case we are pretty safe in identifying
it with an actual later court, the folksmote and conjecturing
ɪ See above, pp. 16-17. 2 p ю. 3CS. 577, ii∙ 220.
4 W. Page, London ; its Origin and Early Development (x923), p. 130.