24
ORIGINS OF THE BOROUGH
that its jurisdiction was not then confined to the city, but
extended over a district which at least comprised Middlesex.
If the scheme of the Burghal Hidage was the work of
Alfred, the fortification of Worcester seems to occupy a
somewhat isolated position between the purely defensive
burhs of that system and those erected by Edward the Elder
and his sister Ethelfied in the course of their long offensive
against the Danes. Like the former it was undertaken for
defence only, but it was not, so far as we know, part of any
general scheme. The later series of fortifications were steps
in a converging advance from London and south-west Mercia
upon the fortresses of the central Danelaw, but the new
burhs were not all on the direct lines of advance for on the
east Essex had to be occupied to prevent outflanking from
East Anglia and on the west a combination of the Welsh and
the Dublin Northmen with the Danes must at all costs be
averted.
In all twenty-five burhs were constructed by Edward and
his sister, if we include Chester and Manchester where old
Roman walls were repaired. There were, however, two each
at Buckingham and Hertford, and those at Bedford and
Nottingham were merely bridgeheads for the attack on these
Danish burhs. Of the twenty-one which remain after the
necessary deduction only eight1 are found as municipal
boroughs later in the Middle Ages, though Manchester and
Bakewell attained a quasi∙burghal status under mesne lords.
This small proportion, which more than reverses that of the
Burghal Hidage is easily understood, since a majority of these
forts were on the borders of Wales, a region much less favour-
able than Wessex to urban growth. Four of them are shown
by their names to have been adaptations of more primitive
fortifications. Four or five were so obscure that they still
remain unidentified. Some were probably only temporary.
These facts emphasize the conclusion we drew from the
Burghal Hidage that the mere fortification of a spot, whether
already settled or not, did not secure its future as a town.
For that its site must present special advantages for trade
or administration or both, and this Edward himself recognized
in his law restricting trade to ports.2 Of the eight burhs which
were to show that they possessed these advantages, all but
1 Chester, Bridgenorth, Tamworth, Stafford, Hertford, Warwick,
Buckingham, and MaIdon.
2 Liebermann, Ges. i. 138.
AFTER FORTIFICATION
25
Bridgenorth were selected as mint-places before the Norman
Conquest, indeed, with the exception of Buckingham, by
Edward’s son, Athelstan. Of the burhs which did not win
special jurisdiction or corporate privileges, Witham in Essex
had a mint, but this was only in the reign of Harthacnut when
mints were more indiscriminately distributed.1
None of the eight more important new burhs is called port
in the Chronicle. This need not be significant, however, for
port and burh were practically equivalent in the tenth century
in the sense of “ town,” and in a region not yet free from the
danger of Danish invasion the term which implied fortification
might easily obtain predominance before it did elsewhere.
Yet Northampton, one of the captured Danish burhs, is called
port by the chronicler in ɪoɪo, and Worcester as late as 1087.2
Speaking generally, the chief Edwardian foundations had
a less important future than the well-chosen centres which the
Danes had fortified and made district capitals.
A study of the maps in the Reports of the Commissioners on
Municipal Boundaries and Wards (1837), drawn before the
modern growth of towns, usually detects a marked difference
in lay out between the towns which first appear as Anglo-
Saxon burhs and those which grew up later without the con-
striction of ramparts. Putting aside the old Roman sites, the
greater compactness of such towns as Oxford, Worcester or
Derby as compared with, say, Andover, Coventry or Chester-
field at once strikes the eye. It is generally held that many
of the new burhs, both English and Danish, were modelled
upon the Roman civitates or castra, and this may have been so
to some extent, though the English settlers within Roman
walls, Haverfield pointed out, do not seem to have taken over
the old street plans and a quadrangular rampart or wall with
a gate on each side is the simplest form of fortification to enclose
a considerable inhabited area and therefore likely to suggest
itself without imitation. Early settlements were often made
at cross-roads and if walled would, as at Oxford, reproduce
the Roman plan without deliberately copying it.
4. After Fortification
Nearly all the chief English towns of the Middle Ages are
found either among the Roman ciυitates or burhs re-occupied
and their walls repaired, sometimes very early, or the new
1E.H.R. xi. (1896), 761 ff. 2A.S.C., ed. Plummer, pp. 141 223.